Left – Taylor Ferguson and Sara Wiseman. Cover – Sara Wiseman, Judith Gibson and Mia Evans Rorris. Photos – Clare HawleyNo moot point that the main point in seeing The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is watching Matilda Ridgeway as the mute Marlene.
An early play of Rainer Warner Fassbinder from his time at The Munich Action Theatre or anti theatre, the writer turned it into one of his earliest film successes in 1972.
Like much of Fassbinder’s writing, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is anchored in artifice, stylization and realism, a theatrical cocktail that needs to be carefully concocted for the mix to work.
Like the gin and tonics mixed during the play, the production reels from finesse to slapdash and often is as flat as the stage Tattinger which is served to seduce and celebrate.
As played by Sara Wiseman, Petra von Kant certainly lives up to her name. A conniving, manipulating, narcissist, a fashionista feminazi, the personification of the exploitation of woman by woman.
Marlene, in polite terms, is her dogsbody, but there is nothing polite about von Kant, and so, simply, in imploite parlance, she is Petra’s bitch, the classic secondary cog in the sado-masochist machine.
And Ridgeway is machine like, robotic in gait, mechanical in movement, immutable in facial expression yet demonstrably expressive in eyes, stillness and presence. Was silence and nuance ever so eloquent? Silence is golden in this performance, and Ridgeway is electric to watch, whether walking on tip-toe in high heels, clomping in obvious but muted disdain, fixing a drink or sitting at her work station. Like hiding in plain sight, she projects the epitome of the public eavesdropper.
Between Ridgeway and Wiseman, the oxygen is pretty much sucked from the stage and Taylor Ferguson as Petra’s not so ingénue infatuation, Eloise Snape as her buddy Sidonie, a fellow follower of fashion with the dress sense of an haute couture clown, Mia Rorris as her brat daughter and Judith Gibson as her mother don’t get much time to breathe.
The set is sterile and perfunctory, a dull grey back brick wall, with make-up mirror chic and a sofa centre stage.
Take the bitter tears of Petra from the title and you're left with a fair idea of what to expect.
MopHead Productions in association with Red Line Productions
The Bitter Tear's of Petra von Kant
by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Directed by Shane Bosher
Venue: Old Fitz Theatre, 129 Dowling Street (Cnr Cathedral Street), Woolloomooloo
Dates: 11 October – 12 November 2016
Tickets: $38 – $28
Bookings: www.oldfitztheatre.com/thebittertearsofpetravonkant
