Desert
by Gavin Strawhan

Red Shed Company
Cardwell St.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Mention the Men’s Movement and in no time flat someone will make a joke about hugging a tree. All those bollocky jokers running with wolves, listening to the mythopoeic beat of a different drum. But, the apologists insist, women have their rituals, their secrets, their Fun- so why not men ? Never mind Lodge, the RSL, the footy club and the communion rails of the front bar what we need are new ceremonies for the New Bloke. And plenty of obliging persons appeared to package and commodify the intangible. Weekend sessions, Robert Bly videos, plenty of howling and plenty of primal stomping. Further diversification followed- christian men’s groups, capitalist men’s groups, christian capitalist men’s groups. Rarely has a notion proliferated -and exhausted itself- so quickly.

Which is something of a problem with the Red Shed’s latest production Desert, Gavin Strawhan’s often-hilarious account of two men and a boy finding themselves, losing themselves and (maybe) finding themselves again. In the three years in which Strawhan has worked on the text, the Men’s Movement, as represented in the play, has virtually passed on leaving some of the drolleries of Desert in a vacuum. This is further compounded by the fact that director Tim Maddock has deliberately abstracted the setting – it is notably Desert, not Outback, and the green prickly cactus set against cartoon blue walls and orange vinyl mud crust is more Roadrunner and Coyote than Pro Hart.

These are bold choices, but in emergencies- and in the contortions of the text there are many- the actors have very little to anchor their characters to. Nevertheless, Desert starts strongly with Blake, a therapist and convert to the MM, collecting his companions to go to a weekend Gathering of Men. His friend Conrad, a doctor, is an over-empathetic husband who wears a feeding bra to better understand his wife’s pregnancy. Miles, Blake’s son, is fourteen, living with his mother and in need of a father’s rough love. Needless to say he’d rather stay home and play with his friend Liddy, an apprentice sorceress and embodiment of the Feminine Principle.

As Blake, Francis Greenslade is brilliantly large, straddling the heartiness of the character and maintaining sufficient comedy and credibility for Strawhan to crank up his dialectic. Greenslade fulminates, expounds and endlessly encourages his reluctant fellow travellers. Thumping his drum, telling his stories, he is both master of ceremonies and cheer squad while Conrad , in a nicely observed performance by Alex Hulse quietly counters and modifies his grandiosity, and Miles, played with knowing detail by Richard Kelly, detonates and undercuts his authority. It is funny stuff and written with enough insider knowledge to have satiric depth.

But Desert is a better play in the setup than in resolution. It builds effectively and complicates with some unexpectedly powerful pillow talk from Greenslade and good observation of the broken circuitry of father-son relationships. There is even a shift in tension as it becomes evident that the trio are lost with car troubles and, thanks to an accident of nature, no mobile phone. The difficulty is that after interval Act II becomes as seriously lost as the Boys who would be Men. Strawhan’s schematic ambitions become clear and what began as comedy of manners is stretched beyond capacity. The men’s neuroses spin out and with that there is a loss of continuity in character – Conrad behaves badly, revealing the soft man as also the weak one, Blake deflates into a spiteful sexual braggart and Miles, now wise in the ways of moisture gathering, undergoes an initiation into the New Manhood , guided by Liddy, played by Kylie Mitton with as much aplomb as is possible in an exponentially ludicrous role.

Some of this might have been allayed by Tim Maddock’s direction. The scenes between Miles and Liddy are never satisfactory because Strawhan hasn’t decided whether they are supposed to be four and a half or fourteen and a half and so the Spring Awakenings get tangled up with the archly written – and performed – kids’ stuff. The account of the friendship needed to be brought down more notches in order for it to sustain the later dream elements in Act II, not to mention Liddy’s red cowgirl costumes and purple cheesecloth.

Much of Desert is great fun, drily observed and shrewdly performed (with some terrific music from Scott Rowe) but when it looks to resolve into some principle of the Third Gender it comes perilously close to the kind of pseudo-mysticism it is so effectively satirising. Given the fundamental nature of the issues some pointers and guidance on sexual roles would be most welcome but not in the glib and algebraic form of this conclusion.
Better an open verdict than this. Better to be lost than to pretend we’ve been found.

The Adelaide Review, No.137, April, 1995, p.31.