Poster Girl
Poster Girl - Old Fitzroy, Woolloomooloo, June 6-July 12, 2008; by Van Badham, directed by James Beach; set and costumes Phillipa Welfare; lighting design Sophie Kurylowicz; sound design Amy Wilson; video design Anthony Beach. Cast in order of appearance: Shannon Dooley, Laurence Coy, Fayssal Bazzi, Sam Haft, Susie Lindeman, Simon Corfield, Marika Aubrey, Andy Lees, Lucinda Gleeson.
VAN Badham’s new play Poster Girl poses the question: if Patty Hearst were to be kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army today, what would it be like and how would it happen?
Badham’s answers are: she would be someone like Paris Hilton; the kidnapping revolutionaries would be as inept but not as nasty as they were first time around; and the Proletariat would be as disinterested in the possibility of free vegetables and the overthrow of Capital as they were in the 1970s.
Given our reluctance to learn anything from history, however, very few in the audience would have a clue who Patty and the SLA were, even though Badham has decorated the program with a famous photo of the media heiress in action – in fatigues, Che beret and toting an automatic rifle. Which is a bit depressing because that background gives the play a rich foundation and makes it more interesting and thought-provoking than mere wacky, witty satire.
Today’s poster girl is Mindy Xyloine (Shannon Dooley) and a more media-savvy, marketing-wise minx you couldn’t hope to find hanging out with the Olsens or Paris herself. And, in a further sign of the times, the police officer pursuing the kidnappers, Det. Sgt Prakash Larda (Hayssal Bazzi) is almost as image-conscious and quick to work out which is his best profile for the cameras.
Only the cadres haven’t changed: terrible food, droopy clothes, earnest demeanour and as clueless about the real world as only well-meaning middle class angrys can be (Marika Aubrey, Simon Corfield, Lucinda Gleeson and Andy Lees). They’re easy to poke fun at but make an irresistible target. As a true radical friend observed to me years ago, as we reluctantly sat down to dinner in the collective household: “Peachie, if God had meant us to eat lentil bake, She wouldn’t have invented McDonalds.” How true.
Meanwhile, back at the site of revolutionary fervour, Badham’s other preoccupation – aside from ripping entertainment – is the Stockholm Syndrome. That’s the one where the kidnap-ee becomes affiliated with the kidnappers and loyalty shifts sides. It famously happened with Hearst who finally served prison time for her part in the SLA’s activities. (Which eventually included violent bank robbery and indiscriminate murder, not terrifically funny or admirable.)
Mindy and her cell of the workers’ vanguard switch sides in a much more 21st century fashion. Mindy becomes exasperated at their ineptness and lack of media smarts and begins coaching them in branding and message-packaging. When sexual attraction becomes part of the scenario, there is much oral gratification with a chocolate bar which is straight out of the old Cadbury’s Flake ads – an oldie but goldie.
Concurrently, Susie Lindeman prowls the outside world as glossy magazine editor, Rowena Marshall-Toxteth, so desperate for an exclusive that she will do literally anything to get it. Her relationship with coke-snorting, permanently impotent, glottal-stopping TV reporter Rob Brough (Sam Haft) is parlayed into a set-up for the fame-hungry detective. In a nod to 2008 and the realities of the corporate world, Mindy’s tycoon father Walter (Laurence Coy) appears only as a video image, beamed in from the West Coast.
So far, so fun. Poster Girl is ambitious, clever and often funny and sharp. It will probably tighten up during the run and the bumps and clunks, particularly in the first, half may be ironed out. The direction doesn’t help, however, and there are some unnecessary and awkward scene changes and pauses that need attention. There is a darker and more truly satirical side to the play that a slicker production might bring out, but that’s asking a lot of the circumstances of independent theatre as it is currently lived in this town.
The actors are fine and make the most of their roles, while Shannon Dooley is a star in the making. She commands the stage and the action with ease in her first production after graduating from NIDA in 2007. She is a talent to watch.
Van Badham too should be nurtured and encouraged. She has a real talent to amuse and something more besides. Let’s hope she is able to stay home and work in Australia for a bit and not return to Europe where her potential has already been recognised.
