What: The Play about the Baby, by Edward Albee, Red Stitch Actors Theatre
Where: Red
Stitch 80 Inkerman St St Kilda
When: Until
November 24 2002 at 8pm
Reviewer:
Kate Herbert
Having not
seen more recent works by Pulitzer prize winning playwright, Edward Albee, I
have only early works to compare with this, his latest play.
The Play
about the Baby is a less substantial script albeit llively and amusing. IT
certainly does not meet the level of sophistication ab complexity of his potent
play, Whoo's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. 1962 or A delicate balance. 1967
IT relies on
the absurd and metaphorical rather than the realistic and literal.
A young man
and his wife Brett Cousins Laura Gordon)
live in domestic bliss in their trailer park with their new baby. They are
naïve, cheerful, loving and adolescent in every way. No pain has touched them-
yet.
An older Man
and Woman ( Daniel Frederiksen Kat stewart ) arrive unannounced and uninvited
intheir simple, balance orld.
The older
couple take the baby with no explnation apart from the Man's sinister epithet,
" Without wounds how do you know who you are? How do you know you are
alive?" Perhaps Albee wants us to see a Garden of Eden reference.
Kaarin
Fairfax's direction makes rather heavy work of the text. The actors stand
around a good deal too much and seem uncomfortable in this very stylised almost
cabaret style.
Frederiksen
plays the Man almost as a loud controlling game show host. His character chides
us and the Woman, taunts the young couple and indulges in cryptic references
and odd anecdotes about memory.
S thee
Wooman, Stewart is engaging and funny. She effectively portrays her as a dizzy,
vain woman with the attention span of a gnat.
The main
problem with the casting is that the older couple are too young. The roles call
for mu h older actors to make the spearation of innocence an maturity work on
stage. We cn suspend ourisbelief only so far.
The younger
roles are moore difficult to play. Both Cousins and Gordon seem awkward and
uncertain.
The design (
Dannielle Brustman) s like a cartoon version of a trailer park with two
dimensional caravan wall , fake lawn and fold- up metal chairs.
The
metaphorical elements are laboured. The young couple wear white as if they are
unsullied and virginal. The older pair are in cocktail outfits fit for Derby
day drunken sophisticates.
Res Stitch
is a valiant new company to be recommended. The Play about the Baby is
entertaining but lacks subtlety.
By Kate
Herbert
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