Metamorphoses

This past year or more has played havoc with theatre companies, both professional and community. Many companies have gone to the wall financially after the long period of no income at all. As a result, most companies have clearly evaluated the demographic of their audience and have played safe. There’s a plethora of feel-good comedies and whodunnit’s around - easy entertainment as sustenance after a long famine. Gold Coast Little Theatre, long known for its diversity, is the exception rather than the rule. It has thrown caution to the wind and programmed Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses as its mid-year production. It’s a brave, and some might say unwise, decision.

Let me talk a little about the play, which tends to divide its audience all over the world. It’s been called “a literary masterpiece”, “a work of genius”, “a drama of immeasurable depth” – but it’s also been called “self-indulgent”, “inaccessible” and  “connecting only on an intellectual level”. Like beauty, good theatre is in the eye of the beholder.

A difficult play about Greek mythology, adapted from Ovid, but written with a satirical edge, might be considered best produced for the artistic intelligentsia, but let’s not be theatre snobs. Mary Zimmerman won a Tony award for her direction, but critics at the time conceded it needed a virtuoso cast (and considerable production finances) to make it work for a broad audience. We know the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice, of King Midas, and Narcissus, and Diana the Huntress, but the more unfamiliar myths need clearly defined performance for us to engage.

Director Bradley Chapman has obviously had a vision, but it’s one that is nigh impossible to realise within the confines of a small budget and confined space of a community theatre. With the best will in the world, two spa baths with a surround will never convince us that they are pools of the Gods. And while the theatre is fitted with a brilliant lighting rig, full of moving head LEDS, it is underutilised. A few gobos and some decals to create mood and patterns, coupled with more ambient light, would have helped delineate the various stories, particularly those less familiar ones.

Nevertheless, with the limited budget, the production still manages to create special innovative moments with the use of imaginative props, masks and wings, lifts and dance and its gender-neutral approach to casting.

But to be honest, it is too much to expect virtuoso performances from a young cast who have not yet developed their own tools for acting. Some could not be heard even in the fourth row, some were stiff and stilted – and one or two said their lines parrot like without any indication that they understood what was behind the words. That is not to say they were without talent, far from it. It’s an observation not a criticism. I would love to see each and every one of them in a simpler play – a play that is driven viscerally rather than intellectually, and where they could play to their strengths or perhaps even discover them. Zimmerman’s script doesn’t help. It tells stories as an observer rather than a participant – the shared journey is always the better option – and so we see and hear, but we don’t at any time feel.

Opening night nerves, quite expectedly, meant that the pace was slow, but that will undoubtedly exponentially improve. Chapman’s vision includes telling each story in a different genre (I loved the Zombies), but that also requires a different style and a different pace which wasn’t quite realised on opening night, though it’s a brave concept. While there were laughs to be had, there were far more that weren’t capitalised on. Conversely, there is a deep subtext of love and loss and spiritual understanding that was also largely missed on a visceral level. A little less earnestness and a lot more passion will surely make it easier for the cast and the audience.

I wouldn’t normally pick performances from an ensemble cast, but special mention must go to the charismatic Derito Da Costa (surely bound for the professional stage!) and Harrison Port who exuded confidence. Maddison Mitchell has a lovely stage presence and was one player who truly connected with the audience, and Ethan Leboiron has great stage command.

Finally, an observation, we go to school to be educated; we go to the theatre to be entertained. It’s the PRIMARY duty of theatre to entertain. Yes, it can (and SHOULD) do more. It should have something to say, make us feel, change our perspective. That’s in an ideal world. But if it doesn’t entertain, then ultimately it fails in its purpose. Perhaps this was the wrong play for the wrong time.

Coral Drouyn

Images by TTL Photography.