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Vincent River
Review

Vincent River

January 30 2009

Vincent River Hot Seat, ROAR Theatre and 2SER in association with Tamarama Rock Surfers, Old Fitzroy Theatre, January 4-31 2009; phone: 1 300 GET TIX or www.RockSurfers.org

Contradictions abound in Philip Ridley’s 2000 play Vincent River and this motif is signaled from the outset in this production when its two characters enter. First, Anita (Elaine Hudson), a 50-something woman, followed – reluctantly – by Davey (Beejan Olfat) a surly 16-year-old.

If you are fortunate enough to have got to this point without knowing about the play or reading the many tell-all synopses and reviews to be found on the ‘net, you’ll be wondering who they are and what they’re here for. He has a nasty set of facial contusions but is stylishly dressed in skinny jacket, nice pants and costly Nike Airs. In contrast, Anita is a truly sad sight: slightly too much ill-applied make-up; a flimsy, floaty frock which is a decade too young for her and – most painful of all – a pair of tatty, battered scarlet stilettos that would have looked tawdry even when brand new (costumes by OTTO Continuum). Who are these two unlikelies? What is their relationship? Sex? Crime? Or, something else?

Ridley’s landscape is London’s East End (he wrote the screen play and directed The Krays – the biodrama about the unholy underworld twins of the 1950s and ‘60s). And Vincent River covers the same geographic territory – Brick Lane, Columbia Road and Mare Street – the ley lines of Hackney, Bethnal Green and Shoreditch which, despite gentrification, are still mean(ish) streets. There is raw authenticity in the characters and glottal-stopped dialogue that’s well served by the actors and their dialogue coach, Simon Stollery.

As the two feel their way around the obstacles of suspicion, hostility and underlying unspoken grief, it becomes apparent that there is a connection between them: her son Vincent. Vincent is two months dead: gay-bashed to death in a disused railway station toilet on a snowy winter’s night. Is Davey guilty? And if so, is it the obvious guilt of the perpetrator or something more complicated? Is Anita merely the devastated, innocent mother or something more malevolent?

Answers, and more questions, ebb and flow between the two as they tentatively explore the chasm of unacknowledged pain and steadfastly ignored truths that lies between them and within each. For Anita, the knowledge that her beloved son was a closet gay is something she has been unable to face up to with a courage similar to that carried her through the stigma of unmarried motherhood 35 years earlier. For Davey, neither a girlfriend nor engagement – to assuage his dying mother – has been able to mask his true feelings; which is why he has been trailing around in the shadows behind Anita since Vincent’s death.

Vincent River

The outcome of Vincent River is never in doubt: Vincent is dead, his mother is destroyed and his lover is inconsolable. There is no trite “closure”, no startling revelations, no sentimental claptrap. This is life – and death – in the raw. Director Jonathan Wald has orchestrated a deceptively sweet relationship between the two and their performances are sustained, convincing and riveting. Olfat achieves excruciating tenderness as the tormented teenager, while Hudson’s beaten down – but not beaten – East End girl is like a knife twist to the heart. In a period of heatwaves in Sydney (turning the Fitz into an oven) and the distractions of the Sydney Festival, these two have risen above all to grip audiences by the throat and not let go for a minute.

The set, by Tom Bannerman and Matt Schubach, is interesting: massed cardboard boxes topped by barbed wire suggest both Anita’s as-yet unpacked council flat (she was hounded from the last one by cruel neighbours) as well as the rough end of a rough part of London. It’s good to look at but unnecessarily distracting: design for design’s sake perhaps.

Nevertheless, nothing can take away from the power of the two actors and the story they illuminate. It’s a pity the play is about to close – and has been playing against the tsunami of the Sydney Festival – when its obvious time would have been during Mardi Gras. But it’s to be hoped that the word has got round – and there are still a couple of performances to catch.

 

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