Mosquitoes by Lucy Kirkwood.
Directed by Jessica Arthur. Designer. Elizabeth Gadsby. Lighting designer. Nick Schlieper. Composer and sound engineer. James Brown. Assistant director. Jennifer Rani. Choreographer. Niharika Senapati. Movement and Fight director. Gavin Robins. Voice and text coaches. Jess Chambers and Charmian Gradwell. Syudney Theatre Company. The Drama Theatre. Sydney Opera House. April 8 – May 18 2019
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
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Jacqueline McKenzie as Alice and Mandy McElhinney
as Jenny in Mosquitoes Photo by Daniel Boud
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From the very first scene of
Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Lucy Kirkwood’s latest play, Mosquitoes, Kirkwood’s wit and piercing
insight into human nature draws the audience in to a situation as familiar as
life itself. Alice (Jacqueline
McKenzie), a renowned scientist, working on the search for the Higgs boson particle at the
Large Hadron Collider in Geneva is visiting her heavily pregnant sister, Jenny
(Mandy McElhinney), a medical insurance saleswoman in Luton. Alice, a mother of
seventeen year old Luke (Charles Wu) adopts a rational and intelligent approach
to allaying Jenny’s fears . Alice is a calming foil to McElhinney’s riotously
funny portrayal of Jenny’s irrational panic.
Kirkwood cleverly sets the scene for a dramatic collision between exploding
particles of scientific reason and human emotion. It is the power of the analogy with the LHC
that binds Kirkwood’s drama. It is the nature of an expanding and contracting
universe that defines the contradictory relationships of Kirkwood’s family.
Action and reaction define the confrontational behaviour of the characters, as they face their fear of the unexpected chaos that
intrudes upon their lives.
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| Jason Chong as Boson in Mosquitoes. Photo by Daniel Boud |
Family and fear are at the very
heart of Kirkwood’s tightly interwoven drama of human interaction and
scientific advancement. Alice and Jenny’s mother Karen (Annie Byron), resentful
that her late husband took credit for much of the work she did to secure his
Nobel Prize now fears her age and encroaching dementia. Alice’s son Luke
battles the terrifying fear of his contracting universe in a city and a school
he hates, and the bewildering nature of his sexual attraction to his classmate,
Natalie (Nikita Waldron). Jenny bears the horrible burden of guilt at the death
of her daughter and Alice, trained to apply an empirical mind to the scientific
principles underpinning our understanding of the universe, must confront her
maternal fears when her son goes missing to escape the consequences of an
impulsive action. In the vast and inaccessible reaches of the cosmos, it is the
human being’s confined and constricting universe that offers no consolation
beyond the here and now, as Kirkwood’s characters must struggle, not with an
understanding of the concepts of particle atoms, black holes and parallel
universes, but with a deeper understanding of themselves and the world of family
that they inhabit.
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Mandy McElhinney as Jenny
and Annie Byron as Karen
Photo by Daniel Boud |
For me, like Kirkwood who by her
own admission hasn’t a scientific bone in her body, the science of particle
physics offers a fascinating and contrasting metaphor to consider in what is
quintessentially a family drama. Although I am prepared to grapple with the
concepts of a parallel universe, explained by Alice’s estranged husband, Boson
(Jason Chong) , who acts as a commentator on the scientific principles and
Luke’s eventual contribution to scientific advancement,
I remain perplexed by NiharikaSenapati’s representation of choreographed patterns of particle atoms,
and the extraneous appearance of a silent Hindu goddess. Perhaps they have been
introduced to provide a mystical hypothesis of an eternal cosmos, or more
pragmatically to allow a time lapse between a scene of bitter confrontation
between Alice and Jenny before their eventual reconciliation. In any case it is
too much of a distraction from Kirkwood’s more powerful theme of family conflict and
reconciliation. Or if you will, order out of chaos.
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Louis Seguier as Alice’s partner Henri
In Mosquitoes. Photo by Daniel Boud
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Charles Wu as Luke and Nikita Waldron
As Natalie in Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes
Photo by Daniel Boud
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This aside, Mosquitoes, played out on Elizabeth Gadsby’s open stage design with
Nick Schlieper’s lighting lending a
James Turrell atmosphere to Gadsby’s design is a thoroughly absorbing and
engaging drama, with excellent performances under the direction of STC’s
resident director, Jessica Arthur. In a play that is as compelling and thought-provoking
as it is entertaining, Mosquitoes confronts
notions of complex family relationships and love as well as provoking an enquiring
fascination with the enormity of the universe and the miraculous ingenuity and
capacity for discovery by the scientific mind.
Mosquitoes plays at the
Drama Theatre of the Sydney Opera House until May 18. Bookings; www.sydneytheatre.com.au or (02)9250 1777
