Seasons of Keene - I Alone. Two monologues by Daniel Keene: Kaddish performed by Peter Damien Hayes and The Rain performed by Liliana Bogatko, directed by Ben Drysdale for National Multicultural Fringe. The Street Theatre Studio February 16-18, 7.30pm.
Theatre comes in all shapes and sizes. This production is quite tiny, lasting not much more than 30 minutes, but delicately done. Like Bach's well-tempered klavier, these monologues are short exercises which test the actor and have an extra layer of depth than the ordinary five-finger exercise.
In Kaddish an old man speaks about his life with a woman who has died. Gradually, we realise that his emotion is building, that he is not able to contain his grief, until his story leads to an image - of a stuck pig - and in describing the scene to us he is at last able to find relief in a kind of scream.
Hayes created the character for us in his stilted movement around his room with no more than a bed and a chair. The result, in some 10 minutes, was quite electric, and sad.
Bogatko, in her longer The Rain, used movement to less effect, creating an old woman but not a very specific character. This piece relies on the story she tells of being a mere bystander given things by people in long lines being put on trains, and how she kept them, completely filling her house, waiting for the people to return and claim their belongings. Which they never do.
The Rain, I feel, needed to have more story-telling devices added to this old woman's voice to create in us more variety of responses. On the other hand, the piece makes its point as the picture of the people sent to the gas chambers becomes clear. With this production successfully complete, Drysdale might now consider a larger night of Keene theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
No comments:
Post a Comment