Strangers In The Night, Aug 8, 1996

 by Abe Pogos

Playbox until August 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around/before Aug 8, 1996

Lower West Manhattan feels like Blade Runner dubbed into several foreign languages: incomprehensible, bleak, dangerous, poorly but stylishly lit. Everybody in the subways is a potential threat. So why go there? - to experience this very danger, according to Daniel  (Adriano Cortese), protagonist and writer in Strangers in the Night.

How thin is the line between abusive and psychopathic? Playwright, Abe Pogos probes this question with a stiletto blade which is all too popular in his New York.  Daniel Lewin's cousin, Sarah (Jacqueline Linke) advises him to "murder something", so he can write about things he has really experienced. He ventures out of the bosom of his clinging limpet Aunt Lina (Heather Bolton) and begins his heroic journey into the dark cave of the beast which is New York.

The tension shrieks. Victims stay too long with their murderers, the nephew stays with the annoying aunt. The weak, using emotional manipulation, become the powerful. The homeless guy tells his tragic story and wins, the Jewish aunt bleats about loneliness. She wins. Gerry whimpers, "You hate me," and wins.

Strangers is almost too gruesome, too violent and suspenseful, too intentionally claustrophobic for this squeamish audient, but it is compelling theatre with some impeccable and layered performances, crisp direction and skilful text. The dialogue is taut, the narrative has the tension of a guitar string stretched to snapping and the plot has a final twist followed by a double somersault with pike. We peer into people's apartments, perv through their windows, poke around in their minds, eavesdrop on their conversations.

Hugh Colman's design effectively represents midnight New York with the seeping walls of a public urinal. It divides the space into three which is useful in providing differing locations but fragments the stage leaving us distant from the performance, albeit safer.

Gerry (David Tredinnick) is a gay misfit from Milwaukee (where that?). His rank little apartment is the site of nasty habits which have escalated into the tragic and psychopathic. Daniel's quest for 'experiences" remains firmly in the voyeuristic until his path and the plot, cross with Gerry's.

Tredinnick is riveting, terrifying but maintains a child-like, if psychopathic, vulnerability. Cortese is sympathetic in the difficult role of ordinary guy amidst weirdos. Patrick Williams transforms with ease from charming gay to Rasta peep-show spruiker. Melvin J. Carroll's pornographic narrative was marvellous despite its repulsive content. This is not a play for the faint-hearted nor the easily offended - but it is good.

KATE HERBERT