A room, a very contemporary room. A meeting room. Where minds and even hearts may meet to tell a story. But who’s story is it? The team of young enthusiastic writers are collected to write the bible for an up and coming series, serial, television epic or something else. The audience are teased with the passion of the introduction, Harold Lasseter lost in the desert, trips over a reef of gold. Lasseter is rescued from the desert by an Afghan Cameleer and in his recovery charms everyone with his story of a fabulously wealthy “reef” of gold hidden in the vast Interior.
And then where do we go? Act 1 is some 70 minutes long, with scene splits and time changes and a rush of what the promotion calls “psychedelic romp”, no one can agree, the tempo and the writing is at times over the top as ideas compete with each other. Lasseter’s story must be told but each writer has their own agenda and reputation to protect. I did love the use of filmed edits in ‘the mood reel’ that referenced tropes of action and adventure. The cascade of referencing was almost too much and indicates how madness sets in to the script writing team in lockdown as they get closer to their deadline. There is also another presence, a hooded figure that looks into the room through glitches in the video.
The writer and director wanted to keep it to an ensemble piece and it is difficult to watch the creative process of each writer splinter and buckle under so many competing demands. The romp to the absurd was not consistently applied and I feel the narrative might have been better served as one person’s story. Built as it was around a filmed story, at times the theatrical tropes were too loosened.
THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN PLAY opens in Act 2, in the dining room of a homestead, Under the guise of Lasseter’s origin story there is a crossing and dipping into overlapping stories from the Australian Cannon including Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Away and then The Removalists. This yields even more complexity than the writers’ room were struggling with in Act One. The set design worked for the twists in confined locations across both times. There were some thrilling teasers where I felt we were also as trapped as the cast.
Well done Lucinda Howes, Kurt Pimblett, Rachel Seeto, Idam Sondhi and Mây Trần. All were delivering through to the end with great integrity. Kim Ho has overwritten this piece and Director Saro Lusty-Cavallari has done their level best to corral the different alternative universes within the space time continuum. The Great Australian Play unfortunately is not there yet.
I agree with the premise that the world has changed and THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN PLAY could be a slasher horror drama.
THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN PLAY is playing the Old Fitz at 8 October 2022
Review by Elizabeth Surbey
Production photography by Phil Erbacher