The Heart Of Darkness Illuminated
The Age
Tuesday June 6, 2006
THEATRE REVIEW: TEJAS VERDES By Fermin Cabal, Red Stitch Actors Theatre, Rear 2, Chapel Street, St Kilda, until July 1. Running time: 80 minutes.
RED Stitch is one of our more highly regarded theatre companies, and deservedly so. It has a wealth of talented actors, committed to furthering their art through an ambitious program of contemporary plays from around the world.Its latest effort, Tejas Verdes, concerns the torture and murder of thousands following the Chilean coup of 1973, led by Augusto Pinochet. The fate of the "disappeared" is a horrifying subject, and one fraught with peril for any fictionalised treatment. But Spanish playwright Fermin Cabal manages to eschew cheap sentimentality and craft a work that serves as both a warning against inhumanity and a worthy memorial to its victims. Through the monologues of five female figures, Cabal describes the death of Colorina (Verity Charlton), whose restless ghost bookends the play. The other characters are all, to varying degrees, collaborators in the atrocities of the Pinochet era: Colorina's cellmate (Olivia Connolly), who turned her in to the secret police; a military doctor (Kate Cole), whose adverse report led to her death; a gravedigger (Evelyn Krape), responsible for interring murdered corpses; and a publicist (Laura Lattuada), representing the dictator through the legal trials of his twilight years.Tejas Verdes is essentially a documentary play. Cabal's monologues are naturalistic, with the force and form of oral history. Jonathan Messer's direction is an exercise in restraint; the production is a heavily naturalistic one, delivered in neutral and unemphatic Australian accents. It pays off, and Messer draws out some fabulous performances: Charlton is superb as the defiant Colorina; Cole's defensive doctor is acutely observed; Krape's gravedigger is a wonderfully melancholy piece of comic acting (despite the occasional stutter on opening night). The main flaws derive from succumbing to theatricality, which Connolly as the informant does sporadically and Lattuada as the publicist does from the moment she steps on stage, making her character utterly implausible.Technically, the lighting was a bit off-cue. However, designer Peter Mumford should win an award for his set - a minimalist but highly effective display of memorial art, with suspended reliquaries and the names of the disappeared in luminescent graffiti as backdrop.Tejas Verdes is a play that masterfully explores the darkness of the human heart, and its resilience. This production is equal to its challenges and, for the most part, makes compelling theatre.
© 2006 The Age