Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for Seven Audience in Seven Parts, May 1, 1997

By Lloyd Jones

At La Mama until May 14, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around April 30, 1997

It's one minute to midnight by the clock on the wall which I didn't notice it until the very last moment, the eleventh hour, as an actor untied my wrists and removed my red gag whispering, " Look what we have done to each other."

Lloyd Jones new work at La Mama is called, enigmatically but appropriately,
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for Seven Audience in Seven Parts. It is not a play but a work done in the theatre with theatrical concepts and a sequence of seven scenes in seven-minute units spanning the human life cycle.

It is described as an "exploration of intimate theatre" and, in the cosy La Mama space with an audience restricted to seven only, one feels like an elite group invited for an exclusive occasion.

 There is nothing predictable about the piece. We seven were greeted at the door by "Mein Host" who offered shots of Ginger Wine and reading material to keep us happy until the "start". The tilt is that there is no real start. The five intervals, also divisible by seven, blur into the performance.

The long interval (42 minutes) is a dinner served at table by the entire cast who take turns providing not only fabulous food but serving our every whim, even holding the table-top which shifted about like a continental shelf. It was like eating at sea.

During the other long interval (35 minutes)  when we attempted, as instructed, to toddle off up Lygon Street, each of us was accompanied by or bailed up in the theatre by a talkative actor. It was as if we were at a dinner party where the ground keeps shifting.  The social parameters are familiar but mutable. Nobody accosts the audience but there is a  constant flutter of excitement and anticipation.

The director is on stage all night, moving our chairs, seating us, instructing, making us comfortable telling stories. He even gives one of us the cue sheet to hold for the actors. It is interactive theatre in which the audience-actor relationship is irreparably altered. Watch the performers or the intermittent video of the Seven Brides movie or a video about the Vietnam War protests.

The questions persist throughout the night, "What is performance? What is interval? When are they performers? When are they themselves?" It is a long night but so is a dinner party. The piece is fluid, warm and creates a distinctly different night in the theatre.

KATE HERBERT