The
Australian
27/11/2000
By
Lee Christofis
YOUNG
WRITERS REPAINT MASTER THEATRE.
Art
and Soul Melbourne Theatre Company Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne. Ends December
16.
THESE
seven short plays from adventurous young Melbourne writers bring the Melbourne
Theatre Company's year to an inspiring close. Asked by MTC supremo Simon Phillips
to respond to Garry Shead's painting, Homage to Rembrandt, the writers deconstruct
the artist's meditation on the master and his muses wife Saskia and
a levitating, one winged angel with wicked humour and reflections
on inspiration and death.
First
up on Anna Tregloan's set, which translates Shead's image into a scumbled studio
lyrically lit by David Murray, is Aidan Fennessy's The Slaughterhouse. The play
dismantles the obsessive self portraitist Rembrandt who feels up the angel
and tortures Saskia until she retaliates with her own life challenging
painting. And, as studio becomes contemporary gallery, Australian artist Barry
frets over his retrospective, argues with his inept agent and lambastes the art
market's crass commercialism.
Tom
Wright's At Last the Famous Artist is Dead goes deeper, satirising local
pretensions in a brilliant, coruscating rant by Australia's "greatest
living artist", a camp, blind elitist. Watched by painter and some weird
rellies, he rips into Sydney, Olympics hype, populism, conceptual and
tea‑towel art until he dies in full flight.
Ray's
Painting by Melissa Reeves is a riot, a country housewife's (Louise Siversen)
seduction fantasies over a tormented painter whom she spies one handedly
wanking without missing a brush stroke. Dancing naked, she relishes
almighty power and reorders her world with a fabulous laugh!
Tee
O'Neill's Homage to Rembrandt and Matt Cameron's Whispering Death feel less
secure in this line up. In this madness gleam two reflective gems, which
exploit chance encounters to clear artist's block. Glenn Shea's Masterpiece
brings an old man and a beautiful runaway together in a storm. His hospitality,
and the permission of his remote wife to draw the girl's form, break the tension
and resolution flows elliptically with a genuine tenderness of spirit. Joanna
Murray‑Sinith's Untitled finds the wrong model arriving at an irascible
widower's studio. He hates her instantly because she's blonde. But crisp, urbane
sparring reveal truths and the naked model's power releases his unremitting
grief.
Kate
Cherry and Peter Houghton direct a near‑dream cast with vitality and
shared vision. Robert Essex, Kim Gyngell, Kate Kendall, Genevieve Morris, Ben
Rogan and Louise Siversen
inhabit the 28 characters. But top honours to Essex and Gyngell for superb
timing, eccentricity and grounding presence.
(c)
Nationwide News Proprietary Ltd, 2000.