Dramatic Manipulation Provides Insights
The Age
Tuesday May 2, 2006
THEATRE REVIEW: THIS IS HOW IT GOES By Neil Labute, Red Stitch Actors Theatre, directed by Wayne Chapple, Rear 2 Chapel Street, St Kilda, until May 27. Running time: 120 minutes.
NEIL Labute's best-known play, In the Company of Men, was made into the well-known film of the same name, but This Is How It Goes anatomises play writing itself, particularly its ability to manipulate truth, time and probability. It is a complex, subtle revelation of racism's pervasive presence in America, and its capacity to undermine moral resolve.As the character simply called The Man, suggesting he is an Everyman figure, Brett Cousins gives a stunning performance, one that develops in complexity from his first appearance as narrator, engagingly taking us into his confidence, to the end when our feelings towards him are a mixture of contempt, pity and dislike.He is, as he warns us, an unreliable narrator, and demonstrates this by giving us alternative versions of scenes in the play he is simultaneously narrating, participating in, and "writing". We must decide where the truth lies as the story of a marriage gone sour, a complicated love triangle, and the "trade" of a woman by two men, unravels in scenes that sometimes contradict one another.White girl Belinda marries a high-school sports hero, African-American Cody, but 12 years and two children later they seem locked in mutual animosity and anger. When their old school friend rents their garage apartment, jealousy and rage soon start to tear them apart. Or that's what one series of scenes suggests. Others construct a different narrative.The Man keeps freezing the action to come front stage and confide in us. He is charming and candid, drawing us into complicity with jokes and smiles.What he doesn't do is draw our attention to the corrosive, racial subtext that keeps surfacing in his narrative, giving us nasty little shocks that undermine his engaging charm. Terms like "nigger" are only words, he assures us, but there is a real black man engaged in the action here.As Cody, Christopher Kirby creates a compellingly complex character, but not a likeable one. Racism has two sides to it. Cody has racial and sexual scores of his own to settle, and Belinda (Susan Godfrey) becomes a pawn in the men's game.Director Wayne Chapple and his fine cast give this intriguing, disturbing play a first-class production: vivid, sharp and shocking.
© 2006 The Age