Having seen neither Spinning Plates’ take on Ionesco’s Rhinoceros (2024) nor the company’s Green Room Award-winning staging of Dostoevsky’s (by way of Tom Basden) Crocodile (2023), this reviewer was assured that Year of the Rooster would be a standalone piece that could be enjoyed with no knowledge of what preceded it.
Now I’m not sure if that’s true. Because a bit of context regarding the approach the Melbourne company takes to its more absurdist works could perhaps provide a fuller understanding of not only what Spinning Plates is looking to achieve with this production, but also why it has been staged in the way that it has.
Though, it should be said, that the staging is the most arresting thing about Year of the Rooster, right from the get-go.
A circular stage outlined at the front by a low ridge constructed from pieces of cardboard is surrounded by yet more cardboard, covering the backdrop of the stage and surrounding the entrances stage right, left and upstage. Meanwhile, every so often, bags of McDonald’s takeaway food crash down from overhead.
Year of the Rooster review – quick links
Outrageous outfits
But if set and costume designer Dann Barber has done a cracking job with the set, it is his costumes that really crow most loudly. They are inspired – wildly designed and magnificently over the top, they immediately announce the production as an utterly unhinged cartoon made flesh. Well, if not exactly flesh, then bulging biceps, bottoms and breasts (both poultry-fied and human) as part of the costumery.
The play kicks off with Zachary Pidd bursting onto the stage in a rooster suit that is all massive musculature with a tousled red coxcomb approximation, as if pumped up on steroids and ready to take on the world. And beyond. Though the play never does explain why he’s so aggrieved at the sun – surely the star that tells the Earth when it’s morning has a symbiotic relationship with roosters?
But it’s doubtless a brilliant beginning. And it’s followed up by a bevy of equally larger than life characters, with ridiculous costumes and amplified characterisations feeding this satire of rampant Western (particularly US) consumerism and what it means to live in a dog eat dog – or cock fights cock – world.
The serious satire behind Year of the Rooster
The closest thing the play has to a hero is Gil (Jessica Stanley), a meek McDonald’s worker who lives with an immobile Grey Gardens-esque mother (Natasha Herbert). Gil dreams of a better life – one he sees as achievable thanks to his penchant for spotting and grooming superior fighting birds.
Odysseus Rex (Pidd) will be his ticket to the big time, as long as he can persuade carnival showman Dickie Thimble (James Cerché) to give him a shot.
In the meantime, Gil has to contend with a vaguely monstrous but soon to be promoted co-worker Phillipa (AYA), whose dreams have less to do with fowls and more to do with conquering the world of Mickey D’s and then heading to the House of Mouse.
That’s the bare (chicken) bones of Olivia Dufault’s 2013 play, which is touted as a very loose adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey – though, to be fair, to really see the similarities you’d need to be squinting very hard and holding a magnifying glass up to the action.
But then again if you did that, you could also see that, underneath the overblown design, there is a serious streak to Dufault’s work – an exploration of the life of the underclass drudges who will trade their very souls and every last shred of decency for a chance to triumph. The trouble is, with buffoonery writ this large, this gets lost, leading to a growing sense of ‘what’s the actual point here?’
Cracks in the confidence
This isn’t aided by some uneven performances. Director Alexandra Aldrich does a commendable job of sticking to a singular vision for the production, but for the cast there is a difference between playing a part and being a part.
Even in an absurdist production like this one, a characterisation, no matter how large, needs to be rooted in credibility – you, as a performer, have to believe in them, even if the audience may not. And one or two of the less experienced cast have yet to really get to grips with this concept.
But look, a thousand years ago (in 1987) on the other side of the planet (London’s Royal Court), I saw an up-and-coming actor stop-start performing in Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money. They were all declamatory ‘look at me acting’ when they had lines and barely even paying attention when they didn’t. That fledgling performer was one Gary Oldman. Cut to today? Well, if ever anyone inhabited a character down to their very toenails, it’s Oldman as Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses.
Spinning Plates isn’t even 10 years old yet – they’ll definitely get there too.
