At Napier Street Theatre, South Melbourne
Wed to Sat 8pm Sun 6pm until October 22, 1995
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on (or about) 5 October 1995 for The Melboune Times
The message is simple in Slingshot: people are careless with each other's affections. They fly into other lives like a stone from a slingshot, shattering them like glass. We should be more careful.
Directed by expatriate Russian director, Leonid Verzub, Slingshot is an exciting and well-observed contemporary Russian play by Nikolai Kolyada about three crippled lives.
Ilya (Greg Ulfan) is a drunken, disabled beggar who is legless in both senses of the word. His new relationship with the young sedate student, Anton (Grisha Dolgopolov) reveals both men's need for love and friendship. The outcome of their confusing sexual encounter is tragic.
Kolyada inverts the status of the two men. Ilya discovers his humanity, love and purity, Anton his animality, fear and degradation. Their shared loneliness brings them closer but Anton's paranoia about being "normal" in the eyes of society tears them apart. Love and hate are confused. Sexuality is confusing. Ilya's tattered street wisdom is riddled with paradoxes: "The main thing is not to make them suffer," but "Cruelty must be punished."
Ulfan as Ilya has a strong presence and quick, witty delivery. Elly Varrenti, appearing briefly as his slatternly neighbour, provides a vital and dynamic cameo.
Although this is Verzub's directorial debut in Australia he has twenty years of experience in Russia. His style is based in Stanislavski's method. which provides some compelling moments and the colloquial translation gives the text a fluid, flexible feel.
The naturalism, however, slows the pace, particularly in the opening leaving the quality uneven. The production screams for tightening and could easily lose twenty minutes of pauses and business.
Linley Kensit's design effectively captures the decaying Moscow apartment. The lighting by Daniel Zika provides interesting but at times overstated effects.
KATE HERBERT
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