Theatre
\nMurray Bramwell<\/p>\n
Checklist For an Armed Robber
\nBy Vanessa Bates
\nVitalstatistix
\nWaterside, 11 Nile St, Port Adelaide.
\nOctober 19. Tickets $12- $23. Bookings (08) 8447 6211
\nUntil November 5, 2005<\/p>\n
It is almost three years to the day since Chechen rebels stormed the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow during a performance of the popular musical Nord-Ost. The siege lasted three days and resulted in the deaths of fifty rebels and 117 hostages – the latter, for the most part, as the result of a mysterious nerve gas used by Russian authorities in a disastrous attempt at rescue. Drawing on these events, Checklist for an Armed Robber began as a writing exercise for the Blueprints Writers Assembly, has been adapted for ABC Radio and is now a captivating stage production for Vitalstatistix.<\/p>\n
Playwright Vanessa Bates has interwoven two news items \u2013 the Nord-Ost incident and an account of a botched hold-up in a Newcastle bookshop. Both took place in the same weekend, both involved an older woman acting as an intermediary with a desperate young man. One event ended very badly, the other is defused with bamboozlingly persistent kindness and the theft of a book on the mysteries of tantric love. <\/p>\n
Director Maude Davey and a capable quartet of actors have turned Bates\u2019 purl-and-plain double narrative into an absorbing theatrical experience. Much is due to designer Cath Cantlon\u2019s bold use of the cavernous stage at Waterside. With its imposing proscenium, faded red curtain and peeling paint, the space has a seedy grandeur that suits the desperation of the hostage takers as they surround the confined audience space on scaffolding walkways draped with swathes of black PVC. Sue Grey-Gardner\u2019s lighting directs horizontal sprays of disconcerting harsh light while Catherine Oates\u2019s soundscape is ominously subliminal. <\/p>\n
Maud Davey, however, is careful to avoid the clich\u00e9 of a captive audience
\nhijacked by hoodlums. There is an artful absence of action movie FX. No loud
\nbangs and histrionic posturing, rather a melancholy quiet and the deaths of
\nseveral hostages in awful silence. It is the small human particulars which are the
\nfocus of Vanessa Bates\u2019s lucid, admirably restrained text and the actors are
\nmemorable in their precision \u2013 Netta Yaschin, as the Russian journalist called
\nfrom LA to mediate, and as the hostage humiliated to tears at being forced to
\ndefecate in the orchestra pit, Astrid Pill as the bookshop worker whose heart is
\ngreater than her fear. Nathan O\u2019Keefe, by underplaying the gunman, makes his
\nextremity all the more fathomable, and Roman Vaculik\u2019s Chechin commander \u2013
\nas it is the job of theatre to do – brings a human voice to the abstractions of a
\npolitical endgame. <\/p>\n
\u201cNarratives entwined\u201d The Australian, October 21, 2005, p.16. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Theatre Murray Bramwell Checklist For an Armed Robber By Vanessa Bates Vitalstatistix Waterside, 11 Nile St, Port Adelaide. October 19. Tickets $12- $23. Bookings (08) 8447 6211 Until November 5, 2005 It is almost three years to the day since Chechen rebels stormed the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow during a performance of the popular musical Nord-Ost. The siege lasted three days and resulted in the deaths of fifty rebels and 117 hostages – the latter, for the most part, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-australian-texts","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","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=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}