The Inhabited Man
Richard Murphett and Leisa Shelton
25th July 2008, Space 28 VCA, Melbourne
Sometimes I wonder how reviewers do it – how do they manage to level out their feelings about works from one day to the next?
In the day to day hurly-burly of inner city life, one’s state of being appears to be constantly in flux. So how then could you feel like you were giving each show justice? I guess you could have a ranking system of some sort with a selection of marks for each part of the work. Again even if you tried to rationalise each element of a show in the end you are still being subjective.
Which brings me to The Inhabited Man, by Richard Murphett and Leisa Shelton, which I saw thursday night. There were many parts of this work that I loved and I was moved to tears on one occasion, HOWEVER, something just didnt happen for me – that magical je ne sais qua that makes it all click inside you. It was difficult, and I wonder if it was supposed to be that way?
The way that all the media came together was seamless, I remember one moment where I was listening to a voice over of a woman coming from a speaker in the centre back of the stage, whilst simultaneously hearing the main character speaking, reading text on a screen and also listening to a soundtrack. And while all of this was commendable and I indeed love to take in as much information as possible I began to wonder about how much resonance was being felt due to such an overload.
Now was this ‘non-click’ due to a long and tiring week for me? Or did things just not quite happen? The performances were great, (Merfyn Owen especially), the writing was solid (although the puzzling Polish angle had me a little bamboozled) and the imagery was beautiful.
I guess in retrospect I feel like I should be allowed to have an off day and that the way that I feel about that particular work should not be judged harshly. After all we are not robots. Which in the end is the thing that I most took away from The Inhabited Man. The main character was not a robot, and to expect him to be ‘normal’ and judge him by the normal rules that society has laid down is not fair, especially for someone who has seen what he has seen and done the things he has done.
Oh yes and a power ballad as a coda, it wouldn’t matter how I felt – I would never like that…
