They are baying for blood again in Adelaide. It’s not the first time that an artistic director of the State Theatre Company has been under siege from the disgruntled, the disappointed, the envious and the Charlie’s Aunt brigade, but the present minder of the State Theatre Company, Keith Gallasch, is particularly vulnerable.
The trouble is that much of what aggrieved Advertiser theatre critic, Alan Roberts, and Opposition Shadow Minister for the Arts, Murray Hills, have had to say in criticism of State’s 1985 program is supportable.
Unfortunately the issue is more than a little congealed with the forthcoming State elections and attempts to undermine Premier John Bannon’s image as an arts czar in the Dunstan mould.
The fact is that the Premier isn’t visible around the theatrical traps but Murray Hill is not only seen but believed by a wider spectrum of theatre people than would actually vote for him.
Which brings us back to the beleaguered Keith Gallasch, whose directorial debut with the not very beaut Beautland, gave the long knife and forked tongue crowd an unparalleled opportunity for a massacre. Of course they protested too much. One turkey doesn’t make a winter, but the timing was so awful.
It’s completed a very shaky trifecta -the woeful Richard Ill, the unentertaining Mr Sloane and, amidst so much quality theatre in Come Out, the luckless Beautland.
What State needs is a winner, and that is what Jenny Kemp’s Australian premiere production of Botho Strauss’ Big and Little looks like.
Of course, it remains to be seen how well audiences persevere with a long and, in many ways, difficult play, but its selection represents the kind of commitment to new repertoire that a major company should make.
Big and Little was first performed in Berlin in 1978 and starred Glenda Jackson when it played in London to fiercely divided critical notices. It is already, however, becoming regarded as a modern classic.
The play is self-descriptive – it consists of a series of apparently disconnected episodes of varying lengths that present the quest of Lotte, a graphic designer estranged from her husband, who wanders through a fractured urban landscape in search of human contact with family, friends and strangers.
As Lotte looks through windows into the private agonies of lovers, the aged and isolates like herself there are echoes of T. S. Eliot’s febrile and loveless Waste Lands – one character even asks: “What are you thinking? Think.”
But the significant contrast is that Lotte is tirelessly cheerful and persistent in her belief that human communication is not only possible but the right of all.
Unfortunately, in a society where “personal space” is sacrosanct, Lotte is one of those who stand too close to people in elevators, gauchely unaware that her friendliness is repellent in its urgency, terrifying in its open yearning for contact.
Director Jenny Kemp and designer Shaun Gurton have created a featureless and pre- fabricated environment of compartments brilliantly lit by John Comeadow. It invokes a sense of isolation in society like that in Edward Hopper’s paintings. The result is a set which successfully highlights and focuses the performances.
As Lotte, Deborah Kennedy is extraordinary. From the moment the play opens on a long and difficult monologue she is totally in command and she sustains our attention and scrutiny for the entire evening. In dramaturg Hector MacLean’s script, the poetic speeches are precise and yet somehow elliptical and Deborah Kennedy’s inflection and idiom is perfectly suited to it.
Much of what Strauss is charting is at the edge of the alphabet, an effort like that of Beckett to describe evermore precisely the consciousness of a human mind watching itself.
Big And Little is an astonishing play – scenes range from an apparent naturalism to disturbingly surreal images – a teenager permanently confined to a hiker’s tent which moves about its tiny room with macabre comedy or Lotte consulting a large book with blank pages which begin to bleed.
The effect of such scenes is never to be ponderously mystifying. They are as matter- of-fact as dream or nightmare and have the familiarity of the collective unconscious.
The final scene has Lotte seated in a doctor’s waiting room talking about her life to people who refuse to listen. Finally when the others leave Lotte tells the doctor, “I’m just sitting here, there is nothing wrong with me.”
The truth and delusion of this remark is the paradox of the play, as it asks what authentic being-in-the-world might really mean.
Lotte’s dilemma is always painfully apparent but she retains dignity and interest and in its comic nuance Deborah Kennedy’s performance is a triumph.
The supporting cast also provides excellent work, particularly Natalie Bate as a wealthy neurotic wife and Dina Panozzo as the terrified wife of a manic Turk (presented with convincing physicality by Ross Williams) and as the exasperated partner and colleague of an obtuse academic (played wittily by Andrew Tighe).
William Zappa as the introverted scientist, Soren, and Douglas Hedge as a bewildered father, also provide compelling vignettes of the living and partly living. Jenny Kemp has succeeded with a remarkable project which has provided a long overdue opportunity for the State Acting Ensemble to show just what it is capable of.
The National Times, March 28, 1985, p.34.