Windmill Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre and AJZ Productions. Space Theatre. 14 Aug 2015
"the book of loco" won the 2013 Adelaide Fringe Festival Award for Best Theatre Production, so I was mucho looking forward to my first viewing and this faithful reprise with writer, creator and sole performer, Alirio Zavarce, and original director, Sasha Zahra, after a second season at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre last year.
This one act play is an extremely creatively expressed autobiographical amble through Zavarce's earlier and unsettled life, prior to current contentment with his wife Juliette and their two kids. He has a lot to get off his chest, and if he's not still terribly angry about it all, he certainly acted like he was. And that's probably why I left the theatre feeling rather sad, as if the trespasses against him, and those he saw in life, were not forgiven, in spite of a plea to the audience to be kind and considerate of one another, politically and even when exiting a burning building.
Many of his life's incidences struck a parallel with mine, but some serious ones I have not had to endure. Desperate phone calls with the recent ex- telling him to buck up had me recollect some pathetic moments. I have not endured the racial profiling from customs that Zavarce relates on return trips back to Australia, however, I share with him the dislocation of the life of a migrant to this country, and terrible visits back home to ailing, dying or dead parents. A kind of a running theme was what to do in an emergency (and airplane trips figure prominently here again) - later it emerges why. No, I haven't had that happen to my family.
Zavarce, stuffed into a black suit, and sweating profusely, is variably charming, frightening, funny, pathetic, threatening, throwing away anger and the next moment, defeated - driven crazy by manipulating authorities, bad behaviour, or just bad luck. Moment by moment, you just don't know what will be the next turn in the tale.
Director Zahra and Zavarce employ a panoply of theatrical tricks and script devices to keep one off balance - not quite knowing where something is leading and then bringing it all together. Every action seemed to be loaded with symbolic content, although I found selling the plate of shit irrelevant and he could have saved himself the 20 bucks, which must be adding up to quite a sum by now, the third season. The set, comprised of walls of cardboard cartons, designed by Jonathon Oxlade, provided me with a sense of transition or change - on the move, so to speak. As the wall was dismantled in various ways, the boxes lent themselves to all kinds of makeshift props and purposes.
"the book of loco" is like a book from the bible - allegorical, historical, mythical, entertaining, educational, functional and above all, human. A plate of poo and all the rest not to be missed.
David Grybowski
When: 15 to 22 August
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
