| The True Story of Butterfish | Brisbane Powerhouse |
| Written by Jason Whittaker |
| Saturday, 03 October 2009 13:03 |
 The True Story of Butterfish offers questions of scale. Bigger isn’t always better. Curtis Holland, inexplicably to his Butterfish band mates, craves the anonymity and ordinariness of Kenmore. It’s an unremarkable slice of Brisbane suburbia, light years from the heady and hedonistic excesses of international music stardom. Celebrated Brisbane author Nick Earls gives us a suffocatingly small character study. Curtis makes friends over the fence: single mum Kate, whose dreams don’t extend beyond getting her two kids through school; the 17-year-old daughter growing up too fast; the emo son with the smart-alec iGen savvy. Meanwhile, he’s mourning in silence over the death of his father and reconnecting with the brother who resents his absence for dad’s agonising last months. Into this suburban sanctity storms Derek Frick, the cookie-cutter rock star and Butterfish front man, brought home by his own family tragedy but struggling with the sobriety demanded of Curtis’ rationalised new world. Only when he invades the stage, larger than life, does its size seem appropriate. And that’s the dilemma with this play: it’s a diminutive study on an over-sized canvas. The Powerhouse Theatre is a wonderful space, one of the few real assets of the Brisbane arts scene. But it’s not a great theatre venue, and Earls’ characters – fully-formed, certainly – have far too much room to breathe. The story goes that Earls had struck a partnership with the cross-town La Boite company to stage his first attempt at playwriting (La Boite has adapted a number of his novels in the past) in the more confined Roundhouse Theatre. But with a new regime and tighter purse strings the production fell out of development. Brisbane Powerhouse Director Andrew Ross picked up the concept and developed the work for this year’s Brisbane Festival. The production is flawed. The expansive, open stage is sparsely furnished for each scene – a couch, a kitchen bench, a piano – wheeled into place by the cast and a couple of stagehands in well-choreographed but fairly clunky scene changes. Ben Hughes’ lighting can’t hope to create intimacy in such a big space; it’s harsh and unforgiving and draws eyes away from the actors to the busy, unconcealed wings. Lawrence English’s sound design tries to fill the emptiness with background hustle and bustle, but it only makes the audience strain harder to pick up the unamplified actors. Some scenes are barely audible, the performers at times over-reach to be heard, and the intimacy of the relationships is lost. Tragically, the wit and sensitivity of Earls’ words simply evaporate into the void. The character of Curtis is a difficult stage creature, too. He is emotionally blank on the surface, with good reason, but Myles Pollard really struggles to endear him to the audience as a result. The NIDA graduate is lifeless on stage, sleepwalking through most scenes, staring blankly at the rest of the cast. It might befit the character’s state of mind but was never going to work in the warehouse space. There are no bad performers here. Penny Harpham and Jason McLaren are bright sparks as eyes-widening teenagers Annaliese and Mark. Nathaniel Dean, a terrific actor with an AFI award for the brilliant Walking on Water, juggles the dual roles of the brother (mercifully refusing to play Patrick’s homosexuality for laughs) and sozzled rock star Derek without dropping a ball. And Caroline Brazier is a really charming Kate, grounding the story in the sort of suburban familiarity that Earls ultimately covets. What’s satisfying about The True Story of Butterfish, which Earls wrote in sync with the well-reviewed novel, is that it’s such a strong text. Brisbane theatre-goers have seen too many plays this year that aren’t held together by good writing. It’s an amiable Brisbane yarn that deserved better treatment. Brisbane Powerhouse & Brisbane Festival 2009 present THE TRUE STORY OF BUTTERFISH by Nick Earls Venue: Powerhouse Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, 119 Lamington Street, NEW FARM Dates: Thur 1 – Sunday 25 October 2009 Times: Sun, Tue & Wed 6.30pm, Thu – Fri 7.30pm and Sat 2pm + 7.30pm Tickets:Opening Night $55 All Tickets, All other dates $46(f)/$38(c), $35 (s/g) $35(Groups 6+) Bookings: 07 3358 8600 or brisbanepowerhouse.org
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On the whole I enjoyed this production. Quite amusing dialogue, but I didn't connect with any of the characters, least of all Curtis.
To me, Nathaniel Dean didn't really hit his stride until after the interval, but perhaps this was just opening night nerves. The similarity of the Butterfish boys' family tragedies was a bit trite, as was the happening ending. (No, I've not read the novel.) The youngsters were both fabulous - definitely ones to watch, particularly the divine voice of Penny Harpham. I loved Robert Forster's song and listening to his vocals throughout the production was a delight. On the topic of music, hearing all the old Brisbane music before the show began brought wonderful memories flooding back. (Small World Experience - whatever happened to them?) Butterfish is an enjoyable Brisbane-centric show, just as you'd expect from Earls.
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October 03, 2009
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I went to this play mostly because I had read the book (although I wished I didn't read it prior to seeing the play, but was curious to how different it would be structurally between the novel and the play, and also since I have become slightly associated with Nick Earls, through him encouraging me to write, telling me that I can indeed write and giving me advice on how to do it and how to get success, so it was a form of saying thank you from my perspective.
Anyway, from what I saw, it was indeed fairly clunky, both the play (especially in the second half, and I would suspect some rewrites would need to be done by Nick if he so wishes to), and the scene changes and sound and lighting definitely needed some more attention to. Script wise, it seemed like a novel was being read out, very wordy and slightly bland and thought would've been more successful as a film. To me it failed as a play. I got talking to some of the cast and their associates after the play and found out quite a bit of dialogue had been cut out, plus the ending was a bit sudden and unexpected. I was seriously thinking there was going to be at least another 10 minutes in the second half. Tech wise, it was quite clunky, the constant scene changes weren't done all that well to the point of being quite annoying and distracting from the main show, plus there were a little bit too many of them. Zigzag Street the play had several locations in it but it was done far more simple and was in fact quite clever, by asking the audience to use their imagination in some scenes. It was also hard to hear at times too. For a professional play, I found it quite sub-standard. Some amateur plays I've seen have been done better than what was done on the opening night of Butterfish. Still, overall, it was a reasonable night out, during interval, the audience seemed buzzing, a few hovered around Nick for autographs and chats. Performance wise, overall, the stand out I thought was Nathaniel Dean, he did a very good job of his two characters, Derek and Patrick. The weakest I thought was Myles Pollard, which is quite unfortunate as he has done excellent performances in past television shows.
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October 31, 2009
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