THEATRE REVIEW

This latest addition to The Brainbox Project's output is at the downstairs theatre where it sits neatly amongst the supper theatregoers.

Neil LaBlute’s play is quoted as being a relationship play and it is most certainly that, with little room for ‘extraneous’ themes about global warfare, and good family values. LaBlute’s work ranges from stage to screen with In The Company of Men being a well known work of his.

I mention this as I feel that The Mercy Seat has a strong cinematic pull. With its references to the apocalyptic backdrop of the World Trade Center bombing, this script neatly holds back from the cinematic necessity through a forceful energy generated between the two characters.

With his marriage and family in the balance, Ben (Paul Barry) hides out in his lover and boss’ apartment to decide his fate. New bride or no lover?

Abby (Rebecca Davis) is welcoming his decision to join her as a fulltime live-in lover with the proviso he admits to his wife he has left her and the children for such a relationship.

With its ‘moody congestion’ of a tonal and evocative set, the intense engagement of the characters is carried out with great verve by Barry and Davis. The centerpiece sofa is the pivotal stage piece where metaphorically the one upmanship between these two lovers takes place, and is craftily created by the directorial team.

The steamy and wanting aspects of their three year sex life is explored with some neat and clever staging by co directors Michael McCall and Belinda Dunbar within a restricted thrust stage. I would offer that a two-hander requires quieter ferocity, although Paul Barry has moments of spontaneous brilliance.

Davis delivers her dialogue with poignancy, yet the script is lacking to support more than a recalcitrant relationship and this wears thin on more than one occasion. The sexes battleground between them, which, as Abby points out, she has reiterated ‘1 000 times’ forces us to observe too much intense engagement happening every ten minutes for any one to plausibly think this is a relationship that has weight.

Also it has some drawbacks for the perceived shallow nature in this relationship which is about the enticement of Abby’s thighs compared to his two young daughters faces, and makes you recoil from its lack of integrity more times than not.

The dilemma seems to sideswipe the importance of major global events in this 21st century which impact heavily on our day to day lives, so the play makes us beg the question - are we victims of circumstance, or piranhas of change?

Downstairs at the Maj, His Majesty's Theatre, Perth. Until September 13, Tues-Thur 7.30pm; Fri and Sat 8.30pm. Tickets $40, conc. $35, from BOCS.