Conclusions On Ice
Floogle
Director: Joshua Tyer
One Forty Five (145 Hindley St)
Until Fri 14 March


'Conclusions On Ice' is the most intelligent, side splittingly funny work involving a hanging you could hope to see, powered by Joshua Tyler's precise, crisp direction.

A woman appears to us head covered and the first words out of her mouth are to ask someone to call 000 - eliciting immediate laughter. For this woman wants to escape the dangerous death she faces as the ice melts. She's in the middle of a main city thoroughfare. Not one of the crazy characters crossing her path will help.

Co-playwrights Joshua Tyler and Tahli Corin have written one of those plays rightly given the status of mini-masterpiece. The entire history of the theatre's influence is on display here, from the morality plays of Puritan England, all the way to Russian surrealism with a light dash of Beckett and a touch of Herzog.

Patrick Graham and Tahli Corin play three extreme crazies while The Woman on ice, Ptiika Owen-Shaw in a tyro performance, is their straight man. Corin's little girl egging on The Woman to sponsor her in Jump For Hearts fundraiser is so wicked, only matched by her big glasses wearing Italian cleaner. Patrick Graham's mad Irish like crazy man, uptight dentist, old woman bemoaning a dead husband and a lover who has discovered the power spooning others to give joy are electrifying.

Every moment of hope for The Woman is snatched away. No one will untie her hands. Their own worries posses them. She is either in the way or at fault for their pains. She is Everyone.

'Conclusions On Ice' uses the power of comedy to remind us of our frailties in a way that celebrates them in way that leaves you feeling uplifted as you walk out of the theatre.

David O'Brien