State Theatre Company SA with Sydney Theatre Company and Flinders University. Dunstan Playhouse. 15 Apr 2016
Geordie Brookman's singular directorial gift is an ability to realise complex states of transition in the significant life moments of a character. It is done in such a way as to embrace not just the unseen minutiae of evolving emotions and reactions but equally, shifts in the specific world that the characters inhabit.
Brookman is a director who digs deep, seeking the last shreds of complex understanding to be found in a text.
Sue Smith’s Machu Picchu seems material perfectly suited to Brookman. What could be more challenging than making comprehensible the confusion, anger, pain and complete disruption following an accident resulting in paralysis, as happens to husband Paul (Darren Gilshenan) while driving with his wife Gabby (Lisa McCune)? The destruction of physical, emotional, professional and personal foundations of security and identity is an immensely overwhelming experience. What is to come from it?
The sense of disjunction between the depths of complex subconscious transition Brookman seeks to bring to life in performance - superbly utilising Jonathan Oxlade’s sparse, sterile hospital ward set and Geoff Cobham’s nuanced and symbolically evocative lighting - is disturbingly at odds with Smith’s naturalistic text; sporting humorous support characters excellently realised by Elena Carapetis, Renato Musolino, Luke Joslin and Annabel Matheson.
Smith is the renowned writer of The Leaving of Liverpool, Brides of Christ and Mabo, and her exploration of how Paul, Gabby, friends, and family deal with trauma in Machu Picchu is in itself a beautiful thing. We are taken from the present to the past and back again in a series of monologues and exchanges between Paul and Gabby in which the longings of the past and achieving them clash violently with the death-like present paralysis. Darren Gilshenan’s performance is rich in depth, matched by McCune’s.
Humour is well used in both its black and light hearted forms and while warmly embraced by the audience, problematically, what has eventuated is a reliance on formulaic storytelling, a kind of safety net in which the audience is aware of where they are being taken on this journey, yet simultaneously able to experience some sense of comfortable wonderment at Paul and Gabby’s inner transformation. Brookman’s direction redeems as much as possible this element of disappointment ensuring a production of worth is being offered. Is it in part because Smith, in drawing on her experience of being diagnosed in 2010 with cancer, has only been able to brave exposure of remembrances as inspiration for the text so far, given the still recent date of diagnosis?
Only time can answer that.
David O’Brien
When: 13 Apr to 1 May
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
