Observation.
Listening.
The hustle
and bustle becomes a soundtrack. Snatches of conversation overheard on street
corners. Music blasting from pubs and restaurants. Dark corners. Unhoused
people. Drunk people. A woman waits, while she stares at her phone. A man
struggles to keep hold of his dog. A boy skates past. A pair marvel at the way
St Kilda has changed since they’ve last been.
Getting to
the Explosives Factory last night, through the heaving Friday night traffic and
crowds, grabbing food after discovering a reliable watering hole has shut down,
was an experience in and of itself. The laneway which the venue hides down is a
liminal space, quiet shadowy; the bright light of the doorway entrance the only
welcoming light.
Inside
Theatre Works’ second space is St Kilda in microcosm – a wide expanse, pressing
at the far walls of the room, no space for even the pretence of a proscenium. A
couch, a tall chair for a lifesaver, drums and keyboard on a raised platform, ropes
around a checkerboard dance floor. A hint of the beach in the distance.
Slowly but
surely the cast of characters enter the space. Some are already there when I
take my seat. But with a deliberate feeling of naturalism, people are wandering
through the seaside suburb, some with purpose, some aimlessly.
A pair of
young women on colourful beach blankets. A woman doing yoga in the park. A drag
queen in their apartment getting ready for a night out. A sex worker and her reluctant
protégé. A young man shouting invective at people he deems less than him. A
middle-aged man searching for connection. It’s cacophonous. Chaotic. An overwhelming
portrait of a place where you don’t know where to look and you overhear a grab
of an interesting story, but you can’t follow along to listen.
Raimondo
Cortese’s St Kilda Tales – here subtitled A Performance Rave –
was first written for the Melbourne Festival of the Arts in 2001, as part of
the 100th anniversary of Federation Festival. It was produced by
Ranters Theatre in homage to the suburb where a number of their ensemble
members lived over the years.
St Kilda
has changed in the past quarter-century. A night out there is still filled with
all the eccentric characters this play throws at us; I’ve been around long
enough to see all those people in the pubs and clubs and back streets of an
area that has been almost cleared out of the artists and creatives that made
the place so appealing back in the eighties and nineties.
Cortese has
made some changes to the script, but beyond giving some characters phones,
having not seen the original production, I am not sure what’s different. Some
of the language feels more current. Some observations steeped in 2020’s
sensibility. But in a way, as these characters slowly gather together, pressed
side-by-side in a pub, dancing, I’m not sure which venue would look like that these
days. It feels like the Prince of Wales in the 1990s or the pre-renovated Espy,
which used to not just feature bands but live theatre as well. That’s my
nostalgia showing.
The
ambition of this piece – trying to capture the life and vibe of a day and night
and after in St Kilda – is not realised in this production by the Victorian
Theatre Company, directed by VTC co-founder Matthew Connell. The overlapping of
dialogue in concurrently playing scenes muddied the experience of both. The
movement of the characters, especially in the early scenes, felt messy. The
live score, while elevating some dramatic moments – especially the central
scene on the dance floor – overwhelmed a lot of what happened later.
Were we as
the audience supposed to feel so much like we were on that dancefloor that we
couldn’t hear what was going on? Trying to hear people over the noise of the
club was my least favourite thing about being in a club, so replicating it here
wasn’t that pleasant. And the joyous dance sequence was undercut by the fact I
hadn’t really gotten to know any of the characters on stage.
In moments,
as I tried to focus on one story or another, I wondered if the show might work
better as a fully immersive experience. Then you could get closer, and choose
which characters to follow and which stories to focus on. The joy of any
theatre is that you can turn your attention away from the main action to see
what’s happening in the periphery, as opposed to film and TV, which is
continually directing your attention and tricking you with editing. Here,
though, it wasn’t a matter of fixating on something; the only parts I really
connected with were the scenes happening right in front of me.
I tried to
look upon the experience as if standing in front of a large artwork; an Hieronymus
Bosch of suburban Melbourne. You can’t hope to see everything because there is
so much happening, so much detail. But this wasn’t static. This was moving.
Moments played far away from the audience. Some shouting coming from behind the
seating bank. A moment between some of the characters in the actual toilets of
the Explosive Factory – just out of sight and only in hearing for me because I
was down that end of the room.
I am not
suggesting everyone has to see everything that happens on a stage to appreciate
what the theatremakers were trying to accomplish. I like seeing shows in the
round or in traverse, because the audience’s vantage points are distinctly
different. Seeing a show like this where I felt distanced from two thirds of
it, unable to hear most of what was going on because of the layout and the
sound design didn’t endear me to it.
The second
half of the show – which is, in total, one hundred and twenty minutes without interval – is that time
in the night out where you’ve left the club, but you’re not yet ready to go
home. One of the characters name-checks the band The Eagles at one stage,
making me think of the line from Hotel California: “You can check out any time
you like, but you can never leave.” This part of the production captured that
feeling to a tee.
As the
characters stumbled around, drunk or high or lost or lonely, I sat there
knowing that feeling – thinking you can keep the night out going, knowing that
someone’s going to have to organise kick-ons or everyone’s headed to Revs.
There was no dramatic shape, though. There was just a despondent feeling in me,
wishing I could have connected with anything that was happening in front of me.
One final note:
the production stills of this show are exquisite. Darren Gill has captured
moments in a way the show itself does not and cannot. He’s framed a character
or two and isolated them so they are no longer a part of the chaos.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
St Kilda
Tales is on at the
Explosives Factory in St Kilda until May 10th
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