FAG/STAG & Minnie and Mona Play Dead

The theatre company The Last Great Hunt is a living and breathing example that men and women can just occupy an empty space and effectively create visually stunning and engaging theatre. However, the two plays are not only driven by Brook’s principle; in both these plays the simplicity and comradery of the two-hander is also employed to challenge conventional narrative structure and audience address. The experiment is largely successful and establishes itself as a fascinating creative development for these enormously talented theatre practitioners to investigate.

FAG/STAG infiltrates the fast paced and sometimes emotionally stunted world of young men whose daily decisions are frequently marred by the undue pressures of normative masculinity – both gay and straight. This play goes beyond the mainstreaming of friendship between people with different sexualities, and the strong charismatic performances provide a particularly insightful journey into the ambivalence of the fierce loyalty that characterises their relationship.

Minnie and Mona Play Dead is even more daring in its subject matter but more perturbed by its own content. The self-reflexive style abruptly switches between theatrical modes in an effort to explore the psychological disturbances that can drive people to suicide, and there is an unexpected use of humour as a tool in this enterprise rather than acting as a remedy or antidote to the darkness that mental illness imposes.

Patricia Di Risio

Image from Minnie and Mona Play Dead. Photographer: Jamie Breen.