Left – Sandy Gore & Luke Mullins. Cover – Tom Conroy & Luke Mullins. Photos by Brett BoardmanThe Greek tragedies continue to inspire playwrights. Following the enormous success of Medea last year, winning Best New Australian Work at the Sydney Theatre Awards for Kate Mulvany and Anne-Louise Sarks, now Kit Brookman has turned to one of the most enduring myths exploring the psychological complexities of family dynamics. Small and Tired is a study of grief within a family, loosely based on the tragedy of Agamemnon and his family.
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to the gods so that he can raise a fleet to attack Troy. His wife, Clytemnestra doesn’t forgive him, takes a lover, sends her son Orestes off to be raised by Pylades and murders Agamemnon on his return. Years later, egged on by Pylades, Orestes and his sister, Electra avenge their father’s death by murdering Clytemnestra. There’s a lot of high blown grief, rage and vengeance.
Writer/director Kit Brookman’s version is a contemporary, naturalistic and more redemptive story. Brookman presents us with a family that has never recovered from the suicide of one of the children 22 years earlier. Brookman has retained the original names but, unlike Greek Tragedy, no catharsis is achieved. The family doesn’t get to exact murderous revenge. Instead, Brookman depicts how that single terrible event reverberates down through the years so the past dominates the present and in which blame festers and resentments boil.
Blamed by Clytemnestra for Iphigenia’s suicide, Agamemnon was banished from the family. Orestes was dispatched to boarding school and his sister, Electra was kept at home to deal with her mother’s grief.
Grief and its aftershocks has shaped each of their lives and formed each of their characters. Twenty-two years later, when Agamemnon dies, the siblings and mother come together for a rare reunion and all three are like ticking bombs. Sandy Gore’s Clytemnestra towers with dignified, stifled emotion. “I either had to stop blaming or stop living,” she tells Orestes.
After years of delinquent behaviour, Electra is living with the decent, patient Jim (Paul Gleeson) in the outer suburbs. She has settled down but is still dominated by grief at the loss of her sister and father. Susan Prior gives a terrifying portrayal of Electra who presents a veneer of sweet brittleness that inevitably gives way to a tidal wave of anguish and fury.
Brookman has cast Luke Mullens as Orestes. He is guarded and shyly ironic and appears so fragile that he seems almost transparent. He is the perfect choice to play this damaged character who was never loved by his macho, military father and who was wrenched from his family at nine years old. And yet he radiates a nervous optimism that his family will yet be restored. He keeps trying to bring his mother and sister together and keeps chipping away at his mother’s inpenetrable guard.
Hope is also offered by Orestes’ boyfriend, Pylades (Tom Conroy) and Electra’s husband, Jim. Both are steady, emotionally confident and loving and act as a counterpoint to the damaged family. There’s a lovely, comic scene in which Jim, the salt of the earth, gives Pylades an enthusiast’s tour of his garden. It is too easy to slip into caricature in scenes like these, but Gleeson does it so well.
Mel Page’s set – a tufty lawn, dotted with daisies – reflects the overarching gardening metaphor in the play. Jim tends to his garden with love and care and it flourishes, but as Electra points out, the weeds should be given a chance to thrive as well.
This is a powerful new work, movingly rendered by a strong cast. Once or twice the actors struggled with overly long poetic descriptions, but the text in general is taut and spare and demonstrates a good sensitivity to the rhythms of the characters.
Belvoir presents
Small and Tired
by Kit Brookman
Director Kit Brookman
Venue: Belvoir St Theatre | 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills
Dates: 26 September – 20 October 2013
Tickets: $45 – $35
Bookings: 02 9699 3444 | belvoir.com.au
