Something Natural but Very Childish

Dirty Pretty Theatre is creating quite a following in Melbourne after the extended season of ‘Acts of Deceit’, also at La Mama, in January of this year. The style of both ‘Acts of Deceit’ and ‘Something Natural But Very Childish’ stems from a well crafted adaptation of a classic text while staying true to the aesthetics of the time in both set and costume. ‘Something Natural But Very Childish’ is based on the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, a short fiction writer from New Zealand, writing in around the 1920’s. Abrahams, in his overly long director’s notes, explains that the production is an ‘exploration’ of Mansfield’s short stories and has taken bits and pieces from over ten stories to create four new ones.

The general theme to the four stories is ‘love’; unrequited, new found, old and tired, and forbidden. A hyper-active young man (Thomas Conroy) falls in love with a blushing young woman on a tram (Amanda Folson) and they fall almost instantly in love. A married couple (Zoe Ellerton Ashley and Cameron Moore) have endless arguments until her eye wanders onto the piano teacher (Luke Jacka). A gentleman (Josh Price) tries to woo his female friend (Luisa Hastings Edge) but to no avail. Generally, the pace of the pieces attempts to keep time with the jumping piano played live by Luke Jacka. There are short scenes from each storyline cut together creating a series of bite size updates and endless entrances and exits. This is quite carefully constructed to create seamless transitions and is excellently staged using a traverse stage in La Mama’s tiny theatre.

An unashamed look at love could be quite refreshing to see on a Melbourne stage, where bold demonstrations of love and longing are sometimes lost amongst all the self-referentiality of independent theatre, but the over-the-top nature of the performances rarely let the audience absorb the complex, nuanced and sometimes subtle nature of love. Given that the pieces were adapted from short stories could be a reason enough why there were not many performances that ‘grew’ over the course of the night, however, the performance was also two hours long on the night I saw it (mid-season).

Josh Price, as the reserved and devoted Reggie, delivered one of the better performances as we were allowed to see him as a deep thinking, intense and vital personality to oppose the pitying way his friend Anne saw him. On the opposite scale, Thomas Conroy’s high camp portrayal of the young lover, Henry, did not seem believable. The manic style, nervous tic’s and all, with which he threw himself around the stage seemed like it could develop into a deep, resonant love for Edna but instead it went close to ridiculous. I appreciate that love can do infinite and impossible things to people but at the end of Henry and Edna’s tale it was baffling as to whether he had scared her off by acting like a frightening bouncing ball or she had never loved him anyway.

Jane Noonan’s set design and Katie Sfetkidis’ lighting design worked well with the period style of the performance. The set highlighted the floral and delicate by using ivy tendrils pinned along the walls and leaf litter like material strewn over the floor. The lighting opened up little pockets of performance areas at either end of the traverse and warmly lit the actors.

Abrahams appears to have a strong vision for all elements of the performance but I am always puzzled by the need to use accents, in this case British, which appear unnecessary. The period costume in hand with the accents does not enhance the words and themes but makes it harder for an audience to form attachments to them. The words are so strong and timeless that I wonder if I would have been hit harder in the heart had the piece been allowed a more simple staging. Having recently seen, and really enjoyed, Marion Potts’ simple staging of ‘King Lear’ for Bell Shakespeare, I am yet to fault a simple interpretation of a classic text that allows the full force of the words to fall into an audiences lap.

Overall, a strong piece that attempts to capture a frightening, bold and chimerical aspect of life but one that also allows production values to cloud the true clarity of the words.

SOMETHING NATURAL BUT VERY CHILDISH

A Dirty Pretty Theatre Production