By
Duong Le Qu
Playbox at Merlin Theatre October 12 to 28, 2000
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Two differing styles meet in Michael Kantor's production of Duong Le Quy's Meat Party. Kantor's
direction is abstract, visual spectacular, drawing on the modern Japanese as
well as Eastern European theatrical forms. Le Quy's text is political realism
set in contemporary Vietnam.
Kantor, with dramaturg Tom Wright, edited the script and created an atmosphere of
mystery and violence. On a vast, sloping expanse of stage designed by Dorotka
Sapinska with epic lighting (bluebottle
p/l) the cast of eight creates an almost mythic sense of landscape and war.
Mary, (Alice Garner) a young Australian cellist, travels
to the White Sand Desert, a slightly unreal region in Vietnam. She seeks her
dead father, Gabriel's (Matthew Crosby)
remains.
He was an
Australian soldier killed in Vietnam and a renowned flautist. Mary carries her
own instrument with her on her quest for her father's flute lost in battle.
She enlists the aid of Quan (Huong Nguyen) , the Chairman of the People's
Council of the White Sand Desert. His father , Lam (Tam Phan), is
a communist revolutionary war hero who is an autocrat and lives in the
revolutionary Leninist past.
Mary also seeks assistance from An, (Tony Yap) who collected belongings of dead
western soldiers.
The war permeates the contemporary world in this Vietnam.
Huge metal doors swing open to reveal starkly lit soldiers, smoking air and
pounding gunfire.
All this is in contrast with a chanting madwoman (Yumi
Umiumare) who prowls the sands, collecting whitened bones of the dead and
nursing the bones of her children. This is counterpointed by the haunting song
of Mai (Trang Nguyen), the dead Vitenamese girl who comforted Mary's father as
he died.
The ensemble is very strong and the choral and movement
basis for the style is evocative. Darrin Verhagen's music creates a punishing atmosphere. The use
of Crosby as translator in Vietnamese language scenes is an excellent device.
The stage is littered with symbolic objects: Gabriels'
flute, hundreds of insence sticks, suitcases of the dead soldiers laid out like
tombstones, Prisoner of War clothing dropping from the sky.
The Meat Party is a euphemism for The War. The county fed
on its own flesh and its people suffered for 30 years.
By Kate Herbert
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