Sydney Reviews

Left – Jill McKay and Ash Flanders. Cover – Ash Flanders and Luke Mullins. Photos – Brett Boardman

A living room floats like an island at Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf 2 theatre – an arm chair, a fire place, a drinks trolley. On either side of the performance space, the backstage wings exposed, sits Sound Designer/Composer/Musician Steve Toulmin on one side and an easel (ready to support opening credits/the Assistant Stage manager’s used car advertisement) on the other. It’s all very simplistic, indicative of a movie set from 1950s: and it is easy to jump to that conclusion, but as with many things within Little Mercy, all is not what it seems.

Refined New England couple, theatre director, Roger (Luke Mullins) and his statuesque wife, Virginia (Ash Flanders) have it all, all, that is except what they truly long for: a child of their own. When, by chance, a letter from an orphanage is found behind the armchair, their wish is finally granted and little orphan Mercy (Jill McKay) enters their lives. But Mercy is not all that she seems – she’s not all sweetness and helium balloons…

Sisters Grimm, a developing collaboration between Ash Flanders and Declan Greene have created a multifaceted entertainment, brimming with irony, cinematic references, metanarratives, self referential and deeply cheeky. Taking the well worn roles and stock characters of vintage horror films, the art in this is not only in replication, but in anachronistic re-contextualising of gender roles, irreverent sexual references and intergenerational relationships. High camp, queer theatre invested in corrupting and destroying in order to remake the purest and most exemplary homage.

Violently and cheekily playful more than sinister, the true horror of Little Mercy revels how universal and all encompassing the indicators of our fears are: the slow and steady decline once your wish is granted. The fear of mental clarity, the loss of the one thing you took for granted, innocence being misplaced in youth.

Luke Mullins brachiates from role to role with commanding steely austerity befitting a German governess/ambitious musical theatre director. Ash Flanders swans and gasps beautifully – refined and elegant amid the inner and outer turmoil. Jill McKay is delightful and magnetic – her deep raspy voice sickeningly sweet. Director Declan Greene keeps all aspects of production sufficiently taut, reigning in the epic and inevitable collapse/destruction of Roger and Virginia’s life as it was.

Not only is the well understood world of “Bad Seed” genre film perfectly pitched and deliberately placed, the machinery around it – impressively designed by David Fleischer and thoughtfully managed by Assistant Stage Manager Roxzan Bowes – is also highly crafted, deconstructing the elements of theatrical device as the story unravels to its inexorable conclusion. The de-evolution of style, grace and order is well-measured, adventurous meta-theatrical chaos.

Little Mercy honours the genre via a well crafted and predictable trajectory but innovates sublimely in execution.

 
Sydney Theatre Company presents
Little Mercy
by Sisters Grimm

Created by Ash Flanders and Declan Greene

Venue: Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company, The Wharf, Pier 4, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay
Dates: 7 – 24 March 2013
Tickets: $25 – $30
Bookings: 02 9250 1777 | sydneytheatre.com.au