Going Places by Lisa Dombrowski, 28 Oct 1994

 

At La Mama, Carlton until November 13, 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 28 October 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 28 October 1994. KH

 

The path of true art never runs smooth and when you combine an artist with love you have a very rocky road indeed.

 

In Lisa Dombrowski's new play, Going Places, Joan Murray plays Annie, a successful painter turning forty who discovers that her reviewers are saying that she has lost it. Being told you are predictable and passe' by a critic is hard on the ego but when your friends start to look away when you ask their opinion, it's time to regroup or give up.

 

There is some learning which can only be done alone without a prop / partner to boost your ego or to support and distract you. Annie is in a mid-life crisis which draws her to the vigorous, loudmouth Jude ("The Obscure?" "No. The Rude.") an inexperienced but sublimely talented painter who uses Annie to climb the arts ladder. She charms people into lying on the barbed wire for her so she can climb over them.

 

Jude is played raunchily by Belinda McClory who is a wonderful foil to Murray's fine and detailed emotional see-saw portrayal of the intellectual aesthete and conceptual artist, Annie. Annie's artwork is mannered and full of intellectual bullshit. Jude's is passionate, honest and vivid. Annie plays mentor and pal till jealousy turns everybody's head except the selfishly oblivious, invincible and ambitious Jude. The role of mentor is always fraught with danger. The pupil can overtake the teacher.

 

Performances are strong and the writing is smart. Dombrowski, who also directed the play, has a great line in witty observations of artistes of the ultimate wanker variety. Steve Payne plays Annie's long suffering lover Joe with a delightfully wry humour and deep pathos and the other two actors play fabulously wrought stereotypes. Leon Teague is hilarious as the total bullshit fringe artist, Pete and Lise Rodgers has a terrifyingly credible smug-gallery-owner 'visage'. (n.b. 'visage', not just 'face'.)

 

The form slips about a little more than is comfortable from the naturalistic to monologue to movement and the poetic, but the whole is clever and charming.

 

KATE HERBERT