The Unspoken Word Is “Joe”

We take our seats and Natasha Herbert (playing ‘Natasha Herbert’) welcomes the audience to a play reading of a new play by an ‘emerging’ writer, Zoe Dawson (played by Nikki Shiels) and introduces the actors – ‘Zoe’, of course, Aaron Orzech (played by Aaron Orzech), Annie Last (played by Annie Last), and Matt Hickey (played by Matt Hickey).  

Although the stage is mess, supposedly cluttered with the debris of the just closed production of Hotel Sorrento, and the four actors in everyday gear sit on chairs facing the audience, I really doubt that anyone is fooled.  (Even if, apparently, some people have been at this show’s three previous productions). 

Ms Herbert’s gives her self-serving and lengthy opening remarks with perfect pitch condescension and a clear sub-text that it is she who deserves the attention, not this importunate wanna-be playwright, to whom she is doing an enormous favour.  She explains that the play’s title comes, actually, from a stage direction… The condescension passes over the head of the totally self-absorbed, anxious ‘playwright’ Zoe who has another agenda besides the reading of her play.  And so the reading begins: Zoe – as ‘Woman 1” and ‘Man 1’ (Aaron Orzech) are in ‘a bare room’.  Their affair has reached an impasse, but before long we realise that Zoe and Aaron’s ‘real life’ affair has also reached an impasse… But no more spoilers.

The ‘play reading’ of (the real) Zoe Dawson’s ‘relationship drama’ and all that goes wrong and some of what came before are all parts of the play called The Unspoken Word Is “Joe”.  It is a remarkably clever – and funny – piece in which the pretentious, clichéd but revealing ‘play’ ostensibly being read segues into and is sabotaged by the messy relationships among ‘the cast’.  The directions, every one of which is dutifully if redundantly read by dead-pan Ms Herbert, include ‘pause’ and ‘she touches his chest’, and those classic signs of the amateur dramatist: descriptions of what characters are thinking and feeling.  (E.g. ‘The unspoken word is “Joe”…)

There’s a scene in a noisy bar, outside the ‘play reading’, something that’s happened before, but the momentum and energy of it l easily carries the audience with it – and the scene itself is horribly funny: cringe-making, demeaning but pitilessly true.

It is curious really that what we are laughing at is sheer pathos, seen from a merciless even cruel point of view: a ‘play reading’ that descends into chaos due mainly if not entirely to a desperate character, an inept young woman who can neither act nor write very well, but who is ambitious but oh-so-needy and embarrassingly hungry for love – or at least applause.  Proof, if proof were needed, that humiliation can be hilarious.

It’s true that some of the comedy depends on in-jokes for the theatre crowd, but, after all, who else is dropping into La Mama?  Much more comes from the real Zoe Dawson’s and the cast’s acute observation.

The design by Eugyeene Tee bolsters the ‘this is a play reading’ conceit, and the wardrobe is perfect.  Directed with detailed precision by Declan Greene, ‘the cast’ does not miss a moment. 

Ms Herbert sustains her above-the-fray yet patronisingly ‘responsible’ demeanour to the end.  Nikki Shiels has the addled gawkiness and great comic timing of a Carole Lombard.  My guess is that Ms Shiels has a future. 

Aaron Orzech nicely plays thinly ‘professional’ with a ticking bomb of ‘I’d rather not be here’ resentment underneath.  (The bomb explodes.)  Matt Hickey, the spunk who’s new to the game and in over his head with these people, is entirely convincing.  And there’s Annie Last - ‘Woman 2’ - an over-the-top, motor mouth good time girl who gets some wonderful crazy riffs.  It takes real skill to do deliberately ‘bad acting’ and be entertaining.  Ms Last does that very well.  There’s a delicious moment when we see ‘Zoe’ watching ‘Annie’ play a scene and realise that she’s given ‘Woman 2’ better lines than her sad sack ‘Woman 1’.  So Zoe must sabotage that as well as herself.

So it’s a play within a play that’s presented as something else.  Are you lost?  You won’t be watching the show.  Once you get the joke, you go with it, and the joke is sustained to the end – so much so that the audience has to be told by the Stage Manager that it’s really over.  It’s a little gem.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Eugyeene Tee