Out of the Water

It’s all about Red Stitch having ‘Actors Theatre’ as a part of its title – such is the scale of the company’s acting prowess that only makes performances of plays like Ms Berman’s punishing dissection of the concepts of family and alienation possible.

Graham’s (Brett Cousins) father has died. At the funeral, he meets Polly (Kate Cole), the daughter of his father’s second wife. In a loaded post-funeral exchange, their mutual disdain for each other (and themselves) leads to an impulsive exchange of pent-up sexual frustration. When Graham decides to surprise Polly by arriving at her New York apartment, he is hotly-pursued by his God-fearing, teenage daughter Cat (Emily Milledge), who is determined to take her father back with her to the family home.

As a dramatist, Ms Berman is only concerned with truth and necessities, and Out of the Water is sparsely decorated, lean, theatrical muscle. Her dialogue sings with a rare authenticity, and even as you prepare yourself for what appears to be a big monologue moment, she takes you into the moment and out of it almost immediately with spectacular efficiency. What Ms Berman also does superbly, is create something quite extraordinary out of what appears to be quite ordinary – with a scene between the cigar-smoking Polly and the inquisitive Cat in the apartment complex’s courtyard a finely crafted scene of pure genius.

As Polly, the unmarried, childless woman who lives alone in New York, Ms Cole is stunning. She is entirely in the mind, spirit and body of the independent Polly and her survival routine. The final moments of the play are heart-tearing, and only achievable by an actress as the very height of her craft.

While the character of Graham doesn’t get quite as much to sink his teeth into, Mr Cousins’s performance is equally fine. The passive/aggressive, opportunistic husband looking for greener grass is nowhere near as interesting as what is asked of him once his young daughter appears on the scene. As we begin to realise what a reluctant but dutiful father he is struggling to become, Mr Cousins’s performance changes gear beautifully.

And in Ms Milledge we have a star in the making – a riveting young actress whose ability belies her age. Cat is as complex and demanding a role as the two adult leads, and while I must admit to expecting she might be wheeled in as a convenient plot device, I wasn’t prepared for the heights to which the character would be expected to rise. But rise to meet every single one of them she did, in a performance that was simply astonishing.

Given that this is its world premiere season, there is still work to be done. The pace was challenged early by a seemingly inestimable number of scene changes – to the point where it appeared that there were going to be more blackouts and scene changes than there was dialogue. But once we cleared the muddy and demanding character establishment terrain, the cast was released to take their performances to another level entirely – and what a level that is.

Geoffrey Williams

Image: (top) Brett Cousins as Graham and Kate Cole as Polly & (lower) Emily Milledge as Cat and Brett Cousins as Graham. Photo: David Parker