Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 13
Writers: Feidlim Cannon, Gary Keegan & Adrienne Truscott.
Creative Producer: Rachel Bergin
Movement Director: Eddie Kay
Costume Design: Sarah Foley
Lighting Design: Dara Hoban
Set Design: Ellen Kirk
Sound Design: Jennifer O’Malley
Cast
Adrienne Truscott and Feidlim Cannon.
I was hoist by my own petard at the end of Masterclass. Just like Cannon’s self-important character, I stayed on until everyone else in the audience had decided to go; and even when the Opera House staff insisted I had to go, I could not leave without a desperate attempt to interview the actors – who were still refusing to leave the stage.
Adrienne’s female character would not leave because Cannon’s male would not leave because he still believed as a male he must maintain his place in the Master Class. If he left, then she could too; but as things stood, for her to leave would mean her accepting his patriarchal role and leaving her less than equal.
As a male, was my insistence on holding everything up to the bitter end justified because I was in a journalist role seeking an interview? Or was I just being another Cannon-style character?
I surrendered, and I left a note for the actors at the stage door before the staff’s politeness might have turned for the worse.
Of course, my story was exactly what the play was meant to be about – the truth about gender equality in the real world.
The play worked in raising everyone’s consciousness of the seriousness of the issue. Will it make a real difference? I guess I should have raced after other audience members and interviewed them before they went home. But by then they had all gone.
They had laughed at the characters’ twists and turns on stage before the final deadlock. Would the males now really leave the stage so the females could have equal power from now on? Or would men think they weren’t really like Cannon anyway? Or would any women think Adrienne was too obsessed about her feminism?
Publicity describes the set-up: "All-round good guy Feidlim Cannon plays a blazer-clad talk show host interviewing a Hemingway-esque writer (Truscott), espousing a masterclass on playwriting."
In the beginning Truscott is Adrian, only to reveal herself later as Adrienne. I thought I heard Cannon called “Alex” – perhaps Alexander the Great? The technicalities of this highly physical performance made it certainly engrossing, with props and costumes all over the place, as well as sound and lighting everywhere all at once.
But I have to say I began to find the script beginning to sound too clever-clever, too comedic, even farcical, rather than getting to the guts of the patriarchy-feminism problem. That’s why I wanted to talk to the actors who were also the writers.
The ending, when neither will leave the stage, says no more than male-female power is deadlocked with no possible solution except for everyone to walk away. You might say historically it’s an advance to have got to this point, since the rise of the New Woman in European culture in the 19th Century.
But I suggest that Bernard Shaw offered more in his plays Arms and the Man (1894), Mrs Warren’s Profession (1902) and his major work on the issue, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928; Pelican 1937), even though, as Wikipedia records, “The book inspired a respectful and detailed reply from Lilian Le Mesurier in The Socialist Woman's Guide to Intelligence: a reply to Mr. Shaw first published in 1929. Le Mesurier objected to Shaw's self-satisfied and condescending tone.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligent_Woman%27s_Guide_to_Socialism_and_Capitalism
Masterclass has acquired a considerable reputation since its presentation at the Dublin and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals (2021/22) and succeeded in leaving a rather bewildered audience in Sydney as they realised they had to decide to leave the auditorium since the actors wouldn’t leave the stage.
So I can only conclude my review inconclusively.
