Sweet Shorts, Week 3, Top 20
Name your genre, and you’ll be got.
The last week of Short & Sweet – Top 20 – is an orgasmic smorgasbord of styles and shades, from gooseflesh drama to chest-hurting humour. Not just the scripts, but the performances and productions are all stronger for the extra weeks, and the punter is the beneficiary.
I love the fact that Blue by Meg Courtney – a sparse monologue seeing the consummate Ian Rooney talking to his phantom dog – can share an evening with a six-hander spoof about world religions.
Written by Adam Gelin, Religion Shop pitches Jew, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Christ and a seriously pissed-off Buddhist in a Pythonesque emporium where faiths may be exchanged, but not refunded.
Between these two poles is perhaps the Festival’s best example of marrying theatre with narrative. After last week, where we saw Independent Ensembles test the limits, Judy Doubas has blended the harrowing tale of breast cancer with the luxuriance of burlesque in the shape of Black Eyed Susan. Mustered by Brenda Addie, and decked out by Bridie Wilkinson, the ten minutes bewitch.
Though my favourite of the night, if you had to choose, and God knows people somehow have to, is called Alchemy. Walking familiar terrain – obsessive-compulsion – this eerie and eloquent script by Jodi Cramond captures the white noise of an afflicted soul like few other pieces. Alchemy, the word, fits the production, with Mat Wearing and James Deeth (sharing the same stage and skull) owning the auditorium from the outset. Larelle Bossi the director must take her mathematical share of the credit as well.
And don’t think these four redeem a patchy programme. Among the other offerings we have previous script-winner Tom Taylor toying with the word ‘praying’ – and the Fairfax’s pulley systems. We have Jane Miller mashing white-water metaphors with high-end business. Social satires in toilet cubicles, and comedy in fortune-teller tents. We have plays in sandpits and velvet-rope cannibal clubs. With more than one ensured to bite you where it feels good.
Don’t muck around. If you’re in Melbourne, or own the petrol money, see the cream of the short stuff before all these talented bodies return to their real jobs.