Keene/Taylor Theatre Project, Season 11
Grant Street Theatre, April until May 13, 2000
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Watching Daniel Keene's short plays is like peeking into people's underwear drawers. They are intensely personal and we feel like intruders.
In Season 11 of the Keene/ Taylor Theatre Project, we crawl
through the windows into five lives. We witness the despair and anguish, the
fantasies and poetry of these marginalised characters.
Director, Ariette Taylor, has once again skilfully woven together a
program of five discrete plays. Characters stroll or scuttle through each
other's stories. The performance style and design (Adrienne Chisholm) is
consistent throughout and Taylor colours the text with choreographic detail.
Atmosphere is enhanced by sound (David Chesworth) and lighting. (Daniel Zika)
The very stylised vivid red costumes of "A Three-Legged
Chair" shift an otherwise earthy dialogue into a peculiarly abstract
world. Three homeless men (Lewis Fiander, Marco Chiappi, Stewart Morritt)
called Tom , Dick and Harry, bicker, struggle and admire each other with
intermittent references to Shakespeare.
The Funniest Man in the World is a reference to master
clown, Buster Keaton. This piece is a lyrical blend of exceptional narration by
the honey-toned Helen Morse, with Jonathan Taylor's silent movie solitary clown
and his quirky habits. Taylor's mimetic,
balletic movement is delightful as he scampers about like a nervous mouse. This
piece is sweet and charming.
We shift tempo to a rougher, more dangerous episode of
street life in Duet. (Chiappi, Morritt). Two men living in a drainpipe, share
not only space but stories and even a cheap whore. They drive each other to
distraction and eventually to violence.
The mildest play features Morse as a fragile and vulnerable
mother whose 15 year-old daughter returns to her after many years in foster care.
Chloe Armstrong is sweet and credible as the daughter trying to connect with
the stranger who is her mother.
Two Shanks is a potent piece of self-narration with Lewis
Fiander as a rambling old geezer who finds an infant on a dust heap. This is a compelling
small tale which has epic resonances. It speaks of ancient archetypes in its
journey from birth to ritual death and funeral pyres.
This season is a strong mixture of the poetic and the grisly
which has a tender heart.
by Kate Herbert
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