Wharf 1 Theatre, July 19
9/10
Our lives are many-stranded, Martyna Majok’s play seems to tell us: so many lengths of rope, with infinite subtleties in our interdependence. Individual strands can snap or fray so easily when stressed, the wonder is that any of our relationships ever pass the test of time.
Cost of Living won Majok the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it will likely outlive most plays of our time. Majok puts those metaphorical ropes under perilous tension, and we sit spellbound, open-mouthed and teary, watching the strands that fray and those that hold. Most fray.
The play charts snippets of four lives: two duets that run in parallel until they converge into a kind of fugue by the end. By then we’re cleansed and drained and reminded how best to be ourselves, not as individuals, but as humans: fully interactive and reactive creatures.
One duet is for John (Dan Daw) who has cerebral palsy, and auditions Jess (Zoe de Plevitz) to be his new carer. Meanwhile Eddie (Philip Quast) turns up unexpectedly as the fill-in carer for his ex-wife Ani (Kate Hood), who’s become a quadriplegic since their separation. Both duets are played out in the rough and tumble of New Jersey, a place they fill to overflowing with their assorted flawed attempts at being human.
As the text specifies, this first Australian production, co-directed by Daw and Priscilla Jackman for STC, casts disabled actors in the roles of John and Ani. A breakthrough for mainstage theatre here, it’s as far from a box-ticking exercise as the play is from being humourless.
John gives Jess the job, even though she usually works in late-night bars, and Ani lets Eddie help, despite her bitterness and his guilt. The fascination lies in the way the dynamics of the two relationships evolve. We come to see that Ani and Eddie’s marriage, which lasted for 20 years, was partly founded on their ability to make each other laugh. People who laugh together, after all, more readily forgive.
John is rich and Jess is as poor a stray cat. She keeps her life under wraps, and initially bristles at John’s questions because she knows that when she softens she makes herself vulnerable. She, the carer, is more vulnerable than John, the cared-for.
Majok writes the best dialogue since Edward Albee. Often it jolts between subjects; sometimes it stalls completely or accelerates wildly; sometimes the big stuff is left unsaid, and often characters talk over one another, not wanting to hear a word. They lie to each other and themselves, and yet we can’t help but be moved by them in a way that makes most other plays seem like they’re merely skirting around life’s edges: not taking a big bite from the core.
The actors give us the very marrow from their bones, and to single one out from the quartet borders on perverse, but Kate Hood’s saw-tongued, suspicious, candid, funny, desperate Ani is a towering creation. Daw is droll, brave and moving in equal measure, de Plevitz so good at shedding and restoring Jess’s protective layers, and Quast makes Eddie a big bear of a person, looking for someone to hug to death.
Daw and Jackman’s production glows with all the play’s compassion and figurative face-slaps, but it’s not perfect. Michael Scott-Mitchell’s set, aesthetically as spartan as a public toilet, is too busy and too clever. The play’s in-built design complexities feel like they want simple solutions, so nothing overshadows the humanity.
Until August 18.