WHO'S THE BEST
WHO’S THE BEST? Sydney Theatre Company/Next Stage 2011 at Wharf 2, June 20-July 2, 2011. Photos Heidrun Lohr.
According to the STC’s website blurb, “Who’s The Best? was developed through our Rough Draft program. The audience at the post-development showing seemed to love it. And we reckon you might love it too.” That’s a useful bit of background and also a fair assessment of the show’s effect on an audience. The trio inquiring “who’s the best?” – a question that most people ask of themselves, their co-workers, best friends and siblings at some point but are rarely honest enough to fess up to – are the artists known as post (small p) otherwise the willfully loony Zoe Coombs Marr, the willfully absent Nat Rose and the tall and clearly willful Mish Gregor. And for the purposes of this show, and because of Rose’s absence while she gets rid of the baby in her stomach (her description), the willfully reckless Eden Falk is Nat Rose.
post has (have?) been working together for some years; they’ve developed a style of non-stop, theft-based performance that came to its most notable fruition with late 2010’s Downstairs Belvoir show, Everything I Know About the Global Financial Crisis in One Hour. It lasted one hour and left previously puzzled audiences with more than enough economics and financial nous to bullsh*t their way through any interrogation by Ali Moore on Lateline Business. At that time the idea for Who’s The Best? was growing along with the baby quite obviously growing in Rose’s belly. In retrospect, the question “who’s best” was inevitable among three women with talent to burn and the boldness to set fire to it in the first place.
Theft-based performance is what happens when three people, desperate to get up on a stage and entertain, decide to take what they want from where they find it and turn it into a show. In this instance their earlier years in physical theatre, visual art, stand up, independent theatre, performance art and so on have been raked over and plundered to make up for the fact that they can’t dance or sing or act (they say) but are damned smart and can turn a thought about the Sham Wow – the three-in-the-morning, must-have gadget that holds 12 times its weight in liquid – into a three part rave that would well please James Joyce.
From this it won’t surprise you to learn that they researched deeply into how to answer the question “who’s the best?” They came up with Dolly quizzes, enneagram tests (Google it and you too can work out your personality type, or indeed whether you have one) but they stopped short of the classic IQ tests because you have to pay for them and it’s quite expensive. Along the way the arguments become esoteric and profound: do you need one or two hammers to nail the hammer to the head? Does it have to have occurred to have occurred? Etcetera.
Despite Falk/Rose repeatedly suggesting that the audience should be asked to vote on the question, the contest is really one of audaciously setting out to see how long an idea can be pushed until it implodes or collapses. In this instance, the push is about ten minutes too far but as they have also been canny enough to employ feral satiny curtains as backdrop – emerald green, purple, blue, yellow – when attention and interest begins to flag, the purple curtain, in particular, takes over in a ruse first identified by Dame Edna Everage as “colour and movement” – that is, wave something colourful in front of a drifting audient and s/he will be re-engaged. Matadors know about this too.
So who turns out to be best? That’s for me to know and for you to find out. It’s a clever, funny and often amazingly profound and insightful exploration of character, friendship, theatre and art; and because of the renegade purple curtain, it’s over before you know it. Recommended.
