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| Marc MacKinnon, Lawrence Boothman, Sean Connor in Ode to Joy 2024 |
Ode to Joy (How Gordon got to go to the Nasty Pig Party). Stories Untold Productions with James Ley (Scotland) at Sydney Festival, Bell Shakespeare Studio, The Neilson Nutshell (The Thirsty Mile), January 16-21 2024.
Created with support from Creative Scotland
Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 16
Creative Team
Writer / Director: James Ley
Dramaturg: Rosie Kellagher; Assistant Director: Matt McBrier
Movement Director: Craig Manson
Sound Designer: Susan Bear & DJ Simon ‘Simonotron’ Eilbeck
Lighting Designer: Emma Jones
Costume Designer: Cleo Rose McCabe; Wardrobe Asst: Hana Eggleston
Production Manager & Show Technician: Chris Gorman
Company Stage Manager: Robyn Jancovich-Brown
Ode to Joy is at its heart about how the UK Referendum on leaving or staying in the European Union, which resulted narrowly in a vote for “Brexit”, has cut Scotland off unfairly from Europe.
Since, as we all understand, the personal is political and the political is personal, James Ley has imagined ‘Gordon’, a sexually active gay male government lawyer – one of some 250 such lawyers, the others presumably straight. Where will he find love? Only in exotic Europe.
In a speech naming all the hot-spots, only there will he find freedom, without the conventions of borders – and indeed will find the joy that the German Beethoven expressed in his gloriously symphonic Ode to Joy.
Can he make it happen by drafting Scottish law to hold a second referendum? Yes, he can.
But starting from this frustrated gay personal position has resulted in a weird kind of absurdist dance drama. Tom is, or says he is, the narrator of Gordon’s story – which means he can change the story as needs be. In fact he claims to become God – even though Gordon doesn’t believe in God.
Where Marcus fits in I was never sure. And both he and Tom become sex drug pushers as Cumpig and Manpussy respectively. After all, of course, it’s all pure imagination. Don’t mention reality.
However you will receive a program which includes a “Glossary of Gay”, detailing Chemsex – “a term commonly used to describe the sexualised use of recreational drugs and the involvement of drugs in your sex life.” Though as a non-gay at 83 I found the list irrelevant, it was interesting to learn that ‘Scat’, for example, means “sexual practices involving faeses”[sic]; and that ‘Pig’ “refers to a man who wants as much sex as he can get with as many different men as possible.”
In other words this manic dance is not for the faint-hearted. It’s a kind of satire I guess, but my inability to understand much of the thickly Scottish accented dialogue meant I missed many of the specific jokes which many in the mixed-sex audience laughed at appreciatively. (My 83-year-old hearing aids didn’t help much either.)
So I suggest I’m not really qualified to judge the quality of the show – as (I think) Cumpig remarked at some point, it’s a matter of personal preference. It was certainly true that men in the audience were engaged in lively conversation as they left after genuinely-felt applause.
For me, on the political front, the play makes a serious point about the move, now in England as well as Scotland, to hold the referendum a second time. This could mean that Scotland could leave the United Kingdom – and some have even suggested that Northern Ireland may reunite with the South, and Wales might make it difficult for King Charles III, who once was titled Prince of Wales.
An interesting experience, is my conclusion.
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| Lawrence Boothman, Sean Connor in Ode to Joy 2024 |
©Frank McKone, Canberra
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