Love Me Tender
Love Me Tender, Belvoir St Upstairs, Company B Belvoir, in a co-production with Griffin Theatre Company and ThinIce, Perth; March 18-11 April, 2010. Photos Jon Green.
FATHERS and daughters are a perilous topic these days; and if you immediately agree, it proves one of the underlying themes of Tom Holloway’s play, that we rush to judgement and jump to conclusions far too quickly. Reflection isn’t valued and the results can be disastrous.
Although “inspired” by Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, the new collaboration between Holloway and director Matt Lutton and his ThinIce company stands on its own two feet and needs no cultural pit props to justify its existence. Kris McQuade and Arky Michael are two story-devisers, or chorus, who feverishly pull scenarios and characters out of the air, as if trying to come up with a storyline for a play or TV drama; their interlocking, intertwining, repetition of themes and possibilities at once reinforce the artifice and underline the familiarity of its everydayness. They are a relentless and unsettling presence.
A man (Colin Moody) is induced to conjure up and describe an incident when he walks in on a scene of rape – perhaps; in another moment he relates his love for his small daughter – perhaps; as a fire-fighter he is forced to make a terrible sacrifice – perhaps. The mother of the child (Belinda McClory) is forced to the periphery of their lives, or perhaps, to the edge. Take your pick. Quite literally on the periphery, Luke Hewitt is thrown away in a cameo that seems to hark back to the Ajax myth. Other than being a show-off moment by the writer, or something left over from an earlier draft, it’s an odd shag-on-a-rock moment that the actor doesn’t deserve.
Love Me Tender is rather beautiful to look at (set design Adam Gardnir) with sometimes ethereal lighting (Karen Norris) making a kind of heightened (un)reality across a raised area of sumptuous lawn. It’s the sort of lush grass Aussie hubbies slave over with a hot mower on weekends; or did until water restrictions and fashion began to dictate otherwise. But it’s no ordinary backyard, rather a distanced, uncomfortable space where nobody seems at home and from whence contact with the living world, or the audience, is restricted.
As well as whiffs of ancient Greece, the reek of bushfire is also in the air. The Man is a fire-fighter and the present is omnipresent in the form of Victoria’s Black Saturday. Nevertheless, much like smoke – and the mist that punctuates the action – there is little tangible to grasp on to. There are many ideas in the mix and many memorable images – including a disturbingly erotic sequence in which Belinda McClory holds up a mirror to our society’s casual sexualization of young girls. Possibly, however, there is too much and not enough in Love Me Tender. The creators’ febrile efforts to throw as many sources and ideas as possible into the mix has a curious cancelling out effect. What could be moving ends up being almost blah and the brutal quality of much of the action numbs the responses too. Could try less harder.
