Gemma Burwell’s play GRAVY has a lot of moving parts, a little to do with gravy but not Gravlax or Gravox. The gist of the play has thrust, a brutal, incisive, puncturing and rupturing of acceptable norms, the guardrails that cement the interior of personalities and psyches to the filigree of ties to patriarchal, matriarchal and societal bonds that are bequeathed to us.
To call GRAVY blistering is an understatement, showcasing writer Gemma Burwell’s distinctive dramaturgic style in her new Australian play about the raw dynamics of a daughter-mother relationship laid bare. The two personalities or one bearing the heavy impress of the other, Trisha and Mummy, rummage through their backlog of realities that impinge upon body-shaming and imaging, love in its bucolic mannerism and shame–the elephant-in-the-room
Its a fragile and febrile zone running the gamut of care and control–all under the patriarchal omnipresent gaze of the “ever-watching-man”. This is the opening play by Merek in association with Bakehouse Theatre Co, triumphant in presenting a suffocating theatrical rupture of a surreal, absurdist and blisteringly blinding focus on two women. Its an unpredictable dive into the psyche, offering a haunting glimpse into their struggles to connect and understand.
A bathtub sits upon a raised stage, water seeping around the feet of a seated young woman next to the tub. Dressed in black, she is expressionless. Inside the tub, is an older woman asleep or dead? Writer Gemma Burwells’ explores the pervasive and often unconscious nature of how patriarchy blunts and bludgeons the intimacy between mother and daughter. This is brutal theatre with shattered language brilliantly exposed by sound designers Zsa Zsa Gyulay and Milo McLaughlin and effective lighting by Frankie Clarke. The minimalist set design curated by James Smithers is both suffocating and cloying. Trisha and Mummy are both one and the same, alive or dead, young and old, mother and daughter, all at the same time, and yet they are not..
Director Sasa Ljubovic choreography expounds the writer ‘s existentialism through the two outstanding performers, Trisha (Meg Hyeronimus) and Mummy (Deborah Jones) who carry us through the maelstrom. Be warned: there is no escape from their isolating existence, and brutal intimacy of their emotions, through words and actions towards each other. The notion of the sacrifice a mother chooses when raising her child is a sledgehammer motif throughout. There’s a lot to ponder upon leaving the theatre, especially mirrored in the use of water as an agent to bless or remove stigma and the difficulty of being a woman.
A cathartic play. Simply brilliant.
