The Metropolis Monologues and The City Park Plays

The Metropolis Monologues and The City Park Plays
Short plays by Belinda Campbell, Louise Hopewell, Alison Knight, Lois Maskiell, Michael Olsen, Mazz Ryan and Gregory Vines. Season 2020, Melbourne Writers’ Theatre. The MC Showroom, 48 Clifton Street, Prahran. 17-22 December 2020

Melbourne Writers’ Theatre present a double bill of eleven short plays.  The first half is the six monologues of The Metropolis Monologues, directed and designed by Elizabeth Walley, and produced by Clare Mendes.  Staging is stripped to the bare minimum but that is no drawback here.  There is no clear theme uniting the six – except perhaps the aftermath of disaster in four of them, or a pressing problem in the present in the other two.  The monologues range from Michael Olsen’s alien (Marli van der Bijl) reporting defiantly to ‘Control’ from an apparently drowned and dead world in The Forgotten Return, Lois Maskiell’s The Wave, in which a shattered lifeguard (Tim Clarke) reports on the devastation of a tsunami  at Curl Curl beach.  In The Ministry of Cicadas by Louise Hopewell, an office worker (Emma Choy) in a dystopian future welcomes a new colleague, and in Alison Knight’s The Devil Ship a Soviet apparatchik (Alec Gilbert) confesses his guilt at his connivance in the death of an astronaut.  Adèle Shelley’s Just Go With the Flow in which an Australian teacher (Annie Morris) takes on a tough class in London’s East End, has about the only upbeat ending of the six – certainly in contrast to 24K Magic Ringing by Gregory Vines about the crucial night a girl (Cosima Gilbert) turns sixteen and leaves ‘home’, and the play asks, does anyone care? 

An inherent problem with monologues is the question of the audience.  To be annoyingly literal minded for a moment, who is being told the tale?  Are monologues distinct from soliloquies, in which the character tells what they are thinking?  Yes, because a monologue attempts to tell a story, obviously to us, the audience in the theatre, but is the character just telling us a story as the Aussie teacher does?  Annie Morris makes this work beautifully with her teacher just busting to tell us what happened.  But what of Tim Clarke’s lifeguard, who appears to be answering questions at a coronial inquest – with us listening in?  We get this, but Mr Clarke could perhaps make it clearer, acknowledging more the questions we don’t hear and their effect on him.  In Forgotten Return, the alien is ostensibly reporting to ‘Control’ but then she diverts to her anguish about a lost lover, apparently still reporting.  Playwright Michael Olsen seems to’ve had two ideas, but the play loses credibility in combining them.  Whereas the office worker addressing her new colleague at the Ministry of Complaints in The Ministry of Cicadas is straightforward enough – and Emma Choy maintains the presence of an unseen listener well, segueing into wistful reminiscence about her lost friend with an air of sad abstraction, then catching herself out for over-sharing.

Alec Gilbert’s apparatchik’s confession is clearly a cri de coeur – and Mr Gilbert conveys movingly a stiff but usually obedient flunkey, a propagandist.  But the calculated murder of an admired, even loved man wracks him with guilt.  But to whom is this very credible man speaking?  Just us?  Mr Gilbert told me that an additional problem here is the Russian accent; but he seems to’ve solved this by suggestion rather than verisimilitude.  Cosima Gilbert’s sixteen-year-old, on the other hand, in 24K Magic Ringing (with its echo of The Beatles’ She’s Leaving Home), goes too far into verisimilitude by speaking just as a sixteen-year-old might - in a high-speed garble - so that words get swallowed or just lost.  Too bad because the text builds convincingly to the climax we expect but dread.

The evening’s second half, five plays all set in a city park, exhibits that problem common to so many short plays (and short films) : the ending.  How to wrap it up?  What’s the climax, pay-off or, if you like, punchline?  Yes, it should be open-ended but not leave us thinking ‘Huh?’ or, worse, ‘So what?’  Does the playwright give us a situation or a story? 

Here, only Mazz Ryan’s Under a Rock reaches a satisfying but sad conclusion.  It’s helped enormously by Lansy Feng, whose vitality, sweetness and unforced charm makes us really care for her character, a talented cook and visual artist, trapped in a safe but dull business and marriage.  Kyle Roberts, an actor with an impressive range, provides an excellent foil for Ms Feng: both his character and Mr Roberts himself exhibit a real generosity that enables Ms Feng to shine.  His character, met by chance in the park, while she waits with a picnic for her husband, draws out her disregarded abilities and almost abandoned hopes.  He is an artist too and there is a lovely moment when she shows him a quick sketch she does on the spot, and we know that he knows that she is actually the more talented – but he accepts that and continues the conversation. 

Belinda Campbell’s Another Day at the Office is a situation, but one with a twist that redeems it when the unreal becomes real and Marli van der Bijl’s jogger is trapped in it.  In Alison Knight’s Elysium (quite a contrast to her Devil Ship) Amir Rahimzadeh and Emma Choy play a bereaved couple employing a high-tech company to recreate the past.  It should be poignant and at moments is, but Ms Choy is called upon to play both the mother and the dead child – a tough call in any case – and when this ‘service’ goes awry, what then?  It’s a piece that seems to end where it might start.  Bruce Shearer’s Out of This World, has Mr Rahimzadeh and Sue Rosenwax waiting for a supernatural event, but it’s all a bit too wordy and abstract with a tag of ‘be careful what you wish for’.  Sapling – another dystopian future play – has two gardeners – Kyle Roberts and Rhys Hamlyn – about to plant a sapling in a garden which otherwise has no trees.  What if it… dies?  The blokes escape, but where to?

Overall, then, a somewhat mixed bag.  Some delightful and impressive acting, other acting hampered by the text or an absence of light and shade.  The plays are full of original ideas and thought-provoking suggestions but encounter those familiar short play conundrums – either a set-up without a pay-off or trying to do too much in ten to fifteen minutes.  Nevertheless, here is a fine showcase for a cast who should be better known and for the Melbourne Writers’ Theatre playwrights.

Michael Brindley

Images: Out of this World - Sue Rosenwax and Amir Rahimzadeh; The Forgotten Return - Marli van der Bijl; This Devil Ship - Alec Gilbert; Another Day at the Office - Rhys Hamlyn and Jonny Kinnear. Photographer: John A. Edwards

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