bang
JONATHAN GAVIN‘S new play is thrillingly ambitious. For the most part it works well in telling those six-degrees-of-separation stories that defy credibility – until they happen to you. It is a complex mix of dream and nightmare as those people who happen to be on a city commuter station platform one evening find themselves inextricably linked in life and death – an end and a beginning.
For those who have died as Hatije, a young Turkish-Australian woman, blows up herself and 17 others, it is the end; but it’s also the beginning of a telling of their stories as well as the beginning of that awful death-in-life state that envelops those left alive and bewildered It’s also the beginning of their stories and some comprehension.
Gavin has set out to explore not just the possible motives behind the making of a suicide bomber, but also the terrible cost in human shrapnel that is the aftermath. The very excellent cast of six – Blazey Best, Caroline Brazier, Ivan Donato, Tony Poli, Damian Rice and Wendy Strehlow – take on various roles. And possibly the most interesting is Blazey Best as a working class railway security guard who is consumed with guilt that she failed to apprehend Hatije (also played by Best) the middle class, brilliant, academic-turned suicide bomber.
In real life Best is visibly pregnant at the moment and this adds an unintended and disturbing element to her journey from nice Muslim Aussie girl to vengeful jihadist. Best is a wonderful actor anyway and the many colours and shades of grey she’s given to work with in these two roles are gifts she grabs with both hands. She is at the top of her game and deeply affecting in both roles.
As her perplexed and grieving younger brother Khalid, as well as a wry semi-observer/narrator, Ivan Donato combines charm and humour in the face of his ruined life with touching warmth and plausibility. The same must be said of Caroline Brazier’s role as a bystander whose “innocence” – her unborn child was one of the 17 victims of the bomber – is the glutinous stuff of tabloid-land; except that she is a three-dimensional being and her plight is shown to be so much more than a simple set of neat emotions and reactions.
Damian Rice plays her big, boofy husband with the trepidation and awkwardness of a man whose wife has turned into an unstable hand grenade before his very eyes; he also doubles as a sardonic humanities lecturer-type who drops occasional semiotic cliches into the rich mix of narratives. He is in sharp contrast to Wendy Strehlow whose dual turns, as the mother of the bomber and her brother; and as a nun who happens to be on the platform at the time of the blast, contribute immensely to the overall strength of the cast.
Last, but absolutely not least is Tony Poli whose two roles are as an aging drag queen and his aged mother. With virtually no costume change to signify the switch between the two roles, Poli invests the mother with the aching bone-weariness that comes only from the loss of a child, rather than from age itself. She is a sweet and piteous figure, so like and unlike her son in his self-conscious yet restrained camp demeanour. It’s a beautifully judged performance among five other beautifully judged performances.
Bang is also very good to look at, with the tiny downstairs space made intimate with piles of newspapers, suitcases and the floral tributes that nowadays accumulate at scenes of public calamity; and, at the same time, expansive and mysterious with the back wall covered with mirrors that reflect the players and the audience in a darkly lit exterior-interior. (Set and costumes: Mark Thompson, lighting and vision Martin Kinnane.) The changing mood and places are also beautifully sketched in through Steve Francis’s sound design. Director Kim Hardwick worked with Gavin on his previous A Moment on the Lips and it’s to her credit that she has made Bang as clear and given it such graceful forward propulsion as she has.
Although the play is called Bang, it’s way too intelligent to assault its audience with anything as crass and easy as that. Instead, we’re invited to go with these people into their worlds, which are ours too in so many everyday ways; and so to bond with them, understand them, pity them or laugh with them by turn. But it’s the understanding that’s the key and, while not flawless, Gavin has achieved something really remarkable and entertaining with this play.
