The Fertility of Objects and other plays
By Raimondo Cortese
Griffin Theatre Company, The Stables, Sydney
Review by Brendan Doyle
"A compelling trilogy about the dangers of seduction." Sounds promising, doesn't it? But what we get from Raimondo Cortese are basically exercises in style, workshop pieces for actors.
The format is interesting. It's hard for any playwright to get short plays produced. Here then are three of them, each involving a meeting between a man and a woman, all acted out on a stage covered with earth. (Because of the earthy content? We are warned the show contains simulated sex scenes. This alone guarantees an audience in Sydney.)
In The Large Breast or the Upside-down Bell, a man and a woman, apparently strangers, dressed in flimsy white garments, sit on large rocks, walk on stepping stones and throw coins into a wishing well as they talk seductively to each other, undoing buttons. Is this their foreplay ritual, I wondered.
The language is all rather dreamy and poetic, but it ends suddenly when he hands her a flick-knife and she holds it pointed at her naked breast. Blackout.
The Fertility of Objects is more fun, done in a commedia dell'arte style in a sort of circus ring. The stage is dominated by a large, gleaming toaster object. Insatiable (Zoe Burton) seeks a real man who will buy her this highly desired object.
Enter Bob (Raj Ryan) in cowboy shirt and hat. Dumb and randy, he is quickly seduced by Insatiable. There is much strobe-lit simulated sex, which looks exhausting for the actors, after which she gets her man, but not what she really wants, the toaster object.
Inconsolable, the third piece, I found potentially more interesting, maybe because there is some character development and the suggestion of a plot. Tom (Jamie Jackson), who works in computers, reads Ulysses at a cafe table, smoking neurotically.
Enter Kat (Natasha Herbert), unemployed, who sits at the table and shows great sexual interest in this uptight man who hasn't found the right woman yet. But there's a problem. Kat's "boyfriend" is watching them. Nothing really happens, but we get a strong impression of two people desperately looking for something or someone to fill the emptiness of their lives.
The problem with these plays lies not in the acting or the production, which are up to Griffin's usual high standards, but in the writing. I was not surprised to learn that all three plays were written in one sitting, and were inspired by a dream, a shopping trip to the city and a conversation overheard in a cafe. Indeed, Cortese adds, "The actors on the stage actually sit and drink coffee".
Am I missing something profound here? Or are these plays typical of a lot of new Australian writing — not about anything in particular, just sex, consumer goods and coffee shop lifestyles. No wider world, no political realities, just the mundane obsessions of the author and his friends. Very '90s.