Katherine Lyall-Watson - ourbrisbane.com
What joy to see Jennifer Flowers back on the Brisbane stage! Even better because she's teamed up with Eugene Gilfedder, so often her co-star in years gone by. The pair is back together for La Boite's latest production, The Chairs. This is wonderful theatre: irreverent, ridiculous and hilarious. There's slapstick, pathos and the most astonishing performances.
Eugene Ionesco is famous as a writer of absurd theatre. He called The Chairs 'a tragic farce' and it was first produced in Paris in 1952. I have an early edition (1960) of the play in front of me and it's fascinating to see the ways that Martin Crimp's translation differs from the original translation by Donald Watson. Crimp has breathed fresh life into the text, making it more accessible to audiences without detracting from the intensity of the original.
Coming out of the theatre, I overheard someone say: "Well, I've no idea what that was about, but I loved it". As with many of Ionesco's plays it could be about everything or about nothing. On the surface, The Chairs is about an old couple preparing for a lecture. They've been together a hundred years and now the old man is going to pass on his answers to the questions of the universe. They've invited everyone to come to hear the revelations, which will be delivered by 'The Orator'. The problem for us is, when the guests start arriving, they are invisible. The old couple see them, hear them and respond to them, but all we see are the empty chairs.
The play rushes along at a cracking pace. The greeting and seating of invisible guests, the placing of dozens of chairs, and the barrage of non sequiturs are enough to make your head spin. It would be incredibly difficult to relax and enjoy it if we weren't in the consummate hands of Jennifer Flowers and Eugene Gilfedder. Trying to describe their performances leaves me in danger of suffocating in superlatives. They are mesmerising, awe-inspiring, pitiful and terrifying. They make sense of nonsense and turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Brian Lucas has done a wonderful job with this text-based piece. He's stayed true to Ionesco's instructions (Ionesco wrote at a time when playwrights were often very prescriptive) and added some delightful physical touches. Eugene getting tangled in a ladder is one and the appearance of the Orator (an exceptional performance by Dan Crestani) is a sublime example of another.
Bruce McKinven's set takes dilapidated dwelling to a new level. The home the old couple lives in appears to be made of cardboard - giving another layer to the story where perhaps they are homeless and living on the streets. Carolyn Emerson's lighting is warm and flame coloured: as if the light spills from an open fire in a barrel near the stage. (You can tell that I'm warming to the homeless theme.) Brett Collery's sound starts off so subtly I wasn't sure if it was coming from the stage or a muted phone but, as the play is peopled with its invisible cast, the music takes off: a wild gypsy dance encouraging abandon.
David Berthold's first season at La Boite is halfway through and, so far, it's a triumph. Hamlet became the most talked about show in town and provoked intense reactions, Stockholm wowed us and The Chairs is sheer joy to watch. Congratulations David.
