Maybe Today

This moment is notable for the use of coloured “mobile phones” which are essentially rectangular handheld light emitters. The colour of these devices reflects the symbolism of the costumes assigned to each main character.   Subtle changes in the colour of the actors’ attire reflect the mood established through the lighting (Grosvenor) and the soundscape (Bagorski) which serves to link each scene.  The soundscape was occasionally over loud for the intimate space. Conversely, the actors’ voices were sometimes lost. The space was intimate but not so intimate that every word could be heard. The air-conditioning was partially at fault.

There are some excellent performances in Maybe Today. Lochie Dew, as The Musician, is a solid and easy presence on stage, despite having a limited repertoire as a guitarist. Sam French is compelling and unsettling as The Romantic. He is the Morris Townsend to The Painter’s Catherine Sloper.

Gabi Vavoulas and Elise Bagorski do a good job with a story arc which seems somewhat implausible in terms of emotional credibility. The Undecided (Vavoulas) is on occasions depressed, arrogant, aggressive, idealistic and poetic. This may have been Sargent’s point, of course, but her interactions with Bagorski (The Journalist) are circular and repetitive. The scene in the coffee shop, for example, offers nothing to further the previous scene in the hospital. There are other moments when conflict serves no purpose in furthering the plot or developing character. Many excellent moments need to be revised and reshaped to better serve the whole.

Maya Manaena is warm and sympathetic as The Painter and Adrian Reddish reliable and believable as The Actor.  Special mention must be made of Madi Edwards, Abbey Udovicic and Liam Tope who made the most of various roles. Udovicic is versatile and Tope was especially powerful as the father and showed his range as The Journalist’s boss.

Sargent certainly has a gift for writing. Some of his dialogue is witty and pithy. Some of it is cliched. The characters, although interesting, are peculiarly self-aware. For a character to declaim their own aphoristic self-analysis is less interesting than seeing it play out. The beauty of theatre is that the audience should be able to see a character reacting to situations as they unfold. An intelligent audience does not want to be told in by a character, with the prescience of third person narration, what motivates and defines them when this could be revealed and shown.

The character of The Romantic is the most compelling and enigmatic because he does not do this. The Romantic is one character about whom the audience is left wondering (in defiance of the principle of Chekov’s gun).

Despite some deficiencies, there is much to enjoy in Maybe Today. Maybe too many things. Anyone who attends this brief season will be proud to announce, not too many years hence, they saw a Sargent play before he was famous.

Anne Blythe-Cooper