Brothers in Harm

THE WALLS of La Mama Theatre are about to get a pounding. Local playwright Tom Wright has created three disgustingly self-absorbed male siblings, thrown them in a room together and turned on the Bunsen burner.

The oldest brother is a tyrannical genius novelist, returning to make the lives of his siblings hell. Wright, who also directs his play Hideous Portraits, describes this character as a cross between a mad little crab and Patrick White. "White had that ability to write postcards to people saying, 'You are vile, vile, vile,' " says Wright.

In Hideous Portraits, Melba and Moncrieff, both actors, have been rattling around their ancestral home ever since the death of their parents, watched over by a wall of family photographs. They are the privately educated younger sons of a hardworking quarrymaster but, unlike their pioneering pop, have settled for a lifestyle that will preserve their patrician views of the world.

Wright sees the brothers as remnants of a fading Anglo culture, the sort he saw too much of during his brief student days at Melbourne University. "You can hardly recognise the Australian accent with some people. They have this Hamlet-like hopelessness and are not doing much with their lives other than exist in their heads."

Wright draws parallels between this intellectual impotence and the stilted, "neck up" syndrome of much Australian theatre. "A lot of theatre in Australia is conceived, directed and performed from the neck up," he says. "Everything else is cut off, including our sexuality."

Within the pressure cooker context of a family gathering, Hideous Portraits investigates the repression of masculine sexuality in our culture and the decline of a once-celebrated mind. Inspired by the Thomas Bernhard play Ritter, Dene, Voss, Wright's language is energetic and the performing style non-naturalistic. Although the characters are reprehensible, it is hoped that the audience will find them entertaining.

Hideous Portraits runs from 11 to 29 June at La Mama. Bookings: 9347 6948.