Merciless Gods

With a cast of just six, the Cherry Bomb Theatre Company takes on a text that is in itself confronting and difficult, but this cast between them also present twenty characters of varied ages, ethnicity, social class and sexual orientation.  Given the source material – the novel by Christos Tsiolkas – playwright/adapter Don Giovannoni has opted to utilise a number of dramatic forms.  There is no obvious narrative line that runs through the eight segments: some are standard naturalistic scenes, others heightened or poetic reality in vignette or tableau form, others again vivid monologues delivered straight to the audience.  What links the segments are threads of loss, pain, rage, deracination, despair and degradation.  This is not a comforting or feel-good evening at the theatre. 

At a farewell party, Vince (Savier D’Arcie-Marquez) tells a tale of horrific fury driven revenge – that may or may not be true, but the motive for it is convincing and visceral.  A Greek mother (Jackie Van Lierop) grieves as she watches a gay porn video, ironically all she now has of her beautiful dead son.  A resentful ‘feminist’ daughter Lindsay (Van Lierop again), with her dimwit boyfriend Victor (Columbus Lane), visit her raging but brilliantly creative writer mother (Tea Moma) who pours scorn on both while drinking herself to death.  Marko Pécer tells a tale of anger, sperm and sweat in a male bathhouse.  In another complex, disturbing scene, Pécer is a drained, bitter, played out old man in a wheelchair who is about to be euthanised, breaking the heart of his gay son… 

The results of this cast’s efforts are, it must be said, as varied as the range of characters they play.  Most obviously, all six cast are young and while, yes, there is some powerful acting here, our suspension of disbelief is rather stretched.  In the opening party scene, Tea Moma, as a twenty-something provocateur, is awkward and false, but then, as the self-destructive alcoholic writer, she is brilliant, acidic, spitting contempt and bile, eating up the stage, and totally dominating the daughter and lummox boyfriend.  Marko Pécer, so good as a young gay guy pining for a straight guy, gives it all he’s got as the old man in the wheelchair, but he’s just too obviously young and the disparity distracts from a strongly written scene. 

I confess to having seen a previous production of Merciless Gods.  It was by Little Ones Theatre in 2017 and there, director Stephen Nicolazzo had at his disposal a range of ages – and talents.  Here, director Billy Nichols does a great and ambitious job but is constrained their cast’s abilities – or by the demands placed upon that young cast – and the unforgiving Motley Bauhaus stage. 

That said, the text itself raises questions.  It unflinchingly confrontational; it creates a piercing awareness of situations and emotions that are truthful yet painful to witness.  It pushes into and fearlessly mines lower depths than any Gorky plumbed, but we might in the end ask to what end?  What redeems and justifies Merciless Gods is the courage and strength of the performances here, and the words of the playwright Terence (170 BCE): ‘I am a man, I consider nothing that is human is alien to me.’

Michael Brindley