John

The Fairfax Studio opens out to embrace the audience and bring them into the intimate workings of four complex individuals.  It is a great venue for this fascinating, intriguing and enigmatic work. 

The domestic setting by designer Elizabeth Gadsby, of an all-purpose living room for guests, is busy with clashing yet strangely simpatico décor.  Like a fifth idiosyncratic character, the set is acutely integral to the unfolding of the story.  At times it is also used to add dashes of magic realism.

A young unmarried couple, Jenny (Ursula Mills) and Elias (Johnny Carr) come to stay at a Bed and Breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  It would appear the reason they’re there is because Elias had a great interest in the American Civil War as a lad.  There is considerable stress in the couple’s relationship and things aren’t running smoothly for them. 

The environment is quaint and quirky and their mature and delicate hostess Mertis, played by Helen Morse, a little odd.  She seems to have an uncanny control of eventualities – but does she?

Annie Barker is a much-lauded playwright.  To date she has written and had produced seven highly regarded works.  Melbourne audiences may remember Circle Mirror Transformation, with which Melbourne Theatre Company introduced us to her.  Then fast on it’s heals Red Stitch produced Aliens, directed most skillfully by Nadia Tass.  Red Stitch also produced her more recent play Flick to considerable acclaim.

John takes naturalism to an extreme.  Its characters function in as close to real time as possible.  Although it is slow the audience is perpetually on ‘tenterhooks’ searching for and making meaning.  In all, it generates a rich sense of humanity, compassion and kindheartedness.

What is this play ultimately about?   It is a work about living and about intimacy, sticky interactions, tolerance, acceptance, patience and self-reflection - to name the most obvious things. It looks at varying degrees of deception, self-deception and collusions and it confronts the niggling and uncomfortable.  It also touches on the mysticism and superstition we use to frame and understand the day-to-day mysteries and uncertainties in our lives.

Overall the characterization is glorious.  Johnny Carr is virtually unrecognizable as Elias.   His Elias has a big, almost uncontainable presence.  He has masses of hair and a slightly uneasy and irritated demeanor.  As an actor he masterfully renders himself unrecognizable. 

Helen Morse creates a wonderful quizzical and wholly believable Mertis Katherine Craven or Kitty - so down to earth and yet bemusingly evanescent.  Morse is so deeply ‘in the moment’ that Mertis is marvelously convincing.

Melita Jurisic brings her own unique magic, and ages by at least twenty years, to delight us with the blind but wise Genevieve Marduck.

Ursula Mills plays the seemingly straight -forward Jenny beautifully.  The lack of artifice in her characterization seems to render her the pivotal character.  This tends me toward the feeling that John is at its heart a young woman’s story.

Mysterious and subtle and not so subtle light changes (Richard Vavre) accentuate some of the strange and weird atmospheres and eventualities.

The sound (Russell Goldsmith) is mostly constituted of upbeat classical music that I suspect is heavily prescribed by Ms. Barker.

They (whoever they are) say it is the sign of an artist to be able to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.  This is definitely what Annie Barker achieves and she finds joy and a kind of redemption in the troubled and troubling minutia of life.

Suzanne Sandow

Photographer: Jeff Busby

Credits

Directed by Sarah Goodes

Set and Costume Designer - Elizabeth Gadsby

Lighting Designer - Richard Vabre

Composer and Sound – Russell Goldsmith

Cast

Elias Schreiber-Hoffman – Johnny Carr

Genevieve Marduck  - Melita Jurisic

Jenny Chung – Ursula Mills

Mertis Katherine Graven – Helen Morse