DROPPED
DROPPED, The Goods Theatre Company in association with Red Line Productions, Old Fitz Theatre, 8-20 December 2015. Photography by Christine Chahoud, above Deborah Galanos and Olivia Rose; right: Olivia Rose and Deborah Galanos.
Melburnian Katy Warner’s 60-minute two-hander was first staged at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2013, then programmed by La Mama in 2014. It’s Sydney premiere is the work of new independent company, The Goods and Olivia Rose, one of the movers behind it, also performs in the play.
Dropped is set in an unnamed war zone at an unspecified future time when women are an unremarked presence in combat situations. The far off call of a muezzin signals that their patch of nowhere is somewhere in the Middle East. The ominous groaning of metal suggests the two soldiers – Olivia Rose and Deborah Galanos – are either in or in the vicinity of a major structure that’s about to collapse, or perhaps it signifies a greater existential collapse. Who knows.
The two, clad in camouflage combat gear, helmets and casually cuddling their rifles, sit in the desert dirt (set and costumes Lisa Mimmocchi) with the kind of familiarity that suggests filth, sweat, heat, fear and discomfort have become their everyday – and every night (lighting Verity Hampson). They are not at ease, however, but quite what they are doing and where they are remains a mystery.
As they wait, perhaps for evacuation, maybe for attack, they talk and joke about their lives – what was, what might have been, what could be – and suspiciously peer into the surrounding darkness, real and imagined. Their vodka supplies have run out, the radio isn’t working, they are lost in more ways than one.
Although nameless, the two characters are something of an homage to Waiting For Godot’s Vladimir and Estragon. Indeed, just like Estragon, Deborah Galanos has very sore feet and pulls off her heavy boots and thick socks to give them a good rub.
On opening night – in a hot, humid, dark, mist-filled and therefore claustrophobic auditorium – that she remained barefoot thereafter upset three burly (apparently ADF) men in the audience who exited noisily muttering “bullshit”. And they were right of course, no highly trained infantry-woman would dream of making herself so vulnerable in such a situation – I found myself thinking, nervously.
But Dropped is not realism, nor drama-documentary, it’s a phantasmagoria and as the two slide deeper into their fears and imaginations their bewilderment slithers across the divide: are they in a war zone or have they been abandoned? Are they dead? Is the baby they find one they have killed or simply a symbol of all that’s wrong and inglorious in war?
When “Vladimir” begins to exhume tiny shoes from the dirt all these questions and images float in the murky mist and the earlier laughter goes with it. Director Anthony Skuse draws powerful performances from Olivia Rose and Deborah Galanos. The latter, in particular, has slightly the best of the roles and her detailed and nuanced playing is magnetic.
Dropped is – as Anthony Skuse says in his program notes – about remembrance and forgetting, as much as it might be about war and gender. These two faulty human traits are endlessly interesting and Katy Warner explores both in obtuse and direct ways. At just 60 minutes she packs more into the play than seems possible and is well served by Rose and Galanos in a tight and robust production. Recommended.
