Keene/Taylor Theatre
Project: Season 9
Trades Hall, from Oct
9, 1999
Reviewer: Kate
Herbert
Daniel Keene is
prolific. His short plays keep coming thick and fast and the Keene-Taylor
Project is now into its ninth season.
Ariette Taylor again directs this latest series at the
Trades Hall. The four pieces in this program are independent works but they are
linked by an overall costume concept (Adrienne Chisholm) that has echoes of
both a mediaeval mountebank troupe combined with a group of cockney Music Hall
pearlies.
These images are not part of the content of the texts but
rather create segues between pieces as well as random resonances within the
mostly contemporary stories.
The first, Cordelia, is the only one that is not a modern
piece. Malcolm Robertson plays an distracted and dream-like Lear who grieves
eternally for his hanged daughter, Cordelia.
He carries a doll, her effigy, in a suitcase, as if he were
a vaudeville ventriloquist. Robertson makes his grief palpable and Keene's
poetic language acts as a slipstream between past and present.
Getting Shelter is the most successful theatrically. Bob
Hornery plays an old geezer, a derelict and a thief it seems, who lies on his
hospital deathbed which is the most comfortable place he has lain for many
years.
His three old cronies (Laurence Bishop, Harry Haythorne,
Jonathan Taylor) surround him and wait for him to reveal the whereabouts of his
key, which may be the key to their loot.
Ariette Taylor uses the three men as a silent chorus. They
prowl and fawn over the old bloke's body as he taunts them with hints about the
key.
In River, Paul English gives his usual exceptional
performance in this story of a young working-class man who abandoned his wife
and son (James Priest) years earlier but is trying to re-establish contact with
his boy. It is a series of episodes, the final being a disturbing glance at the
drunken and raving man in his bed-sit with his confused son.
Dan Spielman performs the final play, Dog, with passion. It
is a distressing snapshot of a psychiatrically ill boy in the midst of his
crisis.
The songs that link the pieces, including the likes of
"I Want to Be Happy", lend a poignant edge to the plays. Taylor has
created a fine structure for the season that has a range of styles and some
interesting themes.
by Kate Herbert
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