BLOKES DON’T TALK by Vince Melton
Bathurst Theatre Company.
Something Borrowed Theatre Company and Smith’s Alternative.
Produced by Judith Peterson.
Directed by Tanya Gruber
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
To discover some theatrical gems,
it is necessary sometimes to look beyond the surface. Such is the case at
Smith’s Alternative, the former bookshop and now alternative theatre venue/bar
in Civic. Under the guiding hand of Domenic Mico, Smith’s Alternative is
establishing itself as a leading light in providing opportunities for theatre
workers and musicians to express themselves, develop their talents and create
an intimate ambiance for the creation of new work.
My visits have been too
infrequent, but on each occasion I have been impressed by the offerings. What
has excited me most has been the emergence of new talent, whether that be a
former Daramalan student of Joe Woodward, Tanya Gruber’s production of Edward
Albee’s At Home At the Zoo for her newly formed Something Borrowed Theatre
Company, musical performances or Vince Melton’s series of short monologues,
Blokes Don’t Talk. In Blokes Don’t Talk six men relate the stories of their
lives from their perspective. Joseph (Alex Rouse) is a small time crim from the
wrong side of the tracks, whose life of crime leads him into trouble and
mishap. It is a bleak glimpse of those men who believe that they need to resort
to crime to drag themselves from the seeming futility and disadvantage of their
lives. Rouse’s monologue could
easily have become the bumbling comedy of the
ineffectual criminal, but he lends it a frustration and powerlessness that
underlies the trapped circumstance in which he finds himself. There is pathos
in his failure.
Maurice Downing’s Dave is an
effectively written and beautifully paced and performed account of a man who is
the victim of his own lack of awareness of his own actions and the consequences
of misplaced priority. As Downing presents Dave’s journey from shearing on the
land to working in a factory, from his courtship of his wife Melanie to their
breakup and from his secure family home to a small Bachelor flat in Sydney, I
see a man in th audience nodding his head in recognition. At one tender moment,
his partner places her hand on his as a gesture of consolation. Downing’s
performance is engrossing in its plausibility, and disarmingly natural in its
performance. Here is a new talent to watch out for in future.
He is not alone. This is in fact
a hallmark of this production. New faces emerge on Canberra’s theatre scene,
and this play about men for men and women, written simply from stories that
Melton has picked up since he first wrote Blokes Don’t Talk in 2000, prior to
performances by Bathurst Theatre Company in 2004 and 2008.
Graham August’s monologue by the
young father, recounting the experience of the birth of his son, is the
shortest of the six but August genuinely captures the dreams of the new father,
quickly dissolved by the practical reality of a dirty nappy and the onerous duties
of fatherly responsibility. It is a pencil sketch of the experience but works
effectively enough to provide a moment’s insight into the contrasting nature of
idealism and reality.
Gruber’s decision to avoid the
stage and have the monologues delivered from the tables at which the various
actors are seated lends the performance an immediacy with each monologue
following on immediately from the previous one. I am sitting next to a stranger
sporting a black eye. As August flees from the space at the sight of a dirty
nappy, Arran McKenna leaps to his feet to present Johnnie, a taxi driver with
an over developed libido and a false sense of his own sex appeal. His own
sexuality is confronted when he finds himself in an unsettling situation with a
beautiful passenger who is not as she appears. Blokes Don’t Talk compels an
audience to question convention, stereotype and what it is to be male, and
expose the male’s inability to understand or deal with the issues that confuse
and confound. McKenna’s Johnnie is expertly portrayed as a man trying to come
to terms, not only with his own notions of male sexuality, but also with a
questioning of his own responses. I look forward to seeing this actor more
often on a Canberra stage.
As I do TW Gibbings, another
newcomer to Canberra theatre. His Bobby, a young arrogant, forceful and defiant
achiever commands the floor in a riveting performance. His attempts to deal
with his brother-in-law’s domestic violence against his sister depicts the
passionate belief in sibling loyalty and support. Melton is careful not to
simply paint the portrait of the violent husband and the abused wife. He peels
away Bobby’s macho fraternal loyalty to reveal the irony that underpins the
tragic powerlessness of the female victim of male aggression. Gibbings adeptly
shifts status from the self-assured controller to the powerless and confused intervener
in the complex circumstance that permeates the issue of domestic violence.
Only Ken Moran’s Military Man
seems out of place in a show that deals with contemporary issues and everyday
male characters. Melton has included the account of a Gallipoli veteran to
reveal male attitudes to mateship and responses to war, which, on the field, is
primarily a male domain, exposing male characteristics, conditioning and
values. Perhaps a more recent conflict within the context of modern warfare
might have been more effective. Moran, the older member of the company, who
performed many years ago in The Broken Years, at the Australian War Memorial
under the direction f George Whaley, is most suited to delivering this
monologue, and he does it naturally enough, with a true sense of sacrifice,
waste and loss.
Blokes Don’t Talk speaks to all.
It is the voice of experiences of real men, facing the consequences of their
actions, their ignorance and their need to be heard and understood. In Gruber’s
production, and in the café environment of Smith’s Alternative, it is simple,
compelling and unpretentious. Producer, social worker and youth worker, Judith
Peterson is presenting this as part of a trilogy of film and theatre that
explores attitudes to death in the family and the relationships between
couples. The Glue That Holds Us Together and Couples Don't Talk are being presented at Smith’s Alternative over the course of
the year, and if this production of Blokes Don’t Talk is anything to go by,
audiences can be assured of an experience that is insightful, entertaining and
worth a visit to Canberra’s intimate venue and showcase for new works and
exciting emerging and established artists
Blokes Don’t Talk
May 23 and 24 at 7 p.m.
Smith’s Alternative
 |
| The Glue That Holds Us Together |
Tickets available at
trybooking.com/83195
 |
| Couples Don't Talk |
