S-27
S-27, Two Birds One Stone and Griffin Independent at the SBW Stables Theatre, 19 March-10 April, 2010; photos Alex Vaughan
IN HER director’s notes Caroline Craig writes that when she first read the script of S-27 she was on the London underground and was so enthralled she missed her stop. No wonder. S-27 won the Amnesty International Protect The Human Playwriting Award but that shouldn’t be taken to mean it’s worthy and earnest at the expense of theatricality and entertainment. Sarah Grochala’s taut yet expansive 60 minute drama could make anyone miss a stop or two; and also cause heart-stopping moments along the way.
Set in the malign shadow of an unnamed brutal regime, S-27 draws its inspiration from the S-21 prison that flourished during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It explores how easily cruelty can permeate and then overwhelm a society and, in the view of the playwright, “what happens when good people do bad things.” And it’s the matter-of-fact ordinariness and truth of that observation which really provides the shocks and sobering realisations in this dynamic little play.
It gives us false comfort to think that only monsters and “evil” people perpetrate monstrosities and evil – well, no, it’s people like us. It’s us – the vast majority of us are not only capable but would be willing participants, given half a chance or a quarter of the fear. Think Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Stalin in Russia, Amin in Uganda, Videla in Argentina, the British in the Boer War, the Americans in Abu Ghraib, the Nazis in WW2 and endlessly, on and on and on.
In S-27, May (Sarah Snook) is on the inside of “the Organisation”, she is an ideologue and fervent believer in the cause. Her job is to photographically record the rest – traitors, unbelievers, criminals, and the merely unfortunate – before they go through a door to their deaths. She meticulously notes lens aperture, timing, names and dates – for what? It doesn’t matter. It is her duty and she does it. Before her pitilessly focused eyes pass a number of the hopeless and hapless. There is a sniveling, terrified boy, a desperately cynical older man, a young mother so deranged by terror she is willing to do – almost – anything to save her infant; and May’s one-time love.
May’s resentfully ambitious assistant June (Kelly Paterniti) is an obnoxious little number – pragmatic and ruthless. She understands and accepts their situation and has her eyes on the main prize: successful survival. Ironically, therefore, she is more honest about their circumstances than May can ever be because, as it eventually becomes apparent, May is a romantic.
Watching her deal so pitilessly with her subjects and so callously with the mother and baby, it doesn’t seem possible that this could be so; this is a woman, after all, who shot her own sister when the choice was survival for herself or her sibling. But love has a funny way of reappearing when it’s least expected and turns out to be the greatest betrayer of all. May finds she can no longer be the person she has worked so hard to become; despite her best efforts, her fiercely repressed humanity reasserts itself, with disastrous yet heartening consequences.
Sarah Snook was (checking the StageNoise archive) outstanding in one of her 2008 NIDA graduation productions, The Shape of Things and she turns in another startling performance here. Scrubbed to merciless plainness and peering icily from beneath hooded eyelids, she begins her trajectory as an archetypal prison camp barbarian. As the play progresses so does she, gradually, until her final predicament is revealed – to audience and to May – as the kind of redemption that makes for a beautiful, aching conclusion.
Snook is supported with compelling strength by Paterniti as the sweet-faced horror, June; Adam Roberts as the snivelling wreck, Boy, Lynden Jones as the weariest Man ever to cling onto life; Lizzie Schebesta and Paige Gardiner as the luckless Girl and Cousin; and Anthony Gooley as Col, the love that finally dares to speak its name to May, when all is lost.
Catching up with the play a week into its run meant seeing co-producer Emma Jackson stepping in to the pivotal role of the Mother and she was tremendous; while her co-partner in crime in the company, Caroline Craig, has done an equally fine job in her debut as director, sculpting a simple yet effective dance of life and death around a chair and a camera on a tripod, to maximum effect and meaning.
Mikkel Mynster’s lighting design is so superior in its specificity and subtlety you have to hope that more projects “pique his interest” (his biog notes) when he’s not being NIDA’s head of production. Lighting and sound (Jeremy Silver) are sinuously in tune with Nicholas Dare’s old school room: stacks of chairs, crumbling, peeling walls and an almost tangible scent of innocence long gone. Lisa Mimmocchi’s costumes are a triumph: somewhere between smart girls’ school and militaristic for May and June and wretchedly dehumanised for the rest.
This is the first production for Two Birds One Stone (Caroline Craig and Emma Jackson) and it’s to their great credit in all ways. S-27 is hugely entertaining, will make you think and argue long after it’s over and it’s all packed into just under an hour. Excellent value for time and money. Go girls!
