“A top notch team deliver a hit and miss Australian revival and if for no other reason it is great to see Melissa Reeves work onstage.”
Kate Gaul
Venue: Belvoir 25a
Sydney
Dates : Until March 30
Australian playwright Melissa Reeves play Furious Mattress premiered in 2011. This Legit Theatre Co. production directed by Margaret Thanos is its Sydney debut as part of the 25A program. Written back in the day when plays had an interval this two-hour stint is loosely based on the events that led to the death of a 49-year-old woman in January 1993 after her husband, and three other members of a breakaway Lutheran sect, performed an exorcism at the couple’s home at Antwerp, near Horsham. It’s a great premise and Reeves has fun playing with genre whether it is comedy and satire, naturalism, the gothic and surreal, or drama. It’s hard to get away from what is essentially the unpalatable story of a hapless husband (played shrewdly by Julian Garner) challenged by his trapped wife Else’s sensuality (played deliciously by Matilda Ridgway). Enlisting the support of a duplicitous Anna the exorcist (a magnetic Alex Malone with gloriously painted nails and a to-die-for handbag) and local plumber Max (played savagely here by Shan-Ree Tan) the team not only bash bibles but bodies and some of it is hard to watch (fight choreographer Diego Retamales had done a fabulous job!). Else is slowly tortured and killed by her husband and those he enlists.
Furious Mattress opens on an image that sets up everything perfectly – a chair askew with rope hanging from one arm, a lifeless body in a bed, the faint buzz of flies and two sweaty humans holding bibles. The rest of the action explains what has happened by going forward and backwards in time. This production sets the action in one room dominated by a bed in which the dead wife, Else, lies for much of the play. Designed by Angelina Daniel the room is padded foam on both floors and walls… a reference to an ancient, padded room? A skeletal structure of wall uprights and cross bars suggest a gaol.
The play can be read as a critique of the patriarchy and religious zealots but I am not certain what Reeves intention is here. Does it show us anything new and do we really need to see these people behaving badly? At one point late in proceedings a giant creature emerges from the actual mattress and attacks or fucks the exorcist (not sure which) amidst flashing lights and appropriate sounds. Kudos to Harry Milas (magic consultant) who presumably created and renders this moment of theatrical transformation. It does suggest that the writer might have made more of this imaginative assessment of her subject to great effect. In its naturalistic moments – although well rendered – the play is plodding. There is a kind of hint that the company knows or feels that the extraordinary is required to make this work – but it comes across as mildly exaggerated Aussie accents and not-quite-B-grade-enough aesthetic to land. And the play never delves into the whys and wherefores or goes beyond the surface of strange human behaviour but stays safely “funny” – which is infuriating.
A top notch team deliver a hit and miss Australian revival and if for no other reason it is great to see Melissa Reeves work onstage.
Kate Gaul, Theatre Now
