I'm Your Man
I'M YOUR MAN, Belvoir and Sydney Festival in association with BYDS; Downstairs Belvoir, 14 January-14 February 2011. Photos: Heidrun Lohr. Main: Justin Rosniak; right: Michael Mohamed Ahmad and Billy McPherson.
CREATED AND directed by Roslyn Oades, I'm Your Man is the end result of a chance meeting 10 years ago in London with an ex-boxer and, more recently, with Bankstown actor-writer Michael Mohamed Ahmad - also an ex-boxer. Both wanted to make a play about the sport. Oades hung out at the fabled Lakemba gym where fighters such as Tony Mundine and Jeff Fenech trained and talked to them and many others. The opportunity arose to follow Australia's IBF World Featherweight Champion Billy Dib for more than a year. During this time he talked to them, they accompanied him on the daily gym grind of training; he won the vacant title, then successfully defended it. And he is the central figure in this dynamic 70 minute play.
The action is set in a working gym - one of those sweat, leather and liniment-scented establishments where exhortations such as "It's better to give than to receive" are stuck on the walls. And the sentiment is not meant in the gentle Jesus meek and mild sense, lest you be even slightly naive. The walls are plastered with posters of fights and fighters - Muhammad Ali in his beautiful prime is prominent - and there are mirrors for checking your form and all manner of punch bags to belt and dodge. (Ralph Myers is listed merely as "design consultant", and whomever is responsible for the transformation of the downstairs theatre seems to have absorbed the sense and feel of a boxing gym as if by osmosis.)
As well as functional workout gear, each member of the cast wears ear buds or headphones. This, we are told, is so they hear their "lines" through them and recite them back to us from edits and choices made by Oades. She calls it "headphone-verbatim" and says, in her program notes, "By confining the actors to the discipline of accompanying the recording with absolute precision (including every cough and stumble) a curious, hyper-real performance style is established." Well yes, but isn't that what a script and learning lines is all about anyway? It's a peculiar way of ensuring that the actors replicate the stops and starts, nuances, cadences and fumbles of the recorded speech - it's what actors do anyway, surely?
This affectation is quickly forgotten, however, as the performers as so dynamic and convincing and the intimate setting is so all-enveloping it's hard to think or be anywhere else but with them. As well as Ahmad, the actors are Billy McPherson, Katia Molino, Justin Rosniak and John Shrimpton. They spar, they dodge and weave, they skip (boy, do they skip), they practice every punch in the pantheon and more; and they talk. Each fills in a verbal mosaic of the boxing life; its joys, compulsions, terrors, excitement and pain.
An arc of a story glimmers in among the fragments: Billy Dib's journey to the top. We leave him on the brink of glory, ceremonial glitter-gold hoodie lovingly settled on his head by his trainer. It's a poignant moment - in fleeting stillness and anticipation. His sparring partners and loved ones are left behind; it's only him, left to face whatever's waiting in the ring. It's both the zenith and nadir of human endeavour.
I'm Your Man is terrific theatre, fascinating to listen to and watch; each of the actors slips seamlessly in and out of character and situations and the way the tiny Downstairs space is used to suggest a busy boxing gym is remarkable. Oades has made something special with this play: it isn't a show for everyone, although because you don't like or approve of boxing isn't a good enough reason to miss it. It's entertaining, profound and thoughtful. I loved it and absolutely recommend it.
