Appropriation

‘Sydney continues to lose theatre spaces at an alarming rate’ states the Fledgling Theatre Company and so opens its new performance space on the 4^th floor of an old building behind Central Station in Sydney. Good for them. A very narrow doorway at street level leads to a very slow lift: Studio Blueprint has taken a large space on the top floor which includes a large thrust stage surrounded on three sides by rickety, uncomfortable chairs. Amazingly, their opening play — Appropriation by Paul Gilchrist, an account of events immediately following the last body-strewn act of Hamlet — has no less than 12 players. Perhaps no smaller spaces could fit them in.

It’s certain that this uncouth, black-shirted Fortinbras (Nick O’Regan) is no university educated Hamlet. His language is studded with ‘f-words’ and he is rarely your mate. Soon all Elsinore is hanging on his every word, including his quietly spoken, intelligent mistress Astrid (Shannon Ryan). Only one of the Travelling Actors (Asalemo Tofete) has survived the war: he can remember the good times.

‘You lot are a bunch of women,’ screams Fortinbras, before the arrival of his wife Gabrielle, who certainly knows how to control him, keeping him right under her thumb. Statuesque and formidable, Sonya Kerr has the full measure of Gabrielle and rises effortlessly above the war-addled citizens of Elsinore.

The play acknowledges Hamlet often with references to ‘madness in great ones’ and ‘there is a time for every purpose under heaven’, and there are some Monty Python moments like when one crowd member asks another ‘what the fuck is a fjord anyway?’

The actors double and triple up, and play live piano and guitars admirably. Top marks all round... except the shape of the stage imposes its own problems: a thrust stage (and 12 in the cast) demands direction and lighting of a different degree. From my seat in the second row aspects of some scenes were missed. I was in full light virtually throughout.

As were the 40ish couple in the front row directly opposite, who fondled and stroked each other continuously while at the same time laughing uproariously throughout. Where was Fortinbras when we needed him?

Frank Hatherley