Sydney Reviews

Left – Catherine Davies, Kevin Kiernan-Molloy and Julia Billington. Cover – Kevin Kiernan-Molloy and Catherine Davies. Photos – John Feely

Cut Snake is an absolutely joyous show. It’s a hard show not to describe simply in superlatives. It is marvellous. It is spectacular. It is brilliant. And it is magical, because it is sincere. Cut Snake is a very silly show, but it is not an empty one. Underneath the theatricality, there is something very real and vulnerable – something deeply touching.

The show revolves around three friends – Jumper (Kevin Kiernan-Molloy), Kiki Coriander (Catherine Davies), and Bob (Julia Billington). When Jumper dies in a bus crash on a Contiki tour in Europasia, Kiki and Bob are both horribly sad. They get on with their lives. Kiki takes Jumper’s pet snake Trix on a two year cabaret world tour and climbs Mt Kilimanjaro with a bearded lady and a band of gypsies. Bob gets married, has kids, has a grandson, has a heart attack, has another heart attack, and dies. But neither can quite forget their old friend Jumper, whom they both loved so very deeply. And then one day Bob sees a fairy and invents time travel...

There are many layers to Cut Snake, but there is also an easiness to it, a sort of jubilation. It knows it is complex, but it does not self-importantly dwell on it. This is such a joyful piece of theatre. I don’t mean that it’s saccharine or uplifting in a greeting card sort of way, but that it’s energetic. It’s lively. It’s vivacious. Davies bounds round the stage as Kiki. Kiernan-Molloy twitches in that way peculiar to teenage boys. Billington narrates the whole affair with a sort of lovable solemnity. Stories upon stories unfurl like flags. Kiki dances a tango on the top of Mt Kilimanjaro. Bob fishes in the lake with his grandson. Jumper lives and dies and lives and dies again. We laugh and gasp and laugh again and for a brief moment, we might cry. Cut Snake is wonderfully, charmingly, joyfully alive.

I would be remiss not to mention the outstanding physical work done by the actors in this production. Paige Rattray has directed a taut but demanding show, and the three cast members are equal to it. Their energies and abilities are seemingly boundless. Cut Snake calls for an incredible versatility, and it is a challenge that Kiernan-Molloy, Davies and Billington all live up to. They perform the hugely difficult physical work with apparent ease, play the guitar, perform as and with a talking snake, and bring their own strange and wonderful characters to life. Together, they are extraordinary.

Cut Snake is comic and tragic and dramatic and absurd all at once. The reason it can be all these things and work is because it is genuine. It is a strange show, but its strangeness is not a deliberately engineered wackiness. Instead, it is a sort of organic weirdness growing out of a very real heart: at its core, this show is about love and friendship and being extraordinary and the small things that make people close. It’s the kind of show that leaves you feeling energised as you walk out. You have laughed. You have cried. You have laughed some more. And you feel alive.
 

Arthur & Tamarama Rock Surfers Theatre company present
CUT SNAKE
by Amelia Evans and Dan Giovannoni

Director Paige Rattray

Venue: The Bondi Pavilion Theatre | Bondi Beach (1 Queen Elizabeth Drive, Bondi Beach)
Dates: March 12th – March 23rd 2013
Time: 8.00pm
Tickets: $25
Bookings: http://rocksurfers.org/cut-snake/