Tabula Rasa
Glitch Bar, North Fitzroy
Melbourne Fringe Festival
26th September 2008
Well, I didn’t really know what to expect heading into this show. The flyer was obscure, I had received a nudge from a friend to attend but nothing more was known about it. I went to Glitch Bar in Fitzroy, which I knew but had never been in and was surprised at the cinema space out the back and how fantastic it was for theatre.
Tabula Rasa is three short works written by Alison Mann and directed by three separate directors (Herself, Amanda Mouellic and Rachel Purchase). The writing showed great range and depth throughout but really hit hard with the first work Children.
Much of the success of this work should be attributed to the director, and perhaps the direction fo her own work meant that Alison was able totake it by the scruff of the neck. Both the performers Rachel Purchase and Ananth Gopal dealt with the material in a centred and physically enagaged way. Always connected to each other, the language and the emotional core of the work. Although the text was a heightened abstraction of what two young lovers would speak to each other, it somehow became natural to the audience – as if we were watching naturalism. It was an intelligent love, a knowing and deep connection, whilst still remaining light with the material and funny.
The second work baby/doll was directed by Amanda Mouellic and although couldn’t match the crispness of the first work, still managed to create an atmosphere of remembrance. I never would have thought that a show that had a character that was a doll in it would be able to move me. (For some reason the doll questioning why its owner (now grown up) had left and what she was going to do with her now made me feel quite sad. Hmmm…what is it about a discarded childhood plaything that would make me so upset?? maybe I need to see a therapist and talk this through…) I was thinking that as a device, the character of the doll was able to prise information from the woman Anna that she probably wasn’t able to admit to herself, and that provided the drive for the piece. The other interest was what the doll wanted, which was a nice touch.
The third short play The Vanish Club, was perhaps the weaker of the three, but still engaging and the writing certainly held up. David Passmore had to carry the work with his charisma and on the most part does this. I think the choice to have him talking to an imaginary person next to him rather than referencing the audience perhaps went some way to disconnecting him from us. We became voyeurs in his world and not complicit in his very particular world view. According to his bio David is from New Zealand but so convinced that he was an Englishman that I wrote down in my notes that ‘this has only worked because he was English’. There is something so specific about English club and pub bravado, where you are enamoured with the charm and at the same time chuckling at the idiocy of the drinking culture.
I found that some of the shifts between thoughts or the shifts between physical modes didn’t quite work and I think this is a direction thing – it felt like gestural things had been imposed upon the performer and he hadn’t yet found a way to make then feel comfortable on his own body. This may settle down as the season goes on. The moments where this piece really broke open for me was where the character began talking about babies, and suddenly all the bullshit about being a womaniser left him and we were left with a man who really wanted a child. This was the power of this piece.
Overall I walked away with a Fringe experience that was solid, professional and funny. Alison Mann’s writing was clever and moving.
