2000 Feet Away
2000 Feet Away, Belvoir St Downstairs, 1 November 2007 to 25 November 2007; ph: (02) 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au
Anthony Weigh's time at Birmingham (in the UK) doing an MPhil in playwriting studies was time well spent. He has returned with a worldview wider than most and literary ambition to go with it. The result is a play premiered in Sydney and set in Iowa, which also serves as a universal and thought-provoking tale of woe and warning.
The title refers to legislation enacted in 2005 in Iowa and since adopted with enthusiasm in nearby jurisdictions. Registered sex offenders must not reside within 2000 feet (600 metres or thereabouts) of any place where children are likely to congregate. As well as the obvious - schools, day care centres, playgrounds, public swimming pools - the exclusions also include parks, bus stops, libraries, shopping centres, cinemas; in short: virtually anywhere in any town or village.
The idea was to make life safer for children. Unsurprisingly, the consequences have not been that straightforward. Apparently, hundreds of registered sex offenders have now vanished off the social radar. Some are homeless and destitute, some have suicided, others have moved out-of-state and others are simply living clandestine lives.
There are a number of problems with the law and through a variety of characters Weigh alludes to most. For instance: a young gay teacher who "has feelings" for a teenaged pupil, while a lawbreaker, is surely not a sex offender to be treated with the same fear and loathing as a man who initiates sex with children. And a 17-year-old boy whose consensual sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend makes him a statutory rapist in the eyes of the law is not a sex offender.
On the other hand, the 2000 feet law does nothing to protect children from the most infamously predatory sex offenders: fathers, uncles and brothers; nor the passing opportunistic strangers and other sad sacks who prey on kids. According to the New York Times, recent studies in Colorado and Minnesota suggest that where an offender lives appears to have no bearing on whether he commits another sex crime on a child.
Weigh has set his play not just in Iowa but in Eldon, a small town in the far southeast of the state (population at last count: 998 not including four registered sex offenders - see box). Eldon has two claims to fame: it was where Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold briefly owned Tom's Big Food Diner. There the two fabled porkers served loose meat sandwiches similar to those hurled at patrons by Roseanne at the fictional Lanford Lunch Box in the eponymous sitcom.[page]
Eldon's second entry in the history books, and a more enduring one, is that it is the site of the house which features in the painting American Gothic. This picture, like the story strands of Weigh's play, started off meaning one thing and now, after various controversies and rewritings of history, means something else entirely.
Grant Wood painted American Gothic in 1930 after spotting the house and making it the anchor of a depiction of rural, hardworking America (see it here). His own sister posed for the stern-faced woman and his dentist as her even grimmer husband. (Eldon is still 98% white and deeply Lutheran.) Entered in a competition and hung at the Art Institute of Chicago, American Gothic was seen by the judges as almost cartoon-like and not serious. However, it gained third prize and captured public attention on being reproduced in newspapers across the country. It is now one of the undisputed iconic images of the USA.
In 2000 Feet Away, the couple in the painting represent all that was once good but can also be tersely self-righteous and bigoted in small town America. As portrayed by Nicholas Hope and Belinda McClory - the nice couple and habitual winners of the annual American Gothic-Look-Alike competition - the resemblance is uncanny. Even more unsettling, however, is how - even as seemingly animated human beings - their characters remain as frozen as the picture's subjects.
Blazingly alive, by comparison, are Deputy Hallsy Moss (Colin Moody) and his charge and emotional nemesis, AG (Darren Weller) one of the registered offenders on his patch. Forced together by unwanted circumstance, the two men move warily around one another. Through them the deeper questions of Weigh's script are woven into the fabric of the evening and left hanging - like strange fruit.
Moody has the lion's share of the action and he inhabits both the character and the stage with a combination of force and sensitivity that is riveting. His foil is Weller - an actor who should be seen on stage more often than he is; his work as the unfortunate AG is often exquisite and subtle.
Not so trivial trivia
According to the publicly available registry, there were four registered sex offenders living in Eldon, Iowa in early 2007. Also according to that register, the ratio of residents to sex offenders is 244 to 1. However it would probably be more accurate to make those "known or previously convicted" sex offenders.
The men listed are Raynard Lenard Warner, 47, Black, crime: aggravated criminal sexual abuse; Paul Christopher Steele, 37, White, crime: sexual abuse third degree; Troy Wayne Davis, 44, White, crime: Lascivious acts with a child; Raynard Warner, 57, Black, crime: failure to report change of address. (In other words, he's disappeared).
If you want to know their height, weight, a mugshot and street address - you can easily find out, it's all there.
The rest of a fine cast - including Pamela Jikiemi, Tanya Goldberg, Tom Campbell, Nicholas Papademetriou and Natascha Flowers - under Lee Lewis's clear, well-orchestrated direction, fill the Downstairs space with a collection of supporting characters that illuminate stories and ideas. They make the viewer examine in him or herself the temptation and terror of absolutes; the grey areas hiding in the shadows of black-and-white beliefs; and the dreadful attraction of mass hysteria and facile political solutions.
The creatives in this independent production are particularly strong with Alice Babidge (costumes) Verity Hampson (lighting) sound design by Stefan Gregory all delivering way above the production values one might expect of a tiny outfit such as Frogbattleship. The set design - a collaboration between Brett Boardman and Lee Lewis - is a triumph of imagination and ingenuity: a matt black space is defined by a neatly drawn chalk mark and then brought to life through a chalked projected computer animation version of American Gothic and other aspects of Eldon life.
There are rough, unfinished edges in 2000 Feet Away but the worst that can be said of it is also its greatest strength and praise: in its reach and complex range of ideas the play is fabulously ambitious and always absorbing and entertaining. Can't wait to see what Weigh does next - or with another version of this one.
