MOVING PARTS
MOVING PARTS, Will O'Rourke at the Parade Theatres, NIDA, 25 July-10 August 2013. Photos by Matt Hart; above: Colin Friels and Josh McConville.
First-time playwright David Nobay is one of the best known and most awarded advertising copywriters in the world. He was at the theatre a few years ago, he has said, watching Andrew Bovell's When The Rain Stops Falling and was struck by inspiration. (It's the play where a bloody great fish drops out of the sky, you may recall.) Nobay apparently had two thoughts. The first: this is what I want to do; and the second: how hard can it be?
Unfortunately, the true answer to the latter question is usually hidden from the naive observer by the deceptive skill and talent of the best playwrights. Bovell makes the craft look effortless when it's the opposite - When The Rain Stops Falling is actually a highly complex, subtle and original piece of writing. Being inspired by it is one thing, thinking that one might easily emulate it is another.
Nobay has put a lot of time and effort into Moving Parts and has also gone to a lot of trouble to secure a lot of time and effort from others. His actors - Colin Friels and Josh McConville - are among the finest. Movie and advertising business mates have come on board to direct (Steve Rogers), light (Russell Boyd for god's sake!), to design (Steven Jones-Evans), to provide original music (Jack Ladder) and to costume the two men (Margot Wilson).
Their efforts are in vain, however, as the structure is built on the flimsiest of foundations: an irretrievably poor and pointless script. Within the first ten minutes the edifice is tottering and there is nothing to be done to shore it up. It is described as "a darkly comic thriller" but is neither comical nor thrilling. It might be considered dark if you can swallow the idea of a young man terrorising a middle-aged watch salesman over a bottle of Scotch after-hours in an exclusive West End shop.
Yet there is a comic plausibility in the setting - if you think about the pages and pages of ads for expensive watches that fill the glossy lifestyle magazines, but otherwise it's just weird. The two men - quickly revealed to be estranged father and son - wrangle about the authenticity and desirability of different watch brands. This argument slithers into a semi-philosophical debate about time and its existence, and is conducted at gunpoint and with varying degrees of animosity. Time soon wearies them, however, and they become more dispirited than angry, as do some members of the audience.
The new production company's blurb states that it's "a company seeking new ways of combining arts and business, bringing together unique teams of creative professionals, to engage audiences in new and exciting ways". It's a lovely idea and this particular unique team is "drawn from the Australian theatre and film industries". In other words, little expense has been spared in bringing the play to the stage.
However, it's still-born and even the dramaturgical midwifery of playwrights Suzie Miller and Stephen Sewell would have been too little, too late. It's dispiriting that a copywriter, of all people, would not understand the fundamental importance of the writing, nor be so blind and deaf to the absence of genuine drama and character.
And don't go to Moving Parts expecting to see Friels and McConville engaging in a bit of DH Lawrence nude wrestling as per the poster image - that's just advertising.
