Photo Mimi KellyIn the wake of exciting showcases in Sydney of new short plays such as Brand Spanking New and Off the Shelf, it is pleasing to see that Sydney Ghost Stories is a selection with a difference rather than just more of the same, being organised around a single theme or loose genre, as its rather self-explanatory title would suggest.
These six new short plays are performed by different combinations of the same six actors and penned by six separate writers (number of the beast, anyone?). The evening begins with a rather choice bit of theatrical yarn-spinning as actor Jamie McGregor tells us some tall tales of ghostly encounters in the Old Fitz theatre itself in an introduction by Toby Schmitz, who also penned the first play that immediately follows. It gets the evening off to a good start with the immediacy of relaying spooky encounters in the very space in which you are sitting, and is a nice launching pad for the disparate pieces to come.
In describing the half dozen plays that make up this grab-bag of chills and creep-outs, one can’t really give too much away without spoiling the effect, but suffice it to say that each story is true to its brief in approaching the idea of a “ghost story” in their own individual ways.
Schmitz’s The Point of the Story gives a modern, internalised twist to the idea of a haunting, exploring a man and a woman’s respective preoccupations with murder and the potentially dangerous effects of watching too many CSI-style shows. It is engrossing, unexpected, and one of the stronger pieces of the night, and draws unnerving performances from Matthew Walker and Jeneffa Soldatic.
Ibis by Lachlan Philpott threw things into a far more esoteric realm, with an occasionally confusing but eerie tale that puts a curious spin on that old young-couple-buys-haunted-house chestnut. Despite good performances by Soldatic, Joe Manning and Catherine Terracini, the piece lagged at times.
The tension was ratcheted up several notches by Verity Laughton’s intriguing Ghostie, in which two young men creep around a possibly haunted house in the hopes of getting scared, horny or both. It is a tale built on lies, uncertainty and the power of suggestion, with a prevailing ambiguity that leaves all the things that go bump in the night deliciously unresolved as to their supernatural or psychological causes. Blessed with Laughton’s fine dialogue, Jamie Irvine and Walker make for a very believable, engaging duo.
After interval came arguably the weakest play of the evening, which is a shame, because it actually had one of the most entertaining ideas as its premise. Depicting a clash of two different worlds, Tobsha Learner’s Black Wedding brings the members of a Goth band face-to-face with their subject matter in a fun style that recalls classic episodes of The Twilight Zone. Learner’s execution, however, is unpolished and overlong at every turn, eschewing what appear to be good impulses towards subtlety in favour of excessive dialogue. The audience was already well ahead of the characters without the need for so much bludgeoning exposition. Soldatic, Terracini and Walker do their best with what they have, creating some effective touches here and there.
By contrast, Escape Pod by Rebecca Clarke is elusive, engrossing and deftly handled, and is one of the better plays in the group, presenting an outsider brought into a family with a supernatural crisis simmering just out of sight. Although the ending is a little abrupt and unclear, it is a very atmospheric work with well drawn characters who contribute as much to the sense of menace in the story as do any possible malign spirits. McGregor, Manning and Terracini are each excellent in their best performances of the night.
Rounding out the evening is the idiosyncratic Act 2 by Stephen Sewell. Predictably bleak, it is a metatheatrical psychodrama that is as much about dreams, madness and art as it is about ghosts in the conventional sense, in that we see a writer in the midst of an ontological crisis through four characters who may or may not be different versions of the same people. That’s not to say, however, that by being a brain-teaser the play is not spooky at the same time, which it most certainly is, ably brought to life (or afterlife) by the strong efforts of Walker, Terracini, Manning and Soldatic.
Although a mixed bag, the delight of theatrical smorgasbords such as these is that if something is not to your taste, there’s a good chance that it won’t be long before you get to bite into something more appealing to your theatrical palate. And while the focus is clearly on the diversity of the writers involved, this ghostly group of shorts also provides a nice platform for a promising sextet of actors who each get the opportunity to show their stuff in multiple roles.
Sydney Ghost Stories has its highs and lows, but is a good night out when all is said and done. Just hope that afterwards you’re not going home to an empty house…
Picture This Productions and Stories Like These present
Sydney Ghost Stories
by Lachlan Philpott, Rebecca Clarke, Stephen Sewell, Tobsha Learner, Toby Schmitz, Verity Laughton
Directors Katy Alexander, Dean Carey, Glenn Fraser,Toby Schmitz, Anthony Skuse
Venue: Tamarama Rock Surfers at The Old Fitzroy Theatre | cnr Cathedral & Dowling Sts Wooloomooloo
Dates: Nov 25 - Dec 20, 2009
Bookings: www.rocksurfers.org/sydneyghoststories
