Unit 46
Unit 46, The Factory Theatre, 105 Victoria Road, Enmore; June 215-July 19; www.factorytheatre.com.au
CATCHING up with a show later in its season – when first night nerves have settled and the cast is humming like a well-tuned donk – is often a rewarding experience. It’s also nice to be in a audience of real people too. That presupposes, however, that the play is worth catching up with. Sadly, Unit 46 is not one of those. It’s a horrid little piece and it’s a mystery why anyone would want to do it; and a bigger mystery that it was apparently “the hit show of the Adelaide Fringe”. Perhaps it was a crappy Adelaide Fringe year. Who knows. It’s probably as meaningful as the information that it’s “going to Edinburgh” – a phrase as empty as “internationally published author”; ie, anyone can do it if you pay.
The plot. The idea of simultaneously presenting two different lives and realities in the same space is an entertaining one: in unit 36 of an apartment block is Diane (Lucy Miller). Upstairs in unit 46 is Tim (Leof Kingsford-Smith). Their two apartments occupy the same stage and they go about their business physically oblivious of the other while communicating via snippy notes slipped beneath doors. It’s a terrific stage construct, but not only did Alan Ayckbourn do it first, also he did it brilliantly. (In such funny-bitter social comedies as, for instance,How The Other Half Loves and The Norman Conquests.) And the writer of this play, Mick Barnes is no Ayckbourn.
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It’s as well that Diane and Tim are not privy to the other’s personal habits as they are uninteresting and unfunny and it’s no surprise that he is a “loner” (that is, unbearable to live with) and she is a miserable divorcee (that is, unbearable to live with). Basically, Tim philosophises and excuses his failure as a human being while examining his own stools. Meanwhile, downstairs, Diane’s idea of an evening’s home entertainment is quantities of chardy and a maudlin ramble through the vicissitudes of her love-life and her inexplicable interest in Greek mythology – while checking out her own vagina with a mirror. Director Andrew Doyle does well to keep the two from bumping into each other, but that’s about it. It’s almost impossible to extract anything pleasant to report or recommend unless misogyny and yuck are your thing.
