Belvoir Downstairs Theatre, February 26
8/10
At the risk of revealing I’m over 21, I saw Gordon Chater’s unforgettable 1976 performance as Robert O’Brien in this one-actor play’s premiere season, in those heady days that confirmed Australian plays, acting and production could be world-class. It toured Australia, had acclaimed West End and off-Broadway seasons, and was duly revived, but hasn’t received a professional production for 24 years. Until now.
Make no mistake: this is among Australia’s greatest plays, containing one of the most enthralling characters and most challenging roles in our relatively brief theatrical history. To take it on, as Simon Burke does here, demands virtuosity of range and stage-craft as well as a preparedness to bare all. I don’t just mean a man in his 60s being physically naked, as stipulated in the opening sequence – which requires its own courage in such a combustion chamber, with 80 people all within two metres of the stage. I mean the demands of letting us glimpse the soul of man who is an elocution teacher by day, a transvestite by night, and is wrongly confined to a psychiatric institution following accusations of child molestation.
O’Brien also has a wicked sense of humour. Did this aspect not stand the test of time, the play, itself, would not. While not all O’Brien’s quips will pass the newfangled puritanism in which we sometimes find ourselves, a diverse opening-night audience laughed at nearly all, aided by Burke’s delicious realisation of this endlessly multifaceted character, directed by Declan Greene for Griffin Theatre Company.
As well as being funny, O’Brien is intelligent, well-read, hard-drinking and bawdy, and lusts after Mick Jagger, sometimes in the drag attire in which he shares dalliances with his married-with-children stockbroker friend, Bruce. He’s also warm, sincere and an expert, caring elocution teacher.
The wonder of spears’ achievement is that he created such a complex, rounded man of 60 as a straight 23-year-old. The wonder of Burke’s achievement is making O’Brien glow with an inner warmth that jackknifes to spitting rage. Moments of something close to acting genius (as when recreating a boorish talk-back radio discussion) alternate with moments where little cracks appear, which may well be papered over as the season advances.
Not only is it a monumental role in terms of range and density, but it’s as complex as Winnie’s in Beckett’s Happy Days in terms of the choreography of props, including bottles, smokes, a bra (which he steps into, rather than puts on), an endlessly ringing telephone and a bust of Shakespeare, which he addresses (possibly presumptuously) as his confidante.
Greene finely calibrates the gathering drama in spears’ text, and the complexity of the play’s morality has only increased. If Burke doesn’t quite scale Chater’s heights (assuming vivid memories can be trusted), those heights are within his grasp, and others may well remember his own performance in 50 years’ time.
Until March 29.