{"id":1797,"date":"2012-04-21T19:17:54","date_gmt":"2012-04-21T09:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/reviews\/?p=1797"},"modified":"2012-04-21T19:17:54","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T09:47:54","slug":"the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/?p=1797","title":{"rendered":"The City"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 14 , 2012
\nAdelaide
\nTheatre<\/p>\n

The City
\nby Martin Crimp
\nnowyesnow
\nThe Bakehouse Theatre, Adelaide
\nApril 13. Tickets $ 17 – $ 25
\nBookings : 8277 0505,\u00a0 www.bakehousetheatre.com<\/a>
\nUntil April 28.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is it\u201c, asks one of the characters in Martin Crimp\u2019s 2008 play The City<\/em>, \u201cthat our hopes make us so sad ?\u201d It is one of the very few direct comments anyone makes in this captivating, eighty minute maze of disconnected details, emotions, lacunae and cul-de-sacs.<\/p>\n

Crimp\u2019s plays have often used indirection to find direction out. Earlier works, like the self-descriptive Play with Repeats<\/em>, use re-starts and repetitions to find variations and might-have-beens. His 1997 hit Attempts on Her <\/em>Life is subtitled \u201cseventeen scenarios for the theatre\u201d and provides neither casting clues nor stage instructions.<\/p>\n

In the opening dialogue of The City<\/em> we initially feel we are on surer ground. A couple – Clair, a literary translator, and her husband, Chris, are discussing their day. He has had trouble swiping his staff ID to get into the building, she has a chance encounter with a writer named Mohamed whose child has gone missing at the railway station.<\/p>\n

But in no time we sense there is a different weight to the two stories \u2013 one is apparently trivial and neurotic , the other potentially tragic \u2013 and this disjunction widens and twists as the play steps in and out of narrative focus. A neighbour, Jenny, appears. She is a nurse on shift work unable to sleep because of the children playing. She reveals that her husband, a doctor, is\u00a0 involved in \u201ca secret war\u201d, where a city has been pulverized, even its inhabitants, reduced to \u201cfine grey dust.\u201d \u00a0This ruined city is a recurrent image, a spectre at the edge of the apparently calm domesticity. Is it a harbinger of bad faith ? A moral rebuke, perhaps, and a reason for these agitated, unquiet lives ?<\/p>\n

Director Geordie Brookman and his nowyesnow company use the intimate confines of the Bakehouse theatre to strong effect. Victoria Lamb\u2019s\u00a0 abstracted minimalist d\u00e9cor of \u00a0white \u00a0and glass panels, (along with Ben Flett\u2019s impersonal lighting) is deliberately short on reassuring particulars \u00a0and Andrew Howard\u2019s soundscape is frequently ominous.<\/p>\n

The performances are excellent. As Clair and Chris, Lizzy Falkland and Chris Pitman (ably supported by Anna Steen and Matilda Bailey)\u00a0 lucidly, and often amusingly,\u00a0 capture the unease and insecurities in their relationship, while also remaining disturbingly dissociated and elusive (like voices in a T.S. Eliot poem) as the narrative shifts, intriguingly, dreamily, and in tiny increments, out of our grasp.<\/p>\n

Brookman is soon to take over as artistic director of the State Theatre of South Australia. It will be a welcome achievement if he can bring the intensity, clarity and freshness of this production – the same urgent nowyesnow-ness –\u00a0 to the mainstage of the Playhouse.<\/p>\n

Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n

\u201cMazy tour through interconnected lives\u201d The Australian,<\/em> April 16, 2012, p.15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 14 , 2012 Adelaide Theatre The City by Martin Crimp nowyesnow The Bakehouse Theatre, Adelaide April 13. Tickets $ 17 – $ 25 Bookings : 8277 0505,\u00a0 www.bakehousetheatre.com Until April 28. \u201cWhy is it\u201c, asks one of the characters in Martin Crimp\u2019s 2008 play The City, \u201cthat our hopes make us so sad ?\u201d It is one of the very few direct comments anyone makes in this captivating, eighty minute maze of disconnected details, emotions, lacunae and cul-de-sacs. Crimp\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,17,5,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-23","category-adelaide-companies","category-archive","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1798,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions\/1798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}