Breaking The Castle

A tale of a recovering addict pulls at our heart strings searching for empathy and support. Peter Cook, the writer and performer of this one man show, lays bare his life and traumas in his fictionalised personal story, directed by Bridget Boyle and produced by Deb Wilks from Cluster Arts Global (a Brisbane based arts and culture company).

Cook enters from the side of the stage, in a black hoodie - the audience prepped by the loud white gangster rap (Eminem) before the show; the lights go down and the stage is dimly lit up. He looks shady and discreet yet upfront about feeling nervous. He then launches onto the stage and rips into an eighty-five-minute frenetic monologue - and all while bouncing off other character transitions - about his life as a junkie/actor auspiced by a two month stay in an exclusive rehabilitation retreat in Thailand.

Cook plays himself, yet his stage character is Dave, a wannabe actor who works crummy jobs to pay for his escalating drug addiction, while auditioning for bit parts in movies and TV shows. His talent agent has let him down and he is sick of being the butt end of auditions.

He is comical, serious and at times loathsome. The show juxtaposes the crossroads of drug addiction and rehabilitation. The set design (Raymond Milner) is constructed to represent the duality of locations; the ‘posh’ retreat and the ‘messed up’ space he inhabits as an addict in Kings Cross, where he encounters like-minded street junkies.

His life as an addict began with snorting cocaine, then eventually descended to smoking ice in his beloved meth pipe. There is a hazy unclear diffusion between his drugs of choice, yet his addiction is over-blown and excessive until he breaks down and finds himself in a psych ward in hospital.

Meanwhile his time at the retreat is bubbling away, befriending an international menagerie of people who are there to deal with their inner traumas and not necessarily drug addiction. His relationship with his English Councillor is edgy until he realises there is no way out, forced to reconcile with his own life and confront his bucket load of traumas head on -   he   retreats to find himself and finds solace and emotional relief.

He suffered the younger brother syndrome because his older brother was a football champ in his local league. The death of his much older sister when he was a teenager is sensitively portrayed; his molestation reenactments come to the surface when he begins to take control of his life in rehab.

Cook is an agile performer and is quick off the mark in character transitions. His   building of trust with his councillor is convincing but overused and sometimes lags.  Frank the reformed junkie who paid for Dave’s rehabilitation - trip to Thailand is undermined as a character and could have provided stronger juxtaposition. His ‘cockroach audition skit’ for a Mortein commercial is hilariously animated and performed with   prowess and skill; his humour is often wry and sometimes witty.

There is liberal kudos of street junkies, drug fuelled one-night stands and sex parties. The  cocaine addiction and alluded rich  party life, followed by the low life ice – meth-head addiction l found intriguing and sometimes farcical.

Cook is a fiery talent with impeccable acting skills and a vibrant imagination. His story is about the fatal hazards of addiction and the road to rehabilitation. It is a tale about recovery, resolving traumas and facing your demons.

Flora Georgiou