Unfortunately, you won’t get the chance to see TOM WILLIAM MITCHELL in its current incarnation as the show completes its run tonight. I am so pleased however that I did make the effort to get to the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre to see such an innovative and engrossing play.
Merrigong Theatre Company has a stated aim of supporting local and new work and this particular show is the final production of the inaugural 2018 MERRIGONGX season. It is a work of considerable merit. New work it’s true. A work which, despite its three year gestation, may require some hard decisions in its next showing but a play which distills and personalises the topic with thematic depth allied with exciting staging and tech.
For TOM WILLIAM MITCHELL is about the media. About Tom and the media, about us and the media, about politics and the media … it has a complex and redolent reach. We meet our eponymous would be media-star. He’s been on Australian Survivor, he’s pretty and driven and sees himself as a perfect fit for a role as a newsreader. His audition though, is a bit shit. Not actually his fault from what we can see, the forces of producers and networks and social media metrics are pretty much lined up against him. Until he lets loose and then it all hits the fan.
This production, written and directed by Mark Rogers, is helmed by an outstanding performance. Matt Abotomey as Tom is everywhere, all the time, and he hurls himself into a role which requires physical endurance and technical excellence in very close proximity to the audience. It takes place on the actual IPAC stage where the audience is seated in tiered rows on four sides. The acting space is defined by a square floor cloth and a rope light surround but strays into aisles and stairs and various entries. The main feature of the production is the four TV screens and attendant live cameras that feed to them.
It’s a conceptualisation that works with stunning effectiveness. Mainly because of the competence and artistic commitment of the ensemble: Hannah Goodwin, Lily Hensby, Braydon May, Harry McGee, Alex Perrit, Lauren Scott-Young, Solomon Thomas, Carly Young. It must have been quite a rehearsal period to achieve such a high level of fluidity and deceptive effortlessness.
Being impressed by this expertise is a merely a side thought because the show is initially propelled by a breakneck chaos that engages the audience quickly. One becomes conscious of watching a screen rather than a person standing not 3 feet away from you and it’s a serious mind screw, the meta elements becoming more cogent as the show progresses. Technically the show is brilliant. Like when the live feed is laced with a twitter ticker which is jarring and disruptive, words like budge-it and milky bar kid flicker and I was compelled to try and read while being unable to tear myself from the action.
And there is a lot of action. The play has a clear and thorough narrative but it is interspersed with surrealism which serves to re-code the audience. Grenade theatrical expressions of Commedia and Athenian drama into the out-of-touch 39th floor or make the audience an insider to the tips and tricks of newscasting and comedy and tragedy mesh beautifully. There’s time to laugh at what we think we think is going on … the levity is situational and often it’s Tom’s way of seeing.
Initially we find the idealism and naïve openness of Tom attractive, he speaks his mind, but as his career expands he is trapped forever by a phrase spoken in heat. Abotomey gives long speeches in defence and in offence and he does so with exceptional skill. His Mrs Rosen speech is modulated so successfully that the stream-of-consciousness sweeps one with it rather than manifesting as the diatribe it might appear as written. All the while he is hitting us with a rolled-up newspaper in the brash confidence that he can channel disaffection.
Because, it’s no spoiler to say that Tom changes. In fact, there are some extraordinarily odious characters here. The sabotaging, insecurity of the female news anchor is nothing compared to the fame-whore star wanna-be on a redemption arc.
Complex in word and deed for sure, TOM WILLIAM MITCHELL does slightly overstay his welcome. The need to tie up the narrative, to end the story, made the show too long for me. Even at just over 100 minutes. The several climaxes leading to the finale are going to be part of that difficult decision-making which will prepare the show for its next outing. And he will be back, he’s too grand a creation to lose. Keep an eye out on a TV set near you!
Woodcourt Art Theatre in association with Merrigong Theatre Company [Facebook] presented TOM WILLIAM MITCHELL. You can read an interview with Writer/Director Mark Rogers here.
