Tuesday March 19, 2024
THE WAY THINGS WORK
Review

THE WAY THINGS WORK

November 12 2014

THE WAY THINGS WORK, Rock Surfers Theatre Company at the Bondi Pavilion, 12-27 November 2014. Photography by Zak Kaczmarek: above - Ashley Lyons and Nicolas Papademetriou; right: Demetriou and Lyons.

Right now (November), in a triangle of eastern suburbs theatres, there is a piquant convergence of plays that could tell a visitor a lot about this city. A few kilometres inland, in Darlinghurst, the blithe, middle class hedonists of Emerald City (the Stables) and Daylight Saving (Eternity Playhouse) are stressing over their water views, while here on the seafront at Bondi, Aidan Fennessy’s new play is about what really matters in a secret yet increasingly and reluctantly public Sydney. This Sydney is co-located on Macquarie Street and the sprawling unknown wilderness to the west of new suburbs whose names are uneasy mysteries to most Easties, but where everything is really happening.

“Everything” in this instance means money and power and lots of both. The Way Things Work cryptically refers to different types of concrete (who knew) and a failed multi-million dollar infrastructure project in the western suburbs. If this sounds oddly familiar it’s because Fennessy has been able to draw on and lightly fictionalise any number of corruption inquiries and revelations. These have plagued Sydney and New South Wales since 1788 and there’s no sign of a let-up any time soon.

The play opens in the office of The Minister (Nicholas Papademetriou). Although he’s wearing a red rather than pale blue tie, he is obviously a man of Macquarie Street and, like so many at the moment, he’s in deep shit. The East-West Tunnel is in the sights of a Royal Commission. As the structure crumbles and is beginning to cost taxpayers millions in unwarranted maintenance, it’s coming to light that corners were cut, protocols not followed and illicit money was made – and the cement truck stops at the Minister’s desk. All might be well, however, if when his senior public servant (Ashley Lyons) is called to give evidence he can fail to recall one particular name.

The wrong cement trickles down to the second act and to two brothers whose company supplied it. They – or men just like them – must surely be intimately known to Eddie Obeid, Nathan Tinkler and the present round of political resignees on both sides of NSW government. The brothers are slippery as eels and without an ethic between them; they send their adoring mother out for pizza at all hours and she probably knows Judith Obeid – whose colourful identity is conjured in an audio montage stoutly informing journalists that “we are a good Christian family”.

The third act transforms the two actors into an inept hit man and his jailer and go-between. What happens is as likely and grimly comical as anything we’ve read in the years of extraordinary investigation and revelation by Kate McClymont in the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald. Rock Surfers invited her along as special guest on opening night and in a typically short, funny and sharp speech afterwards, she confirmed the verity of what we had just seen.

THE WAY THINGS WORK

Directed by outgoing Rock Surfers’ boss Leland Kean, this new play is by turns a documentary and a satire on the way we live now. But as truth is stranger than fiction etc etc, it’s only as satirical as the players in the real-life drama will allow – and that’s not a lot! From the palatial ministerial office to the rude and smelly prison cell is a journey as treacherous as going to the moon: one small agonising step for the Minister and one giant leap forward for ICAC and the taxpaying public.

Papademetriou and Lyons work hard and effectively in their varied roles and are alarmingly credible across the range of Sydney’s highest and lowest. Kean’s simple abstract set design is transformed from Macquarie Street to Silverwater via the western suburbs through Luis Pampolha’s lighting effects and some neatly atmospheric soundscaping by Jed Silver. At some 100 minutes without interval, The Way Things Work is a play that adds another vivid portrait of Sydney to the gallery. But this is the rogues’ gallery – at the bleaker, unbelievable yet somehow funny end of the spectrum that is 21st century political corruption.

An entertaining and educational evening after which you will know that the difference between “ordinary” and ”special” concrete is millions of dollars, murder and a jail term.

 

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