The Beast

Eddie Perfect’s first play is simultaneously an hilarious black satire and a slapstick farce, and I can’t remember both loving and hating a play so much at the same time, it has that strong an impact.

Perfect so often defies categorisation, or else expands the meaning. He’s an original and his work is bound to divide opinion. The Beast is no exception. It’s part Grand Guignol, part Theatre of The Absurd, very confronting and as original as the playwright himself. There are flashes of brilliance that leave you gobsmacked, coupled with the indulgence of set gags and business that simply interrupt the narrative flow. Often unfocussed and undisciplined, not to mention crass and disturbing, it badly needs extra work and tightening; but when it succeeds it is just dazzling and breathtaking! The word “edgy” is overused…but Perfect’s writing has so much edge that you could sever a hand just trying to touch what is at its core.

Basically the plot concerns three male friends who are in a shipwreck together and manage to survive the death of their skipper. The three make a vow to live ethically and without harming others for the rest of their lives (which prove to be as hollow as their promise). Fast forward a year, and all three have gone for a treechange lifestyle. To honour their commitment to mother earth, they decide to hold a degustation dinner party, have an ethically raised calf slaughtered (in an ethical way of course) in front of them, and pick for themselves which part they want to eat. The problem arises when the butcher cancels and they have to slaughter it themselves. And slaughter it they do, in such an inept way that the poor calf undergoes terrible torture. And they do this on stage, in full view, with copious amounts of “blood” spraying all over them and the backdrop. Admittedly the calf is a puppet, in the style of War Horse, but it has a real personality, and we suspend disbelief to empathise with it. Half the audience shrieked with laughter at the bungled killing; half covered their eyes or gasped. It is not for the fainthearted, nor does it allow anyone to be ambivalent. The reality is that an animal has to be killed in order for us to eat meat. Death is on the menu. It’s a sobering thought even while you are laughing.

Some of the audience didn’t return after the first act Interval. My husband was one, he spent the rest of the evening in the Script Bistro with coffee and cake, shaken and discussing with some others what they had just experienced. “Why?” was the pertinent question. Why were people in fits of laughter at the butchery? Why show such a thing except for the shock value? There are a thousand reasons, but not least (and I hope this is the playwright’s intent) to show the shallowness of a whole social class, pretentious wankers who pay lip-service to humanity without even understanding the word. Those with money and acquired taste and class, without a genuine original thought or emotion in their mental armoury are usually tackled in the ulimately “safer” style of, say David Williamson. Indeed, a lady I met in the foyer declared Eddie Perfect to be our next David Williamson. Not so. Perfect will never be safe, will always push boundaries; will always use not a pin, but a bloody big knife to prick our self deception. This play reminds me more of an Edward Albee play…shades of “Who is Sylvia” but I would hate Mr Perfect to be the next Edward Albee. I’d rather he be the First Eddie Perfect.

The performances are excellent throughout from an exemplary cast, and though the seven actors work as an ensemble, I can’t help but give extra Brownie points to the marvellous Travis Cotton, trying so desperately to fit in with those who “outclass” him, and Sheridan Harbridge, whose desperate, neurotic and totally dependent Gen (wife of a philandering pretentious prick) is heartbreaking, but that takes nothing away from Virginia Gay, Tom Budge, Hamish Michael, Kate Mulvaney and the versatile Hayden Spencer.

Iain Sinclair directs with a deft hand. When reality becomes uncomfortable (as it does several times in the second act) he pushes the farce to extremes, for we would all be suicidal if we dealt only with the reality. I suspect he and the actors have done much work fleshing the characters to provide such individuality. We recognise the archetypes while all the while assuring ourselves they are not us. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Sinclair’s work. What he hasn’t managed to do is focus Perfect’s huge but scattered talent as the playwright. I suspect that will happen as the play is workshopped for subsequent productions; for this is a play which will either die and be buried in this one season, or become a modern classic, much lauded here and around the world. Albee has suffered the same dilemma with every outing. The final moments, so low key after the excesses of the evening, are sheer brilliance. One thing is for certain; the MTC has not played safe and deserves praise for leaving its comfort zone behind. You will be confronted and perhaps hate this offering, but you will FEEL, and know you are alive. Be brave, it deserves to be seen.

Coral Drouyn

Images: (top) Hamish Michael (Simon), Sheridan Harbridge (Gen), Travis Cotton (Baird), Virginia Gay (Sue), Tom Budge (Rob) and Kate Mulvany (Marge) & (lower) Kate Mulvany (Marge) and Travis Cotton (Baird). Photographer: Jeff Busby.