★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Richard Jordan Productions UK. The Arch, Holden Street Theatres. 26 Feb 2025
Who is more ravaged by Shellshocked? The characters or the audience?
This “explosive new play” is from the pen of British playwright Philip Stokes who has rattled our cultural cage in previous Fringes: Heroin(e) for Breakfast and Jesus, Jane, Mother and Me.
And, it features his son, Jack Stokes, whose dramatic perspicacity won him an enthusiastic Adelaide Critics Circle Award in 2023.
Naturally, expectations for this work were high, especially since it comes out of the production stable of the highly distinguished Richard Jordan.
Shellshocked fulfils those expectations with its quality of professionalism and, without a doubt, its promise as simply unforgettable. But it is not easy theatre. Strikingly Pinteresque, it is a very strange and gruelling ordeal with some raspingly shrill vocal work by senior actor Lee Bainbridge.
He plays Mr Lupine, the mysteriously famous artist to whom young Wesley, urged by his mother, applies for an apprenticeship. Having survived the trenches of WWI, 19-year-old Wesley has shown immense promise in his cathartic charcoal drawings. Having been rendered the man of the family, the rake-thin lad wears his dead father’s oversized clothes as he applies for work to support his poor mother and sisters. Slovenly old Lupine knows all about them. They live down the road. But, he has a game of cat and mouse to play with the young soldier. He, too, is a damaged soul. Not a very nice one. He plies the boy with cognac and plays power games which have the audience pondering his motives. Is he a sexual predator, perhaps? Or just a sad old loser?
Is Wesley as naive as he seems?
Their interactions evolve through some breathtaking and disturbing scenes. Stokes delivers a beautifully contained performance against the bombastic aural assaults of Bainbridge. There are some momentous interactions.
The little Arch theatre houses this production well, the stage draped generously with artists’ drop sheets and adorned with period bar and desk plus, dominantly, a huge white spotlit canvas.
This is the artist’s studio wherein the play opens with him listening to the radio. A strange soundscape thereafter comes and goes, with filmic suggestions of rising drama. It is perhaps unnecessary since the play not only speaks for itself, it literally bellows. And twists and turns rather satisfyingly. One is left with all sorts of quaint loose ends to ponder along with a piercing reminder of the appalling collateral damage that war imparts upon individuals and society.
Samela Harris
Warning: the theatre’s new airconditioning is fierce. Take a wrap,
When: 18 Feb to 23 Mar
Where: The Arch, Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
