Ranting Out Of Reality

INSANITY and genius are two qualities often associated with creative people, and often exploited successfully in the theatre. Characters who are inspired, crazy and unpredictable are far more fun and interesting than characters who fall within the accepted range of normalcy.

This precept has been exploited to great effect by Tom Wright in Hideous Portraits, his adaptation of Thomas Bernhard's play Ritter, Dene, Voss. The production, which also marks actor Wright's debut as a director, is a fast, eccentric, rant and rave of a show that has only the most fleeting relationship with reality.

Hideous Portraits is set in the Melbourne ancestral home of three neurotic and intellectually pretentious brothers. Melba and Moncrieff are actors involved in ridiculously arty shows who babble constantly about their craft, and nervously await the arrival at dinner of their famous philosopher brother, Burchett, who has just been released from a mental institution.

The three brothers are bound together in a seething mess of sibling rivalry, love, fear and loathing, which manifests in nervous, almost orgiastically affectatious philosophising and petty quibbling. Melba (Jerome Pride) and Moncrieff (Christoper Davis), who have lived a long time together like a pair of sparring old maids, have struck a precarious balance, but this evaporates when Burchett (Ben Rogan) descends the stairs to the dinner table and injects a solid dose of maniacal ravings and extravagant, unpredictable behavior.

This production is fantastic fun, a romp stuffed with brilliant language and some excellent slapstick. Wright has directed Hideous Portraits with intense discipline, and the actors perform their very exaggerated absurdist roles with relish and skill. This is an unpredictable production with a high level of nervous energy that not only challenges the audience but takes them along for the ride. There is an undercurrent of darkness in the play, which makes Hideous Portraits even sharper, but it avoids pathos and elects instead to occupy the dizzying world of hysteria, paranoia and mental agitation.