Wickedly Good Productions. Rumpus. 4 Oct 2022
Big questions; director Nate Triosi executes a deceptively ‘simple’ modus operandi exploring them.
Which questions? After All This goes after the conflicting business of religious belief, the great beyond and the origins of morality.
Marcel Dorney’s play spawned a 2012 Green Room award winning production by Melbourne company Elbow Room. It’s easy to see why. Dorney’s writing disavows being buried in complicated, over egged atheism versus religion discourse.
Dorney pitches logical questioning of Christian belief, nature versus nurture debate and death cult beliefs of transitioning to a higher level of existence in beguiling stylistic dark humour.
Director Triosi’s achievement; a keep it simple approach on every level, ensuring simplicity of presentation in performance and design, allowing the deep nature of Dorney’s text to subtly embrace and challenge without any sense of disturbing angst.
Angst - maybe, maybe not, as the hour progresses.
The audience travels space to space three times within the Rumpus building. Cast members are hidden amongst the audience. We have no idea who they are until they sprout.
Characters Emily and Angus spring from the foyer bar. Emily has pasted a child-like Jesus themed drawing to the wall. We’re welcomed musically and emotionally to the conflicts of childhood and religious belief. Playwright Dorney has split his characters function. They directly address the audience as narrators, yet play children (and others), in struggled remembrances. We get the ‘simple’ yet complex confusion and denial. Do we?
We’re moved on.
A screen projected equation greets us. Another hidden cast member emerges. We’re entertained by a slapstick style take of Dr George Price and John William Hamilton, purveyors of two vastly opposed schools of thought on morality and faith. It’s as slapstick funny as it’s vicious. We just stand there, gazing at the projected equation encompassing the issues the characters fight over.
We’re moved on.
Most disturbing experience of all is this line of characters in uniform, espousing with gentle warmth and sincerity the mystery of death cult belief.
This is the point at which After All This resolves into an endless experiential conundrum. Nothing offered up is neutral. Comprehendible, consistent, but always pushing towards a favoured position dependent on personal reaction. It’s the very function distinguishing great theatre, as an experience, as a means of really knowing what we think we ‘know’.
David O’Brien
When: 4 to 16 Oct
Where: Rumpus 100 Sixth Street Bowden
Bookings: rumpustheatre.org
