Written by Peter Sichrovsky
By Stable Productions
At Beckett Theatre, Malthouse Melbourne until March 18 1995
This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 26 Feb 1995. KH
The Supper may be a play about the children of Jews and Nazis in Austria, but it does, surprisingly, have quite a few laughs to temper the traumatic recollections.
Erika (Julie Nihill) is daughter to a Nazi. Robert, (David Roberts) her husband-to-be and father of her baby, is son of concentration camp survivors. Having refused to meet during the four years of Erika and Robert's relationship, both paretal couples are coming for an obviously doomed dinner.
Sichrovsky's script is dense with ideas and the dialogue is fraught with traumatic references to the holocaust and the emotional games played by the couple. It is essentially an argument in which the two confront their differences instead of ignoring them.
This drama of words with a dark and strange comic edge, is not quite resolved by either of the two alternative endings. It does, however, weave into the preparations for "the arrival" (Act One) and into the "aftermath" (Act Two), an interesting debate on the risky issue of cross-cultural marriage and releasing past pain. It takes a circuitous path through persecution complex and victim mentality, reconciliation and revenge. This reverberates incessantly in their relationship which almost recreates oppressive Nazi versus oppressed Jew.
The argument is powerful but somehow hamstrung by Erika being so dislikeable in her bitter, incoherent and, finally, violently abusive behaviour. It appears, at the very end, that their appalling behaviour may even be a regular pattern.
KATE HERBERT
No comments:
Post a Comment