COST OF LIVING

By Diana Simmonds

July 21 2024

COST OF LIVING, Sydney Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre at Wharf 1, 18 July-18 August 2024. Photography: Morgan Roberts: above - Kate Hood and Philip Quast; below - Zoe de Plevitz and Dan Daw

One of the content trigger warnings for a previous show by Dan Daw is “sexy disabled people”. It’s on a longish list that includes arachnophobia, flashing lights, swearing, and tattoos. It suggests therefore that members of an audience could find disturbing the depiction of a disabled person as an attractive sexual possibility.

If Cost of Living didn’t move so fast and far in various directions it would be something to think on at length. Let’s face it, the preferred norm in polite society has for long been that disability is either to be ignored or invisible. No chance of that with John (Daw), an Ivy League PhD student who’s looking for a paid carer to take on the chores of his daily routine (showers, dressing, and so on). While he has some of the physical limitations of Cerebral Palsy, there’s nothing limited about his mind or rich boy sense of entitlement.

Seeking the job is Jess (Zoe de Plevitz), also a high-end university graduate but hampered by her social status as an immigrant whose mother’s illness means working multiple menial jobs to support her and just scrape a living. Class and poverty hobble Jess’s progress. When she unwarily explains to John “I’ve never worked with the differently-abled,” she is unprepared for his furious response that she not use the term because “It’s fucking retarded.” In the context of the play, it’s also funny and, as with most of the frequent laughs, it’s almost gallows-style and about an audience laughing at itself.

Playwright Martyna Majok worked as a carer before theatre and a Pulitzer Prize for this play sent her on a different trajectory. She knows the territory she’s traveling with these characters. It’s tough, funny, shocking and illuminating. Sentimentality is absent, making it more human and affecting than the cutesy schlock that characterises so much Americana.

The play opens, however, with Eddie (Philip Quast), an out-of-work truck driver, talking at length to an unseen other and trying to reconcile his present with his past before his wife suffered a catastrophic accident. She is quadriplegic in a high-tech wheelchair. They are separated and she, Ani (Kate Hood), is not society’s preferred idea of such a person: grateful for assistance and serenely accepting of her fate. Ani is as dry and unyielding as a drought, with a caustic tongue to match, often wickedly funny.

The action swings back and forth between the two pairs, also in time and between John’s luxe apartment and wherever Eddie – with or without Ani – is living. There are few visual clues to indicate any of this, so it’s confusing. Michael Scott Mitchell’s set is a series of blank grey walls towards the rear of the stage. They variously slide in and out to signify unexplained locales. It’s inscrutable and bleak, giving nothing and forcing the actors into extraneously awkward entrances and exits. Any warmth or colour is thanks to John Rayment’s lighting scheme, while composer Guy Webster’s often luscious score and found soundscape supply a much-needed empathic backdrop for the actors.

Director Priscilla Jackman, whose recent past work includes such demanding plays as Still Point Turning and RBG: Of Many One, negotiates the complex demands not only of the minefield of a play in which disabilities figure large but also of co-directing with Dan Daw. That she achieves the necessary focus on humanity and the frailty of relationships, rather than simple human frailty, makes the 90+ minutes of Cost of Living rewarding, entertaining, and provoking.

The swings back and forth between the give and take of caregiving, and the reasons why either can be misconstrued and mishandled make for an enriching experience. The relationship between John and Jess is initially transactional and prickling with suspicion. For Ani and Eddie, a life prior to her accident and his unemployment make any connection between them fraught with the double edge of resentment and tenderness. Ani luxuriates in a bubble bath, tended by gentle, hopeful Eddie; Jess assists John in taking a shower, unmoved by his nakedness and physical beauty. The chasm between two such similar activities is startling and, again, thought-provoking.

The final twist in the relationship between Jess and John is a sly reminder of how Hallmark our expectations often are. Cost of Living is way out on the margins of pop entertainment yet at the same time, with this fine company, is a vivid portrait of everyday life and love – should we care to see it. Recommended.