Mindgame

What an unfashionable conceit this young, independent theatre company has dared to display! Who do they think they are? In Mr Horowitz’s psychological thriller – a gripping, beautifully-structured three-hander – we have a perfect example of something that has been noticeably absent on Melbourne’s stages for years: a well-made play, brimming with ideas. In two acts. With an interval. God forbid I should have the chance for a glass of wine, a bag of chips, and a think about what I have seen and what I am yet to see in the middle of it all.

No beyond indulgent, reimagining of the feathers on a fat, wild duck’s arse this. What are they teaching them up there at Ballarat Arts Academy? Stagecraft? Design? Audibility? Sense? Respect? True commitment to a playwright’s intention? Someone from the Department of Education should shut this irresponsible institution down immediately. Where was the gratuitous re-interpretation – the pseudo-intellectual  play-thief’s deconstruction of a writer’s imagination and ideas? Where was the obscenity? And the nudity?

In Mindgame, nothing is as it seems. Writer Mark Styler (Matthew Bradford) has made the long trip to the Fairfields Asylum for the Criminally Insane to request an interview with one of the patients – an infamous serial killer called Easterman – for a book he wants to write. The facility’s Dr Farquhar (Lachlan Martin) tries to put Styler off the idea by telling him that Easterman is too dangerous to be in the same room with. And when one of the facility’s nurses (Skye Staude) is summoned to the doctor’s office to bring refreshments, she desperately tries to have Styler leave for his own safety. Needless to say, Styler refuses to leave and triggers a chain of events that had the audience (and me) jumping out of our seats, squealing, gasping, squirming and laughing, as young Mr Barnard and his exceptional cast took us on the ride of our lives.

In the grand tradition of thrillers in the theatre, design is everything – and Ms Wood’s set and costume design is both flawless, and at complete service to the play’s deceptively simple demands. Mr Thomas’s lighting design was beautifully focused, and the emergency states that punctuate the action when the facility goes into lockdown were marvellously effective. Mr Backhaus’s perfectly timed sound design was startlingly on the mark and responsible for more than one of my leaps out of my seat, while the recurring motif that is playing when you enter the theatre is an eery, unsettling and haunting contribution from Mr Chester.

Mr Bradford and Mr Martin, who are never offstage, both deliver tour de force performances – with Mr Martin (his character gets all the best moments) acting the paint off the walls. Ms Staude was perfect as the anxious employee for whom (or who?) nothing goes right.

It was my first visit to the Gasworks Art Park’s fantastic little studio theatre, and who would have thought that a knock on the theatre door from outside could have been so alarming. Mr Barnard makes excellent use of every inch the space at his disposal (both inside and outside the theatre), and while some of the action on the floor was impossible for me to see from where I was sitting, the direction and performances were terrifically, and occasionally terrifyingly, accomplished.

Geoffrey Williams