Features of Blown Youth
by Raimondo Cortese
Magpie2
Queens Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
When State Theatre refitted Magpie 2 this year it also gave it a difficult task. Some might have called it a Mission Impossible. No longer a theatre-in-schools project its charter was switched to post secondary audience development. Magpie was now to produce theatre for eighteen to twenty-five year olds- a group that is not really a group at all, a demographic that not even demographers can believe in.
From the point of view of a theatre company the only thing which this age range has in common is that they don’t go to the theatre. Or perhaps, more precisely, they only go to theatre that they are in, or their friends are in. The make-it-yourself theatre ethic comes out of the school drama scene and it is hugely laudable and energetic but you can’t develop just by looking in the mirror. There have to be expectations, challenges, objectives. You know, like, standards. What the managers like to call benchmarks.
Under the direction of Benedict Andrews, Magpie2 has in short time done remarkably well to claim an audience and give it plenty to think about. Taking over the Queens Theatre, incorporating the services of Dirty House music and generally establishing its non-aligned status, Magpie opened with the double bill, Future Tense back in May and now reappears for a new production, and as it happens, last production in December.
Features of Blown Youth is a boldly imagined, impressive work from young Melbourne playwright Raimondo Cortese. Prolific not only for the stage but for film also, Cortese has published numerous works of prose fiction as well. The setting for Features is both identifiably Australian and generically non-specific. Cortese has called what he does naturalism but actually it is a kind of hybrid. And there is a lot of it about- in Trainspotting , for instance, where that strong sense of local setting and patois suddenly takes a surreal dive down the S- bend.
In Features the location is an old Melbourne terrace house, cut away in Justin Kurzel’s vertiginous set as an upstairs downstairs grunge doll house inside which the permutations and conflicts of the characters are exposed. The formula comes in tamer version from the TV serial – especially those varied portraits of the singles world which range from The Young Ones, Seinfeld, Friends and This Life. In Features of Blown Youth , though, there is a greater harshness, a heightened intensity of experience and an engagingly cryptic sense of action.
The residents of the house -Isabella, Harriet, Guido and Oron all variously react to the arrival of an outsider. Dove their housemate has brought home a stray, Rot, who manages to provoke anxiety and irritation in everyone. It is a familar trope this one- no group house ever manages to avoid such events. But, in fact, Rot is only the beginning, the cursed precursor. The real intruder in this house is the new owner, Strawberry, a divide-and-tempter who makes faustian pacts with each of the characters in turn.
Using the large space at the Queens to create a two storey narrative, Benedict Andrews has brought together a talented and expressive cast who add perceptive energy to Cortese’s vivid writing. The events unfold in often elliptical ways but there is a strength in the characterisation and a Pinterish menace in the narrrative which makes this production powerfully memorable.
Valerie Berry as Dove has a whimsical innocence which conspires with Jed Kurzel’s feckless punk, Rot to ruffle the perilous stability of the others. As the paranoically aggressive Guido, Nathan Page is convincing if sometimes over blustery. Elena Carapetis creates a knowing portrait of the difficult Isabella and Katy Jenkin has an ethereal daffiness as Syv. But it is the interplay between Colleen Cross as Harriet, endlessly attempting to establish order for herself and connection with Oron, the resident cynic and wiseacre (played with sardonic relish by Richard Kelly) that is a highpoint.
Cortese’s play carries a lot of freight and the narrative exposition in Act One is extensive. So Andrews has his work cut out for him to bring the play back on to the central track when Strawberry, played with a terrific, jaunty vehemence by Syd Brisbane, enters the house to threaten, beguile and paralyse any of the characters caught in his mesmeric gaze. The motif of the corrupt older figure is all too recognisable in the paranoid world of youth culture. Such a character occurs in Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking for instance.
But in its richer detail and more elaborate plotting, Features of Blown Youth signals a differently bleak warning. Where Ravenhill offers a kind of determinist algebra Cortese leads us to believe his vivacious characters have more room to manoeuvre. It is, ultimately, the extent of their vulnerability which makes the cruelty of the final scenes so compelling.
Magpie 2, now defunded after such a short flight, has shown great promise in the1997 season. Benedict Andrews has chosen interesting work and attracted skilful and committed artists to his company. And for this most recent venture they got good houses and a strong audience response. Having reached its target, at least in part, it would be a waste if the momentum from the Magpie enterprise is lost to yet further attempts to fiddle and fix. This project- or something like it -deserves more of a chance to prove its worth.
The Adelaide Review, January, 1998.