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| Christopher Samuel Carroll is Bennet Cooper Sullivan in The Cadaver Palaver |
The Cadaver Palaver.
Written and
performed by Christopher Samuel Carroll. Bare Witness Theatre Company. The Independents Season. The
Courtyard Studio. Canberra Theatre Centre. September 12-14. 2025. Bookings: 62752700
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins.
There’s no-one I know better to play the rakish and yet so sartorially refined Victorian adventurer, cartographer, linguist, raconteur and fornicator of wives Bennett Cooper Sullivan than the enigmatic Christopher Samuel Carroll. After a long absence, Carroll’s alter ego emerges from the foetid cell of an Afghanistan prison to set about on a journey that will take him on a Boys Own journey from the exotic climes of Cairo to the lascivious streets of Soho and then to Edinburgh to find a friend who will help him to find his old sea captain Cobden Gack. It is a perilous mission that will see him battle with a would-be assassin, seduce a fair young maiden, fall into a pit of corpses, and discover him in peril upon the slab of an anatomy lab. Lovers of the tales of adventure and perilous journeys, life threatening combat with dangerous adversaries and the thrilling exploits of the raconteur will delight in Carroll’s recounting of the amazing life of Bennett Cooper Sullivan as he rebounds from one danger to another, from one sexual assignation to another and into the darkest recesses of the mausoleum, its coffins and cadavers. This is the stuff of young boys’ fantasies, delving into the world of Buchan, J Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. Such daring, such bravado and all performed with wit, charm and charisma. One toys with death to make life so much the richer.
This is Carroll at the top of his game, an actor of consummate skill and imagination who holds the audience in the palm of his hand while clutching the mimed severed hand of an unfortunate assailant in the other. For an hour Carroll, with only a patchwork of Persian rugs to mark out his space in the Courtyard Studio, spins a ripping yarn that echoes with the excitement of an age when suave was cool and mystery a mission to reveal. Carroll’s writing rolls trippingly off the tongue. There is the poetic irony of the Irish, laced with the cheeky humour of the master storyteller, the characters’ chameleon who with an accent or a twist of the body can transform into a villain, a pawnbroker, a surgeon, and others in Carroll’s clever tale of mystery and suspense.
Carroll’s training at Ecole Jacques Lecoq needs no props, other than a cane. A fall to the floor, a turn in an instant, hands to the throat, a glance, a sudden movement of the arm can signal a moment, a gesture, a reaction and Carroll’s commanding control of character and escapade. Sporting an immaculately coiffured moustache, trimmed beard and slim-lined Victorian Tweed suit and vest, Sullivan is no Indiana Jones, and yet one has the impression that he could handle himself with charm and aplomb in a pit of rats or in this case cadavers and emerge unruffled and with a witty smile and a glint in the eye.
Carroll’s tale of adventure
gallops apace and it takes some fierce concentration to follow the plot. It is
easy to be mesmerized by the telling and let the plot slip away. Carroll’s one
man show is a gripping as well as ripping yarn that recalls the literary
adventure tales of a past era that still has the power to thrill and entertain.
The Cadaver Palaver has a very short
season as the opening performance of the Canberra Theatre Centre’s Independents
Season. Carroll’s performance alone makes this a theatrical adventure not to be
missed.
Photos by Carlos Herman
