Up close and pass the deodorant

June 28, 2000
Issue 

Picture

Up close and pass the deodorant

Viewing Blue Poles
By Christos Tsiolkas
Belvoir Street Downstairs, Sydney
Until July 16

Review by Brendan Doyle

The 80-seat downstairs theatre at Belvoir Street, one of the few intimate theatre spaces left in Sydney, was packed with an enthusiastic audience on opening night. Most of the cast of the All Saints TV show were there to barrack for young Ben Tari in his first Belvoir gig. This 45-minute show, however, probably would not be allowed on TV.

If you admired Head On, the movie based on Christos Tsiolkas' novel Loaded, you already know the territory. This is confessional theatre, well-suited to this close-up space. And it is pretty confronting.

Viewing Blue Poles is a young, energetic production, directed by new Victorian College of the Arts graduate Lauren Taylor. It has already been a hit at Melbourne's La Mama, birthplace of so much new Australian theatre.

The play opens with a young man and a young woman who are looking at "Blue Poles", Jackson Pollock's painting, in the National Art Gallery (actually, they are looking through a giant frame at the audience, only a few metres away).

The young woman is pregnant and wants to have an abortion because she doesn't believe the young man loves her. He says he is willing to be a father to their child, but he is bisexual and is turned on more by men than women — a poignant little scene of typical contemporary complications, not without humour.

A security guard enters and tells them to keep down the noise. They leave and the security guard sits and tells his story. He's gay and relates a depressing story of a visit to a gay club where men indulge in anonymous sex with strangers. What he would really like, he says, is to live with Jack, the married man and father he is having an affair with. But he refuses to break up Jack's marriage by telling Jack he loves him. How could he do that to Jack's kid? There's a nice irony to the fact that the security guard fantasises about the "happy couple" he just saw in the gallery.

For a one-act play, Viewing Blue Poles packs more punch and leaves you with more to chew over than many longer works. It's sparely and truthfully written, and nicely paced and delivered by the actors.

Is this something new and exciting in Australian theatre? The opening night audience certainly enjoyed it. It's certainly confronting and honest.

Tsiolkas hasn't yet exploited or explored the medium of theatre to a great extent. The result is more like very good close-up television. But it is refreshing to see a piece of new Australian dramatic writing of this quality. More please, and more theatrical.

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