Josh Quong Tart and Lucia Mastrantone in Dead Cat Bounce. Photo: Brett Boardman
The things we do for love – or is that addiction? And what’s the difference?
Mary Rachel Brown’s newest play is all about addiction. Addiction to booze, to love, to unrequited love, to past love, to hurt, to anger. Whatever. As she says in the program notes, “All the characters in Dead Cat Bounce carry shame and their forward movement is dependent on the admission of that shame. I hope the journeys make people feel a little less alone when they leave the theatre.”
To my mind, some of the journeys played out are bigger and just possibly more successful than others, but some of the predicaments are dangerously close to cliché (or at least they are telling us nothing new). “Humans are sad”, says one character, and each of these humans is sad in his or her own way. That’s not a quote, by the way, although there are quite a few references to Tolstoy.
The first scene, performed in near darkness, is very good, so I am not going to spoil it by telling you about it. Suffice to say we soon meet Gabe (Josh Guong Tart), a 48-year-old would be writer who hides behind gallons of red wine. (“Drinking is my version of playing dead.”) Irritatingly (for me), he has somehow acquired an intelligent 24-year-old girlfriend, Matilda (Kate Cheel). I really couldn’t see why she would be interested in this closed-off, non-giving bloke but – hey! – love is blind, and stranger things have happened. Like all co-dependants, Matilda thinks she can rescue him.
Kate Cheel is Gabe’s intelligent 24-year-old girlfriend, Matilda. Photo: Brett Boardman
She finally persuades the reluctant writer to let her read his manuscript, which is a tale about a man dressing up as a cat. Naturally she’s a little perplexed.
“Books are propositions, Matilda,” pontificates Gabe. “It’s the reader’s job to exercise curiosity.” She forgives him. (I would not have.)
Angela (Lucia Mastrantone) is Gabe’s 44-year-old ex. She finally admitted to herself that her relationship with Gabe was going nowhere and left. But she left a lot of heart, and a whole lot of pain, behind. She’s very angry and she’s hanging on to that anger, especially as she has just discovered that she’s left it too late to have a baby with her new partner Tony (Johnny Nasser). As for Tony, he thinks he’d be happy with Angela if only she could turn her indifference into love.
Like Matilda, Angela and Tony read out excerpts from Gabe’s book. As you’d imagine, their takes are less forgiving.
Dead Cat Bounce does keep you wondering what is going to happen to these people. Will they get out? Get on? Get out alive? Give up? However, it’s not till the last third of this 90-minute piece that the tolls of these addictions start to hit home, and we feel like we might be entering new territory. And really, although some of these final scenes are very moving (especially the ones between Mastrantone and Nasser), there is no real revelation. Humans are sad, at least some of these are. Call me cynical, if you must.
Along the way, there are some very good lines, some very witty and one or two that are not (anyone who has read Anna Karenina, or even heard of Anna Karenina, is not likely to forget that surname. Certainly not a 24-year-old, avid for Russian literature, who professes to have just read it.)
Also on the plus side, director Mitchell Butel has assembled a great quartet of actors to bring the roles to life and the action zips along. All credit, too, to the design team (set Genevieve Blanchett), lighting (Alexander Berlage) and sound (Nate Edmondson), for providing a stage that is white, usually bright and walled in. No escape for these characters, unless they are willing to address their inner demons. The use of the Griffin’s small space is especially effective in this production with its swift and clever scene changes.
And the cat? The cat should have got out when it had the chance.
Dead Cat Bounce plays at the Griffin Theatre at SBW Stables until April 6.
