Year of the Rooster

Year of the Rooster is a hilarious, very black and sad fable about never-say-die optimism in the face of insuperable odds.  It is also the third part of Spinning Plates Theatre Company’s run of success with their ‘Beast Trilogy’ – The Crocodile, Rhinoceros and now this, The Year of the Rooster. 

It’s not really about a rooster but about a downtrodden MacDonalds’ employee Gil (Jessica Stanley) who believes her rooster, Odysseus Rex (Zachary Pidd), is Gil’s route to success.  With Odysseus Rex, the biggest, baddest fighting cock, Gil has the way to beat and escape employment bullying and servitude, parental oppression and just being generally disregarded and dismissed entirely.

Yet again, Spinning Plates takes an allusive tale where an animal is a catalyst and pushes imagination and excess to an absurd limit.  Dann Barber’s set is, appropriately, a gladiatorial arena and the one ring of a scrappy circus.  Barber’s and director Alexandra Aldrich’s costumes – brilliantly made up by Christine Milton – plus Aldrich’s absurd wigs - mix styles and references to enrich the play’s surface story of ambition and its multiple metaphors for the forces arrayed against it.

Our hero, underdog Gil is a potbellied little guy with a pudding bowl haircut and his demeaning MacDonald’s uniform.  Gil’s scornful and oppressive Mama (Natasha Herbert) is a ludicrous figure in a wheelchair, labouring beneath a huge 18^th century style wig.  This Weight-of-the-Past figure would keep Gil (literally) underfoot forever.  Gil’s Boss (Aya), prominent chest counterbalanced by cantilever bum, is so ambitious, so dominating, mean, and nasty that her only friend is… Gil.  Then there’s motormouth opportunist showman, a rhinestone cowboy (James Cerce) who senses success in Gil’s rooster and moves in on him.  And finally, Odysseus Rex himself, a muscle-bound, dim-witted rooster born and bred only to fight – and win, of course - who does not greet the sun but instead challenges it every dawn.

Playwright Olivia Dufault calls Year of the Rooster ‘part Greek tragedy’ and references Homer’s Odyssey where, in a Homeric digression, a lookout, Alectryon, meant to warn Ares and his lover Aphrodite of the arrival of her husband Helios the sun god, fails in his duty and is turned into a rooster, destined forever to greet the rising sun…  Is this helpful?  Minimally.  But the title, Year of the Rooster, surely points us at the Chinese zodiac Rooster known for fidelity and diligence - and – or – Chaucer’s arrogant intellectual rooster Chanticleer in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.  But that’s yet another red herring joke since the rooster here, Odysseus Rex, has none whatsoever of the admirable qualities of those other roosters.

For some reason, it all takes place in the southern states of the US of A – although there may be a New Jersy accent in there somewhere.  As the blurb puts it, ‘Homer meets Tennessee Williams’.  Nevertheless, all of the outstanding cast maintain those accents throughout.  And their performances are so polished, so inventive, so on point that they are all incomparable.  Zachary Pidd as the rooster Odysseus Rex had me lost in admiration as they go from a closely observed, clucking farmyard animal segueing into the crazy-brave, stupid bewildered human – and back again.  Jessica Stanley, disguised in a body suit, maintains perfectly Gil’s timid defiance and delusions of success.  Who knew that Natasha Herbert’s matriarch, enjoying her ill-health, could be so mean that we come to hate the old girl?  Aya struts about like a glittering caricature Minny Mouse garnering laughter before they say a word – and then later as a huge, immobilised, hormone stuffed chicken, a sacrificial sex object.  And James Cerche’s hyper-confident cowboy strut – a human rooster indeed - makes for Gil’s perfect, predatory antagonist.

On one level, Year of the Rooster is a Grand Guignol-esque, thoroughly silly and belly-laugh funny comedy of grotesque caricatures, but on another level, each character represents more than themselves in this slyly allegorical tale.  Director Aldrich, her cast and her team weave together a seamless and coherent show in which every element – no matter how excessive, or how bizarre – works beautifully. 

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Cameron Grant