Produced by Wattle We Do Next
Productions & Auspicious Arts
fortyfivedownstairs, July 6 to 29, 2012
Reviewer:
Kate Herbert on July 6
Stars:
**** (4)
Luke McKenzie, Cain Thompson
Cain Thompson, Richard Bligh, Luke McKenzie
Cain Thompson, Richard Bligh, Luke McKenzie
Jim McNeil, not your everyday, bleeding-heart
playwright, was gaoled for armed robbery and shooting a policeman in 1967 and,
while incarcerated in Parramatta Correctional Centre, he wrote several
compelling and shocking plays.
The McNeil Project features The Chocolate Frog and The
Old Familiar Juice, two menacing plays with sharply observed dialogue that are set within the confines of a shared
prison cell.
In The Chocolate Frog, two dangerous, prison-hardened
inmates (Luke McKenzie, Cain Thompson) put young, university educated, new
arrival, Kevin (Will Ewing), on trial for being a ‘dog’, a ‘chocolate frog’,
meaning a dobber or snitch.
The Old Familiar Juice starts playfully but
degenerates into dangerous territory when three inmates (McKenzie, Thompson, Richard Bligh) get
drunk on a yeasty concoction and the youngster (Thompson) is at risk of rape.
Malcolm Robertson’s deft
direction and uncluttered staging keep the focus firmly on the characters and
their threatening relationships.
The plays’ challenging subjects and surprisingly
universal themes raise issues about rules, ethics and morality and the clash of
differing codes of conduct inside and outside prison walls.
All the performances are powerful and suspenseful
making the stage feel dangerous with relationships between these
disenfranchised, damaged outsiders balanced on a knife’s edge.
McKenzie is intimidating as two high status, top dog
characters, Thompson captures the volatile Tosser and vulnerable Stanley, Bligh
is delightful as Dadda, the sozzled old, mediator and Vietnam veteran, while
Ewing embodies the naïvete and ignorance of an educated outsider.
By Kate Herbert
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