(VERE) FAITH
VERE (FAITH), Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company of South Australia co-production, Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, 6 November-7December 2013. Photography by Matt Nettheim. Above: L-R: Ksenja Logos, Rebecca Massey, Matilda Bailey, Yalin Ozucelik, Paul Blackwell, Matthew Gregan and Geoff Morrell; right: Paul Blackwell.
Vere (Faith) is John Doyle's second play after his entertaining if flawed debut The Pig Iron People (also STC). He's obviously learned a lot from that experience and it's a mystery that these days his byline apparently needs the rather apologetic qualifier "(Roy and HG)". He's most definitely "John Doyle - playwright", and that's that. Meanwhile, the new play has provided a visual puzzle for most of 2013.
Visitors to the Wharf home of the STC must surely have wondered about the meaning of the image chosen to represent Vere (Faith) on the walkway. The melting or disintegrating face of the sweet and homely Paul Blackwell has been an oddly benign yet disturbing presence - and it's on the program front cover too. Within minutes of the opening scene however, as Blackwell as eminent physicist Vere finishes delivering a student lecture to the audience, the meaning becomes shockingly, painfully clear. If ever an image could economically, cruelly and beautifully capture the essence of dementia it's this one - by Kris Washusen and Collider.
It's no secret that the central theme of Doyle's play is the baby boomer nightmare and, call it what you will - losing your marbles, Alzheimer's, going gaga, major and minor neuro-cognitive disorder - and micro-diagnose it as you might, the terror is just the same. It might be mum, dad, husband, wife, partner, best friend, or one's self, either way it's one of the most horrifying diagnoses a 21st century person can be given. Therefore, to devise an intricate black comedy around the topic is - take your pick - brave, crazy, tasteless or all three.
Personally, I'd go for crazy brave and further, that with the excellent work of director Sarah Goodes and a first-rate cast, they've pretty much pulled it off. Vere (Faith) is most often funny, interesting, thought provoking, refreshingly ambitious and also, in the main, dead straight and simple. If the opening night audience is a measure, however, it's a production that will polarise opinion: for everyone who said they enjoyed it, there seemed to be someone else - mostly on the scary side of 60, it must be said - beiing furiously angry at how awful it was.
In essence, Vere (Paul Blackwell) is exuberantly giving his last lecture before heading off to Switzerland and CERN and the Large Hadron Collider. He's been invited to take part in the hunt for the Higgs boson - the "God particle". The first half setting is a shared university office where Vere is given the bad news about the meaning of his recent hallucinations and memory lapses by Marissa (Ksenja Logos) and is joined by his colleagues: the expletive-spraying Kate (Rebecca Massey) and ambitious mediocrity Simon (Yalin Ozucelik). The younger generation is represented by two students: deliberately obsessive Mike (Matthew Gregan) and brilliant PhD star Gina (Matilda Bailey). This mix is given a stir by the arrival of the Vice-Chancellor, Ralph (Geoff Morrell) an unctuous bastard who's organised nibbles and a bottle of wine to toast the departing star.
The action revolves around no one noticing Vere's distress while scoring career and intellectual points off one another, brown-nosing - or, in the case of OCD Mike, nose-picking - leching and leering and basically behaving like everyday university folk. While funny and sharp for a fair amount of time, there is too long spent on some aspects and a blue pencil needs to be taken to what amounts to padding and verbal indulgence. Those familiar with Doyle's broadcast style will recall that he loves the language and ideas - but rather too much.
Nevertheless, the second half reminds us of another aspect of the playwright - his sly wit and smarts as the cast returns as other people. Some months have passed, Vere was unable to travel to Switzerland although he is still fretting about having his suitcase ready for the trip - which he believes is about to happen. He's living with his son Scott (Ozucelik) and daughter-in-law Melissa (Logos), he's become a sad nightmare and even worse, they're expecting their son Michael (Gregan) and his fiancee Gianna (Bailey) and her parents for the getting-to-know-you dinner.
Doyle and the production team pull no punches with the effects of Vere's dementia and the half begins with some of the most revolting black humour this side of Joe Orton. Indeed, the dinner party proceeds as dark farce as the parents are revealed as a parson, Roger (Morrell), who resembles a younger Fred Nile in his stupidity and soaring self belief; and his bigoted, smug Pauline Hanson-style wife Katherine (Massey). In place of "please expline" - to signal the other person's elitism Katherine's line is "please speak English" - it's hilarious but enraging.
Equally funny - and at once disconcerting and touching - is that Vere's wandering mind does what a theatre audience often does, but rarely 'fesses up to: wonders why in hell the characters from the first half are each pretending to be someone else entirely. Also disconcerting and touching is how Vere, even as his mind slips away, is more intelligent, more humane and more compassionate than anyone around him; and how his fascination with physics, poetry and astronomy make him closer to whatever God might be than his unwitting tormentor, the ostensible "man of God".
Pip Runciman's set design and Nigel Levings' lighting - of a simple office space, with a skylight and regulation deal furniture - encapsulates the small, dingy world of the university in an airless reality of H&S and wall-mounted fire extinguishers. In the second half, the blunt wedge shape of the office is opened out to become the family apartment and dining area with an elegantly set table and fatally beige carpeting. The walls are lined with many farce-style doors and the timber framing of these flats is exposed - whatever Vere's confusion, there is no reality here either.
Vere (Faith) is too long by perhaps 20 minutes, but an exploration of the war between God and science, faith and intelligence, has never been more timely. And it's fought here with panache and wicked charm: you will never again puzzle about particle physics but think only of The Beatles and be able to understand it perfectly. The company sparkles, with Paul Blackwell and Rebecca Massey rising above the rest to dazzle. Blackwell is one of Adelaide's treasures and it's great to have him back in Sydney, while Massey is simply splendid, as usual.
