Saturday 9 October 1999

Keene/Taylor Theatre Project: Season 9, Oct 9, 2000

Keene/Taylor Theatre Project: Season 9
Trades Hall, from Oct 9, 1999
Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Daniel Keene is prolific. His short plays keep coming thick and fast and the Keene-Taylor Project is now into its ninth season.

Ariette Taylor again directs this latest series at the Trades Hall. The four pieces in this program are independent works but they are linked by an overall costume concept (Adrienne Chisholm) that has echoes of both a mediaeval mountebank troupe combined with a group of cockney Music Hall pearlies.

These images are not part of the content of the texts but rather create segues between pieces as well as random resonances within the mostly contemporary stories.

The first, Cordelia, is the only one that is not a modern piece. Malcolm Robertson plays an distracted and dream-like Lear who grieves eternally for his hanged daughter, Cordelia.

He carries a doll, her effigy, in a suitcase, as if he were a vaudeville ventriloquist. Robertson makes his grief palpable and Keene's poetic language acts as a slipstream between past and present.

Getting Shelter is the most successful theatrically. Bob Hornery plays an old geezer, a derelict and a thief it seems, who lies on his hospital deathbed which is the most comfortable place he has lain for many years.

His three old cronies (Laurence Bishop, Harry Haythorne, Jonathan Taylor) surround him and wait for him to reveal the whereabouts of his key, which may be the key to their loot.

Ariette Taylor uses the three men as a silent chorus. They prowl and fawn over the old bloke's body as he taunts them with hints about the key.

In River, Paul English gives his usual exceptional performance in this story of a young working-class man who abandoned his wife and son (James Priest) years earlier but is trying to re-establish contact with his boy. It is a series of episodes, the final being a disturbing glance at the drunken and raving man in his bed-sit with his confused son.

Dan Spielman performs the final play, Dog, with passion. It is a distressing snapshot of a psychiatrically ill boy in the midst of his crisis.

The songs that link the pieces, including the likes of "I Want to Be Happy", lend a poignant edge to the plays. Taylor has created a fine structure for the season that has a range of styles and some interesting themes.

by Kate Herbert

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