There’s a double bill at the Darlinghurst Theatre that is soon coming to a close, which is well worth catching. The plays are DRAKE THE AMAZING and LA DISPUTE, written by talented Los Angeles playwright Andy Hyman and directed by Australian trained and now London based but NIDA trained director John Kachoyan.
The two plays have been brought to the stage by Michaela Kalowski and Owl Farm, in partnership with the Darlinghurst Theatre Company, and with the support of the always enterprising Arts Radar production team.
DRAKE THE AMAZING was up first. The play is set in the early 20th century and the milieu is the pre-World War 1 Vaudeville theatre circuit.
This was a lot of fun and was at its heart a quirky love story. Scott Sheridan came across well playing mediocre actor and monologist Alden Drake who spent all his time boring audiences to tears as he travelled the theatre circuit. Nicholas Papademetriou reveled in playing his long suffering producer Neilson who enjoyed giving him a roasting.
Drake’s ho-hum life is changed to amazing when sexy and high spirited production assistant Claudette falls in love with him and spurs him on to give, on one autumn night in 1911, one of the greatest performances ever seen. Kate Skinner is great as the smitten Claudette.
LA DISPUTE is a very different play, more intriguing but not as likable as DRAKE THE AMAZING. Hyman has written a contemporary adaptation of LA DISPUTE, one of the brilliant French playwright Pierre de Marivaux’s last pieces.
The scenario sees a wealthy man with too much time on his hands and a cruel streak to boot, invite a group of his friends to a scientific experiment, if one can call it that, where too boys and two girls who have been raised in isolation from the world and each other meet for the first time in twenty years at a party that he hosts.
Welcome to an ever changing world where one minute the participants are wildly in love, and the next moment they are reeling from the agonies of betrayal. Carl Batchelor, Polita Cameron, Julian Curtis and Stacey Duckworth played the guinea pigs.
Try and catch this engaging, quirky double bill before it closes. The final four performances at the Darlo, 19 Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Point, are this Thursday and Friday evening at 8pm and this weekend on Saturday at 3pm and Sunday at 4pm.
David Kary
10th August, 2011