News Archive
2009
2008
Lurid, leaky look at city's seductive underbelly
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday July 16, 2009
THE JUNGLEDarlinghurst Theatre, July 14Until August 8AH, SYDNEY. Pay someone to piss on you and instead you get your throat cut.Written in 1995, Louis Nowra's gleefully lurid satirical drama paints a picture of the city's underbelly in a series of linked vignettes: a palsied young woman treated like a dog by her ancient captor; a young man dying of AIDS who goads his father into a murderous rage; a corrupt cop on a speed bender; a drug dealer trying to offload 100 kilograms of stolen shellfish; a croaking rock legend who needs pethidine injections before she can face her fans.Some of the topical references have been blunted by the passage of time and there are elements of the play that would have had a faintly elegiac ring to them 14 years ago, but director Alex Galeazzi and his cast of nine prove that the currency of Nowra's play set in various locations all within spitting distance of this theatre is still good, even though this production is patchy.It's more miss than hit for the first hour the scene between dying son and homophobic father only serves to highlight some crudely provocative writing, for example. But as The Jungle unfolds, the cast grasp the opportunities afforded to them more vigorously, even if a lack of rigour in the stage blocking causes some of the dramatic scenes to spring leaks and the more violent a scene is required to be, the less convincing it is.Comic scenes fare better; most revolving around Kelly Butler, who excels as walking-dead rock diva Cynthia Paine.Ivan Donato strikes sparks as drug dealer Jason, Sophie Webb is daffy and dangerous as a Kurt Cobain-obsessed prostitute, and Lynden Jones comes good as a finance executive forced to question the truth of his relationship with a handsome Romanian.The collage-like structure is a lot more familiar than it would have been 14 years ago, but there's fun to be had discerning the continuities between scenes, and Nowra's blend of broad comedy and high-stakes drama, dirty realism and hypnotic descriptions of Sydney's seductive surface culminating in an image of the city being rinsed clean by the rising sun is satisfyingly rendered throughout.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
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