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Directed by
Daniel
Ghossain
Assistant
Director
Lisa
Pickup
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The
Central Space Theatre
31
January- 16 February 2002 |
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Thirsty Dog Theatre's
production of two rarely-seen Pirandello
plays, The
Vice and The
Doctors Duty, benefit from the
intimacy and simplicity of the Central
Space.
The
Vice is a short piece about a
wife's infidelity and its consequences,
and The Doctors
Duty is a short piece about a
husband's infidelity and its consequences.
They naturally fit well together, and
well illustrate the usual double standard
towards wives' and husbands' actions.
The cast made
sterling efforts at rendering Pirandello's
emotionally-charged world, but did not
quite succeed in manufacturing the required
chemistry between the principals. Emotions
were stinted, lines were rushed, some
of the acting was wooden. The redeeming
feature was Jimmy Flynn's Andrea in
The Vice
which even though not perhaps sufficiently
supercharged emotionally, was compelling
to watch. He also plays Tommaso in
Doctors
Duty, bring depth to the moral
dilemma involved.
The impression
given by the production overall was
that it mimicked a daytime TV soap rather
than exploring and revealing real life.
This was especially so in The
Vice's portrayal of the relationship
between Giulia and Antonio (played by
Margaret Moore and Grant Davies). Their
interactions never quite seemed to be
essential or true, which is what was
needed to elicit the poignancy of their
situation. In both plays Pirandello
reminds us that things are never quite
as clear as they initially seem; but
the significance of the insight is lost
beneath the insufficiency of the acting.
Elizabeth Shenton |
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