by Rachel Halliburton
Theatre: Rabbit
Lyric Hammersmith
Peter Rabbit and prostate cancer are just two of the topics covered in an evening that begins on a chemically induced high and ends like an early David Lynch movie. This is a mad, bad, dangerous show with no heroine but plenty of heroin, and a display of dyfunctional family values that would have blown Beatrix Potter's bonnet off.
As a theatre company, Franctic Assembly has repeatedly asserted itself as a voice for the club gereration, with a bold physical language inspired by film and pop videos. However, in its last two productions - Heavenly and Peepshow - it became increasingly obvious that the verbal inventiveness was effortlessly outclassed by the visual idiom, and that for the company to advance artistic directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett needed to go out into the world and get themselves a decent scriptwriter.
They have certainly found a radical new voice in the 27 year old Australian Brendan Cowell, who takes the audience on an imaginative journey hovering between dream and narcotic nightmare. He attacks the growing phenomenon of shock jocks by creating Paul Cave, a terminally ill Right wing radio ranter, who discovers alternative angles to life when he spends a weekend in the mountains with his vacuous wife, his legal school dropout daughter, her junkie rap-obessess boyfriend and a petrified live rabbit.
Dick Bird's slickly surreal set shows a pristine white room with massive windows, framing a picture-postcard, pretty view of trees and a snow covered mountain. Irony is the enemy fo David Sibley's self-righteously reactionary Paul, yet Graham and Hoggett establish a deliciously tongue-in-cheek tone for the production, whether it's Susan Kyd's dippy but sexy Kate worrying pertly about cucumbers or Sam Crane's pathetically hilarious Spin shooting up before going on an Iron John styled bonding session with the dying Paul.
Frantic Assembly's trademark choreography works best when conveying intense emotion for a drama that is refreshingly ambitious and blackly funny. It marks a bold, brave dawn for a company whose future has just become significantly brighter.