Shades of Blue by Andrew Bovell , 7 Feb 1996

 

Shades of Blue by Andrew Bovell

At La Mama until Feb 18, 1996

Reviewer: Kate Herbert.  Reviewed around 7 Feb 1996

 

Stare too long at human interaction and you will feel a profound sense of its strangeness and absurdity. This is Andrew Bovell's obsession in Shades of Blue at La Mama.

 

Conversations occur in parallel lines, dialogues overlap, characters interrupt, ignore and obsess. They rarely actually listen or pay attention to real meaning or heart-felt expressions of anguish.

 

Bovell's script has biting cynicism, charmingly wry juxtaposition of dialogue and thought, witty word plays and slips of tongue and acute, icy observations of behaviour and language. Characters are quirky, brittle and vulnerable. We see the confusing intersections of diverse, lonely existences, of those left on the scrap heap.

Director, Tom Gutteridge, has heightened the sense of alienation, making characters stroll physically through others' lives, unconscious of repercussions, unconscious even of people in their orbit.

 

The ensemble of eight is strong. Heather Bolton is warm and despairing as Nancy, the tacky club singer whose self-esteem is built precariously on having been on Ray Martin. David Pidd as her transvestite fan is a fragile character. The two have sweet, warm singing voices.

 

There is a fake Salvo (Angela Campbell), A disfigured landlord (Bob Pavlich), an abandoned husband (Humphrey Bower), an unemployed country boy (Peter Houghton)and a  loveless policewoman (Maria Theodorakis). The thread which pulls them together is a gold crucifix.

 

Shades of Blue is a hope-free and joyless world of misfits who know life never deals you what you want. The play sings The Blues, but it also cries out, "Try a Little Tenderness" (music by Wade Beed). There was pathos in these fringe dwellers in the land of domestic bliss but when the single ray of hope was snatched from the characters' grasp it became irrevocably, tragedy.

 

By Kate Herbert 290wds