Off The Point, May 15, 2000

by Michele Davis

La Mama at Trades Hall, May 15 until May 28, 2000

Bookings: 9347 6142

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Mental illness is less of a taboo subject these days but it still engenders fear in the broader community and confusion despair in the families of sufferers.

Directed by David Symons, Michele Davis's play, Off The Point, plots the lives of a three children as their mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenic episodes. At first the children are frightened and uncomprehending of mum's peculiar bouts of raving about rays from the television stealing al the oxygen and the fact that potatoes are the cure.

Time passes and they are faced with continuing hospitalisation for mum who now thinks she can create peace and protect herself from bad energies with Shakespeare's verse.

 Performances by Amanda Douge, Nathan Bocskay and Michele Williams as mum have potential but the direction is uncomfortable and the play unfinished.

This play deals with important issues and has some good ideas and affecting moments. The problem is that the writer lacks the skill to handle dramatically such complex themes.

The play does not know whose story it is telling. It begins with mum, shifts from the eldest daughter Emma, (Douge) to the younger daughter, Jane (Kestie Morassi) then ends with Sam, the son (Bocskay). It needs some ruthless editing and dramaturgical advice to find its core. It wanders aimlessly, neither serving the themes of mental illness nor creating dramatic tension.

The short episodic scenes interrupt the action, leap through time without establishing the narrative. The clumsy structure does not provide a journey.  Early scenes do not explore sufficiently the mother's illness or her relationship with her children, before it tries to analyse the impact of her disease on her children.

There is an unfortunate moment in Off the Point when it sounds as if the onset of schizophrenia is being blamed on a bad marriage.

Mental illness has its funny side too but it is unwise to get laughs from a woman's pain. It takes a great deal of skill to manipulate anguish and humour in such a context as this.

by Kate Herbert