Underwear, Perfume and Crash Helmet by Michael Gurr, 13 July 1994

 

By Playbox Theatre

At Beckett Theatre, Southbank until August ( No definite close)

 Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 13 July 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 13 July 1994

 

Underwear, Perfume and Crash Helmet deals with numerous issues, none of which is in the title. Directed stylishly by Bruce Myles, Michael Gurr's latest play for Playbox has a profusion of ideas, a litany of pithy social observations and myriad peculiar characters, but it never lights on any one topic. The writing is often witty and riddled with glib and cynical one-liners about politics, grief, loss, madness, but the content remains insubstantial and the narrative unaffecting.

 

Director, Bruce Myles, creates a strong, portentous atmosphere and uses a powerful theatrical device, scattering the stage with actors who remain on stage like voyeurs or critics, even if they are not in the action, observing, responding or ignoring it. Stuart Greenbaum's music supports the mood and Glen Hughes lighting is grim and stark against a fine expressionist backdrop by Judith Cobb. This extremely talented team creates an atmosphere which gives some weight to a rather emotionless text.

 

The play is a collage of scenes hanging like coats on a rack, but it is not an abstract, non-narrative script. An Australian Liberal member dies near an election, so Blair, a party worker-bee (Penelope Stewart) promotes the MP's hapless and politically incompetent wife Caroline (Janet Andrewartha) as a candidate. Lionel, (John Gregg), a globe-trotting Canadian speaker on conservative politics, assists Caroline to parliament. He is accompanied by an obnoxious valet-come- psychopath (Simon Wilton) who befriends Nick, Caroline's taciturn, saxaphone-playing brother (David Tredinnick).

 

An eccentric and seemingly irrelevant sub-plot revolves around Michelle, a loopy, homeless girl (Tammy Mc Carthy) and "True Believer" in aliens who will come to take her "Home". She is the key to the violent and peculiar climax and provides tenuous parrallels for a couple of themes: Caroline's craving for "Home", and the blind faith of the "True Believers" in politics both of which remain largely unexplored.

 

With such a plethora of narrative threads and characters, many issues are left dangling like Lionel's ties. Before interval, it was a novelty piecing together the jigsaw of scenes, but the second half is less successful. It feels laboured and ponderous, having too many threads and a multiplicity of endings. The six, very skilful actors, began to look uncomfortable and uncertain.

 

 

KATE HERBERT