Crestfall
The Sunday Age
Sunday October 15, 2006
CRESTFALL To Nov 4. Red Stitch Actors Theatre, St Kilda. Tel: 9533 8083. $30/$20. ****
Irish playwright Mark O'Rowe has a reputation for a hard-edged vision of the world, and nobody will accuse him of going soft in Crestfall. It's set in a dystopian community, characterised by violence, crime and a less than romantic view of relationships between men and women. The narrative is in the form of three connected monologues, separately delivered by the three female characters: Olive Day (Ella Caldwell), a sex-addicted hard case; Ali Ellis (Karen Roberts), fierce defender of her family, and married to one of Olive's casual flings; and Tilly McQuarrie, drug addict and prostitute. Although it is an essentially text-based piece - each of the monologues tells roughly the same events from different points of view - there is a strong physical element to this production. Each performer enacts her story in movement (Ingrid Weisfelt directed this aspect) while the other two by turns and together reflect and sometimes join the action. But the strongest impression is of O'Rowe's use of language. For all their unflinching account of squalor and brutality, his words are lyrical. There's something of Burgess and Kubrick's Alex from Clockwork Orange in the vernacular inventiveness and spark of the storytelling. Ross Ganf's direction takes all kinds of risks to create the otherness of the world demanded by the script; the whole thing works to stunning effect.
© 2006 The Sunday Age