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A Thing Called Snake Director: Ross Ganf Inspace, The Space, Wed 13 - Sat 22 Oct 
As you walk to your cabaret-style table, designer Geoff Cobham squeezes you between a towering panel of nine square screens and a giant red curtain that soon dropped and revealed the stacked box seats. You feel you are on a small street in a big city looking into the windows of the flats. Certainly Kings Cross comes to mind as the characters introduce themselves. And what characters!
Playwright Stephen House has a notorious preference for those addicted to a broad range of sexual and drug-using activities, from society's underbelly. He writes with great sympathy and accuracy about their dreams and the petty power struggles between those able to pay for elicit pleasure and those who have to sell it to survive. House has written a love triangle fairy tale borrowing a little from Genesis. He teases his audience by slowly revealing the relationships within the trio. Poor Adam is one of those country bumpkins that gets eaten for lunch on the Cross. He bounces between a tempting predatory thing called Snake and his prostitute lover Eve. Something powdered and purple is the currency. House hand-picked Ross Ganf to direct this world premiere for the Festival's inspace program which is dedicated to supporting new work. While Ganf is yet just twenty-six, he's spent four years transforming House's poetic script and lyrical street vernacular into a splendiferous feast that is superbly complemented by Geoff Cobham's set and lighting design. Movement coach Ninian Donald had the cast moving up and down poles like gymnasts, and razak - co-creator of Miss Gladys Sym Choon - had the trio in sexy and gender-confusing costumes and accessories of unique design. Enhancing the mood were Justin McGuinness' video animation and silhouettes, and Peter Nielsen's aural track. Saxophonist Chris Soole played amazing and haunting licks between scenes and for the songs, and provided a steady influence. All was not perfect in the Garden of Eden. The script needed a bit more punch than the toss-up between Adam and Eve or Adam and Steve. Snake was such a smooth and alluring operator with a nice streak that this metaphorical role of evil incarnate was weakened to something only a little worse than a bad influence. While the production values made getting pistol-whipped with a black African fantasy-size dildo (complete with suction cup for easy mounting on any flat surface) seem like a brutal and humiliating beating, the quick and independent decisions by Adam and Eve to get clear were precipitous. The highly stylised presentation was great eye candy, but it was so much fun that it emasculated and downplayed the personal tragedies being played out. Alexandra Schepisi, Jason Klarwein as Adam and Vincent Crowley as the eponymous Snake played a triptych of Kings Cross trouble with flamboyant vivacity. Klarwein's Adam was weak, vacillating and genuine, while Schepisi's made Eve's dreams worth living for. Crowley's Snake made my skin crawl. This snake is an intoxicating culmination of a massive collaborative effort in design, performance, song, music, and movement, inspired by Adelaide's maverick playwright, Stephen House, and the contemporary application of theatrical possibility by director Ross Ganf. The terrific poster by Kelly O'Sulivan says what you are in for. Bravo!  |
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