Venus and Adonis
Venus and Adonis, Wharf 2 (Bell Shakespeare/STC/Malthouse), 13-28 February 2009; (02) 9250 1777 or www.sydneytheatre.com.au
Marion Potts says in her director’s notes for Venus and Adonis that “… performance in itself is an act of seduction.” And she should know because in staging Shakespeare’s early epic poem of love and loss, she and her collaborators have gone to the very heart of what seduction and performance mean.
Performance poetry can either be electrifying and illuminating, or it can be excruciatingly awful. The latter happens because, frankly, not that many poets are performers – Shakespeare and Dorothy Porter being notable exceptions. What a wonderful idea, then, to not only stage the poem but also to at once restrict it to two actors and simultaneously expand its possibilities by having the two play one character: Venus. And in a novel and painless form of audience participation, it’s the audience that is the object of her desire – Adonis.
As the goddess Venus, Melissa Madden Gray (aka Meow Meow) and Susan Prior are an arresting pair in their pert high heels, generously uplifted cleavages, and absurdly luxuriant Rapunzel-style tresses. They wait for Adonis in what could be a surreptitious love nest – well appointed but sterile hotel room. Anna Tregloan has designed both the set and costumes and the two elements strike sparks of marked contrast off each other. Paul Jackson’s lighting – from softly diffused as befits a luxurious hotel, to a crashingly discordant and ugly centre fluoro – adds considerably to the overall effect.
Strange though it may seem to the monster in the dark (us) watching the gorgeous Venuses preen, prink, pout and cajole, the young Adonis was young enough, in Shakespeare’s contrarian view, to prefer to go hunting in the forest with his pals than stay at home to enjoy the goodies proffered by the Goddess.
And she can’t make herself much plainer, as Shakespeare wrote it:
“Since I have hemm’d thee here,/ Within the circuit of this ivory pale,/ I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;/ Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:/ Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,/ Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.”
I mean, hello, is that an offer of the most explicit kind or what? But no, Adonis isn’t interested. Or maybe he’s scared – he wouldn’t be the first man to shrivel at the thought of so much rampant female sexuality. How appropriate then that he’s gored to death by a wild boar – and in the groin at that!
Like so many relationships, this Venus and Adonis begins with a lot of fun and flirtation before gradually descending into disappointment and fury. That there’ll be tears before bedtime is in no doubt. Along the way the spectacle is a bodacious one. In the confines of Wharf 2, the enclosed space of the hotel room (no door, a low ceiling and a curtained rear wall that eventually reveals a lushly planted and lit terrarium or jungle or conservatory) enhances the sense of real-time, real-skin proximity with the Venuses.
They also “play” with Adonis/us to the point where some in the audience get those wriggles that happen when one’s hills are no longer dry and you’d quite like her to stray lower and check out the pleasant fountains. And as the Venuses try every trick in the goddess handbook (dominatrix, virgin, vamp, tears, laughter) it also becomes hilariously clear that some of us are more turned on by some things than others!
Contributing to the considerable pleasures of this gem (70 minutes, no interval) is David Franzke’s sound design of mixed urban and nature motifs and Andree Greenwell’s score. This is sung by the Venuseswho are accompanied live by a trio semi-hidden in the greenery up the back (Felicity Clark, Michael Sheridan and Bree van Reyk). The style ranges from Elizabethan harmony to primal scream-cool jazz-impro and is simply ravishing.
What you make of Venus and Adonis is, in the end, up to you – windows to the imagination are left open. Whether you leave pondering the curse of immortality, the curse of thwarted love, the pain of loss and the indifference of youth or the eventual resilience of women, what won’t be in doubt is the excellence of all participants and the modern and captivating entertainment offered by Shakespeare’s earliest published work.
Photography: Jeff Busby
