Strategy for Two Hams by Raymond Cousse, Anthill Theatre, April 29 1994

THEATRE

At Anthill Theatre until, May 15 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around April 29 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after April 29 1994

 

Strategy for Two Hams by Raymond Cousse shares themes of incarceration and prison psychosis with Someone Who'll Watch Over Me. But instead of the predicament of Beirut hostages, it witnesses he last hours of a pig on Death Row at the slaughterhouse under the supervision of a cretinous swineherd. 

Cousse draws unsettling parallels between piggy lives and the human condition. The pig obsesses about humanism, philosophy, morality, freedom of action and freedom of thought. The depressing existential dilemmas seen in Kids' Stuff are again present. The pig, like any condemned person, awaits death, rambling and reminiscing like an old digger about his life.

 

This hog seems more concerned with details such as the dimensions of his "cell" or the position of his bucket. The latter is a statement about his freedom of choice. It is a sad little detail, an outward sign of the last vestiges of his dignity.

 

He is proud of his small achievements. How he has cared for his hams, taking to the meadows to enrich them. He is like the animal, bred for eating, in Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Universe. which comes proudly to the table so the diner may select his cut.

 

This sad, helpless creature faces with equanimity his last hours. Slaughter is his destiny.  He even boasts of how, in his youth, he took his hams to the meadows to enrich them. His can barely wait to get to the dinner plate.

 

Counterpointing this poignancy against the humour and the grossness of the images of slaughter had the potential to move an audience deeply. Unfortunately, this potential remains unrealised in Jean Pierre Mignon's production. Mignon, who also directed the original production in 1982, has kept an unnecessarily tight rein on both the actor Ian Scott and the play's dynamic range.

 

The smart wordiness of Cousse's text is testament to its origins as a novel. In this production it translates as almost a lecture-demonstration. It demands a vigorous physicality to enhance and enliven the semantic arguments of this bucolic pig.

 

Scott's usually hilarious clowning and wry humour are seen only intermittently. He is somehow not quite credible as the pig not merely because he lacks the porky corpulence of Cousse who lost 30 kilograms to perform the original production. When he is allowed to get physical by the middle of his performance, the show takes a dynamic leap and, as the season progresses this energy may translate to the rest of the play.

 

By Kate Herbert