By Colin Rose
26 January, 2003
Morally empty characters step over the line in a mesmerising production, Colin Rose writes.
What: The Shape Of Things.
Where: Wharf 1, Sydney Theatre Company.
When: Until March 9. Tickets $59/$48. Bookings 9250 1777.
Rating: 8/10.
NEIL LaBute is a provocative writer-director who straddles both sides of the Atlantic and the mediums of theatre and film. An American, he's had three of his plays staged in London in as many years: The Shape Of Things premiered there 18 months ago.
He also wrote and directed the low-budget, controversy-stirring feature In The Company Of Men and a select handful of other films. He's well positioned to inherit the mantle of David Mamet who has been a key influence as America's leading playwright-cum-auteur.
LaBute's plays and films are peopled with predatory types who dispense psychological (and occasionally physical) violence with astonishing detachment.
His characters are morally empty, with no interior voice telling them to stop before they go too far (the first words in The Shape Of Things are ``You've stepped over the line"). Why are they so cruel? Partly for the sadistic pleasure of it, partly to see just how much they can get away with. Limits are tested to breaking point.
LaBute lays an ambush for the audience of The Shape Of Things, dropping us through a trapdoor with a sensational last-minute revelation.
Up to this point, The Shape Of Things is an entertaining look at the price of love and the tangled relationships of two couples in their early 20s. Beyond this point, we're plunged into a more thought-provoking play about the value of art, particularly art whose sole purpose is to shock, and the vampire-like nature of artists who feed off the lives of their friends and acquaintances for inspiration.
One gets the impression that LaBute is looking in the mirror, examining himself, the profession of writer and the state of contemporary art. His mixed feelings about what he sees are the play's raw materials.
Funny, clever, creative and sexy, Evelyn (Leeanna Walsman) is every thinking man's dream. She's also ruthlessly manipulative, which is too bad for nerdy Adam (Brendan Cowell), who falls forher so heavily that the crash reverberates throughout the play.
What would he do to hang on to her? Get a spiffy haircut, wear contact lenses instead of glasses, swap his grungy clothes for designer labels? Sure, OK. But what if she then suggested he have cosmetic surgery? And what if she insisted he dump his old friends?
The friends are Phillip (Nick Flint) and Jenny (Alyssa McClelland). They're contrasts to Adam and Evelyn. Adam is timid and insecure; Phillip is a pushy big-mouth. Jenny is a ninny, but sweet and without a scrap of Evelyn's guile.
Director Jeremy Sims is a generous collaborator and the success of his flashy, noisy andmesmerising production owes a lot to the contributions of scenic designer Fiona Crombie, lighting designer Damien Cooper and composer Aya Larkin.
Lights strobe so brightly and Larkin's Radiohead-like rock is so loud, it's as if Sims is deliberately tormenting the staid over-40s in the audience. Everyone else will love the full-throttle energy: the play deserves to be a big hit with a younger crowd.
Cowell gives an impressively multi-layered performance as Adam, a decent, likeable guy who discovers the new ``improved" version more sleek on the outside is more capable of deceit. Cowell is terrific at making his character look as guilty as hell at the same time as he's professing his innocence.
Walsman's Evelyn is terrifying. Totally and precociously self-assured, she's the sort of woman men yearn for and then, when they've been used up, spend a lifetime trying to get over.
I think the director might be terrified of her, too. He stages Evelyn's climactic speech on the part of the stage that is furthest from the audience, slightly undercutting its power. That's a minor quibble this play will be a lightning rod for discussion.