Friday March 29, 2024
The Serpent's Teeth
Review

The Serpent's Teeth

May 8 2008

The Serpent's Teeth, Sydney Theatre Company in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, April 24-May 17; ph: (+61 2) 9250 7777 or www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Having, for a number of reasons, got to this production some while after the adrenaline-laden atmosphere of its opening night, the emotional hot air, intellectual methane gas and down-home sycophantic gushings that have greeted the production seem almost incredible. Only "almost", however, because Sydney is always susceptible to anything that arrives from Melbourne clad inthe kind of highfalutin poesy that might once have been worn by an otherwise stark naked emperor.

The Serpent’s Teeth is a pairing of two one act plays by Daniel Keene, loosely connected by the subject of war and its effect on ordinary people. Unusually for one act plays, they require large casts, making them ideal for the STC’s Actors’ Company. The first of the plays, Citizens, also marks the debut of actor Pamela Rabe as a director. More of that in a minute.

The impetus behind Citizens, according to the writer,was that he was “not interested in looking at the lives of people with the power to escape or ignore conflict.” To paraphrase: he was interested in the effects of war on the little people, the ordinary people, the ones who are powerless to escape or ignore conflict.

Citizens is a play of fragmented scenes involving unrelated citizens of a middle eastern country. It has been fractured by an obscene wall constructed by its powerful enemy next door (but is unnamed nevertheless). And along this wall the citizens are forced to walk each day to simply live their lives. There is a grandfather and his young grandson – wheeling a precious olive tree in an eloquently squeaky wheelbarrow; there are sundry other folk: a dotty old man on the way to the funeral of a brother he hasn’t seen in 27 years; a pregnant woman and her oafish husband; three young men collecting rocks on their way to wreak Davidian havoc on their perceived Goliath; and so on.

Although Estragon and Pozzo aren’t among them in the flesh, they certainly are in spirit and this is an overwhelming problem for the play. Waiting For Godot looms larger even than the horrible wall – an oddly effective set/prop: mute but simultaneously expressive. And in the looming, the Becket echoes serve to remind that if you’re going to focus on little, ordinary people they absolutely must – somehow – be monumentally extraordinary too.

The ordinary folk of Citizens are only too ordinary, however, and illustrate why ordinary people are, in the main, kept out of drama: history and major plays tends not to remember or celebrate them because they’re as tedious as tooth ache.

Pamela Rabe (who I remember first appearing to great effect in Sydney at Belvoir St in Keene’s hit of the mid-80s, Cho Cho San!) directs with a steady and gutsy hand. Given the cartloads of portent dragged by all players and the thunderously empty pronouncements made by some, she nevertheless kept her nerve and maintains the rhythms of the piece – even when it must surely have been tempting to cut and run. I hope she gets a chance to take on more rewarding material, after this effort, she deserves it and would surely do well.

The second play, Soldiers, was written as a companion piece for this STC event. It is of the here and now and although it takes what feels like forever to make a point, it finally does – at least three – but not until the last 10 or 15 minutes. They’re points worth making, however, and they concern the revolting piety, charades, sentimentality and cant that surround the repatriation of soldier corpses.

The Serpent's Teeth

The families of five such unfortunates wander in and out of an aircraft hangar while awaiting the delayed arrival of a plane from Afghanistan. Their boys are “coming home”, but as one furious brother spits: they’re not actually. They’re dead. And the military ceremonials are about generating a smokescreen to obscure that inconvenient truth.

For this production the Actors Company consists of Narek Armaganian, Brandon Burke, Peter Carroll, Joshua Denyer, Marta Dusseldorp, Eden Falk, John Gaden, Ewen Leslie, Steve Le Marquand, Hayley McElhinney, Amber McMahon, Luke Mullins, Pamela Rabe and Emily Russell and they perform to their now familiar capacities and quirks. Tim Maddock is the director of the second play and deals solemnly and reverently with its selfconscious sense of importance and portent. The set design by Robert Cousis – a harshly lit and forbidding concrete block wall in the first instance, a lofty, dark, virtally empty space for Soldiers – is simple and effective, as is Nick Schlieper’s lighting, Tess Schofield’s costumes and Paul Charlier’s sound and music.

The fervid debate generated by these two plays in Sydney since they opened is not a bad thing: any argument and debate about theatre in this city is better than none at all. Nevertheless, it’s a pity the focus of the for-and-against factions wasn’t a more interesting, original and worthwhile piece of work.

I suspect a fair amount of the heat over The Serpent’s Teeth stems from an amazing if not unpredictable intervention by the playwright’s wife and most steadfast supporter, poet and critic Alison Croggon (with whom I worked in the last century and whose writing I admire, by the way). She has written a typically eloquent, high-flown and ferociously positive review of the plays. And this after an equally amazing public wrestle with herself over whether or not she should do it in the first place. (Conflict of interest being something to consider even when their relationship is of long standing and totally public.)

This is not so much a matter of conflict of interest, however, as more a question about the worth of such passionately biased opinion. This applies as much to the playwright as it does to dazzled and intimidated critics and bemused potential theatregoers. Unqualified and one-eyed support for one’s nearest and dearest is a fine thing in most instances, but not in circumstances when leaving the house wearing only one’s No.2 tiara needs to be drawn to the attention of the imperially undressed.

Soldiers. Photo by Brett Boardman

 

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