At Hijinx Theatre |
| Hijinx Theatre- Tarzanne - Queen of the Valley , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , December 1, 2000 |
| The set of Hijinx Theatre Company's latest production is really wonderful. A series of raked platforms, painted light green, slope gently up off the stage and culminate in a space that represents a do-it-yourselfer's greenhouse, the precious and threatened grasslands in Africa, the familiar but sublimely beautiful mountains of Wales, and the bleak green lawn of a graveyard. "Tarzanne," written and directed by Greg Cullen (author of "Paul Robeson Knew My Father") takes place in all these settings, and sometimes in more than one at the same time. Like the jungle, the Cambrian mountain wilderness is threatened by encroaching industrial society; and in the world of this play, the greenhouse tended by a well-meaning (perhaps) retired soldier can be an Edenic jungle playground, or it can be as cold, dismal, and unlivable as a cemetery. The title character, played by Lucy Rivers, who was lost on an African jungle vacation ten years before, is delivered home in a cage, and is originally mistaken by the affable delinquent Adam (Mark Bernard) for a monkey. Out of the reach of human civilization (unless one considers the murderous poachers and capturers who eventually catch her 'human(e)' or 'civilized') Anne assimilates into chimpanzee society, and when she is returned her mother, Maisie (Nicola Branson) and the retired soldier Cliff (Mark Howell East) who happens to live next door face a serious challenge in their attempts to make her return to the experience, behaviour, and methods of communication they deem appropriate for a girl of her species. Cullen's composition of this play is fuelled by the crucial need to show that "the ideas of the last [century] including the notion that we can with impunity exploit nature" are suicidal" and that in order to find a sustainable way of living, in both environmental, political, domestic, and personal senses, must involve a return to "fundamental questions about what it means to be human." This, Cullen sensibly states, can be achieved or approached through the use of "imagination" and "our creative human abilities." Introduced in the second act of Cullen's play, one of the more disturbing allegorical representations of the industrial exploitation of nature is Cliff's sexual exploitation of the repatriated and retrained Anne, whose terminally ill mother has transferred her to his guardianship with a reluctant and passive blessing of her daughter's (undesired and apparently non-consensual) union. It seems strange that a man who is haunted by his discovery, whilst stationed in the Balkans, of a group of children who have survived the massacre of their families by hiding, silent, in an attic for a long, emotionally and mentally depleting period of time, would rape (neither the marriage certificate nor Anne's mothers' blessing should invalidate the use of that term) of another orphaned teenager, but maybe the deceptive old soldier never had any sympathy for the Balkan children and just told the story to impress Maisie with a pretension to human(e)ity. Another problematic snarl in the script involves the character of Adam, the reformed burglar and Anne's friend, protector, and unrequited romantic interest. We find out that Adam's homosexuality enraged his father, who threw him out, leaving him no option for survival except the business of crime. Adam tells Maisie, who takes him into her home, of his first lover, Vincent, but after he joins Maisie's household neither characters nor audience ever see or hear about Vincent- or any other favourite of Adam's heart- ever again. Adam's homosexuality is demonstrated mostly through his repudiation of Anne's amorous attacks, and he becomes- in opposition to the predatory, sexually carnivorous Cliff- a sort of desire-less, childlike, grass-eating dinosaur whose days of cruising are over or at domesticated under the saintly Maisie's roof. This might even lead us to think that part of Adam's unwritten, unspoken tenancy agreement is that he NOT let Maisie's fragile family see him bring another young man home. Adam confesses that he wants a child to take care of, but not another lover. He's one of those safely, uncomplicatedly asexual gay men whom one sees played by Rupert Everett in romantic comedies directed at audience of heterosexual women, like "My Best Friend's Wedding" or that other one whose title I can't remember. I thank Cullen for addressing the issues of homophobia and heterosexism in his playwriting, and believe that writers should try to change the frustrating status quo by tackling these issues on stage, screen, and bookshelf, but I'm not sure that creating a character who is suddenly and without further comment rained of the totally instinct, common among humans, to find a soul-mate or a date for Saturday night sounds very natural. Although Bernard also gave a very strong performance, handled his difficult role well, and has a nice singing voice, Rivers steals the show with her committed acting, winningly stubborn personality, and natural-looking ape impersonation that she seems to have absorbed in close but natural detail from the screen of a wildlife documentary. No doubt we have also to thank choreographer Frances Newman and "chimping instructor" Leila Crerar for the magic of Rivers' interspecial transformation. This is a musical, although the dialogue flows very well around and through the songs. It's not an opera, but it doesn't suffer from the stop-and-start convulsions of many musicals. Most of the lyrics were not particularly memorable and after about the third time it's sung a revamped version of 'Rock-a-Bye-Baby' starts to sound grating, especially as the girl being alluded to is, at fourteen years old, certainly not a 'baby.' On the other hand, some of the human characters' attempts to marginalize and incapacitate both Anne and the rest of the animal kingdom constitute the tragic part of this tragicomedy, so maybe Cullen's mantric lullabye is perfectly in tune with the rest of his piece. Paula Gardiner's music is most successful during the percussion-spiced, precipitation-mimicking instrumental pieces on whose currents Rivers and the other actors drift back to the jungle to dance as chimpanzees. Despite some rough edges that may need ironing out before a revival, by the end of "Tarzanne," Cullen, Gardiner and the cast make one want to go up into the Cambrian mountains and look around and hope that the commercial sector, politicians, and ordinary people like you and me and everybody reading this review start treating the natural environment of our planet like we love it and need and it worship it because individual people can make a crucial difference in the life of a child or of an expanse of wilderness and its (human and non-human) inhabitants. |
Reviewed by: Rebecca Nesvet |
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