Tyler works as a barber, but it’s not who they are. Tyler is an artist and we see them dance to Fatboy Slim’s Right Here, Right Now. Their day job doesn’t define them; it’s their creativity that needs to be nurtured and protected at all costs. Queer art must be allowed to flourish, even as political forces conspire to crush it. After they discover a severed nose they can’t get rid of, they are arrested and disappeared.
Pummel
Squad’s adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose sets out its premise for
adaptation early. We should be more concerned about the character of Tyler than
we are of the person whose nose he found, the ostensible central character of
Major Pepsi, who is a government secretary for a line of portfolios where Arts
comes last. This may be based on a short story first published in 1836, but it’s
about right here and right now.
Pummel
Squad have built a reputation of anarchist poor theatre, that on the surface
appears chaotic, but underneath is always slyly political. In this new work,
originally a satire on appearances, they are approaching things in a new way.
Unlike their earlier group-devised works, Marginalia is based on a
script by two of the three Squadders, Ludomyr Kemp-Mykyta and Cooper Donald
McDonald. And this time they are surrounded by accomplished theatre makers, led
by award-winning director, Katy Maudlin, who directed Do Not Pass Go at
MTC earlier in the year.
This show
doesn’t sacrifice the Squad’s reputation for challenging work
presented in a unique kaleidoscopic style. But this time, instead of Pummel
Squad taking on every creative endeavour, they can be supported by designer
Savanna Wegman, whose set is innovative in its adaptability, while also
feeling like it’s been pasted together by an over-enthusiastic scrapbooker. And
lighting designer Amelia Lever-Davidson, whose work shifts nimbly from
over-the-top funeral to broody back-alley terrorism.
Marginalia does follow Major Pepsi on the hunt
for his nose, which has transformed into its own independent being with agency,
but isn’t so fixated on Gogol’s notions of how we judge by appearance.
Kemp-Mykyta and McDonald want us to think about the people in the margins, who
are affected as soon as someone with privilege is mildly inconvenienced. We
watch as the fallout from Pepsi’s rampage across the city affects everyone
around him: from Tyler, his barber, to his personal assistant and dresser, to a
government worker being oppressed by the machine Pepsi’s government has doomed
him to.
Kemp-Mykyta
gives us a Tyler to relate to very quickly, as the dance sequence flips from
passionate to desperate. McDonald plays Pepsi with a franticness that makes
sure we’re rarely on his side, even if we have some compassion for a person
losing their nose. The rest of the cast is amongst the finest actors on our
indie stages, with stand-outs like AYA giving us a number of unforgettable
characters and Molly Holohan making a fast impression as Clowno, before he is gunned
down by the military.
Maudlin
keeps everything bubbling along nicely, guiding the performers to find the
truth in the cartoonish sequences. This is satire via agit prop with more than
a dash of surrealism, but it works. This show feels more finely tuned than
Pummel Squad’s Christmas panto, but of course it is – and it needs to be. While
How the King Learned to Live Forever had politics weaved in, Marginalia
has that front and centre. The chaos is still the style du jour with absurdist
humour as the flavouring.
Pummel Squad’s work is daring and exciting. Infusing their brand of theatremaking with
the experience of Maudlin and the team she has assembled, shows us a group that
is open to new ways of working – even as it still feels like pure Pummel Squad.
Marginalia is thrilling in its audaciousness, but clear in its message.
Fucking hilarious, but quietly devastating.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Marginalia is playing at fortyfivedownstairs
until August 16
Photos: Nick Robertson
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