Two Plays One Week

Two plays, one week, both by the Sydney Theatre Company - ‘Kafka’s Monkey’ and ‘The Wonderful World of Dissocia’.

One I saw, the other I struggled to catch glimpses of.

‘Kafka’s Monkey’

A brilliant one woman show based on a short story written by Czech writer Franz Kafka. ‘Red Peter’ played by Kathryn Hunter is a bravura performance by an actress who takes you through the ridiculousness of humanity.

‘A woman, playing a monkey, playing a man’.

A monkey is captured in the wild and transported to a zoo. During the journey the monkey begins to learn what it is to be human from a group of drunken sailors. He learns how to drink and finally how to speak a single word, “hello”. Red is given the option of the zoo or vaudeville, he chooses vaudeville. He engages tutors to teach him what it is to be a man. Finally achieving his goal he is called on by the great minds of the day to present a report to the Academy. During his report Red holds a mirror up to society and generally finds that humans are short on humanity.

Red’s main objective in becoming human is to find a ‘way out’ from the cage that he is in but when he does he realises that freedom is an illusion and all he has done is swapped one cage for another.

From the moment Kathryn Hunter takes the stage and makes her opening bows she gently takes us, the audience, in and carries us through the transformation of monkey to man. Dressed in a Charlie Chaplin style tail coat and bowler Ms. Hunter uses her beautiful voice and pliable body to convince us that you can take the monkey out of the jungle but you can never take the beast out of man.

This is a tight, well paced, beautifully acted piece of theatre that deserves a successful run.

‘The Wonderful World of Dissocia’

Written by Anthony Neilson for the Edinburgh International Festival, 'Dissocia' provides another view into the mind of man or in this case woman; Lisa has stopped taking her tablets, Lisa is in Dissocia, a world in search of a Queen. Lisa has lost an hour of her life.

Lisa has fallen through the looking glass.

This may very well be a good play. I couldn’t tell.

This entire production, directed, by Marion Potts, seems to have been directed with the intention of cutting out almost one third of the audience. The first Act in particular was played almost entirely to stage left.

The first Act is spent in Dissocia a world at war with the ‘Black Dog King’, a world where ‘scape’ goats are literally goats, a world where mad Hot Dog vendors and ‘in’ security guards live, a world where the Lost Property Office has in fact been lost.

To add insult to injury the second Act has the floor raised to create a lowered roof, (I know it’s confusing), however it brilliantly achieves the result that what little I could see of the actor’s was now even further diminished until finally I gave up and just sat shivering under the air conditioning vent.

The second Act is spent in the real world where days pass by in a blur of pills and sleep. Lights come on, lights go off to signify the passing of time; at least eight times the lights came on and the lights went off.

The costumes are colourful and garish, they looked great, well at least the back of the costumes looked great (Tess Schofield), the sound great, the lighting in the first Act great and the set great but gee it would have been good to see the Actor’s.

Lisa has lost an hour of her life – I have lost two hours of mine.