The first play that I reviewed for vibewire.net was Blue Chair Theatreworks’ production Pass the Stapler, by Allan Kerr. I was extremely impressed with that play, and writer/director Kerr has since gone from strength to strength. Both Pass the Stapler and Tell Me I’m Beautiful are charmingly modern tales of the lives we all lead. Tell Me I’m Beautiful seems to have progressed somewhat in terms of the seriousness of the subject matter, dealing with fidelity, mortality and the characters’ satisfaction with their working lives.
Marisa and David Lonergan (Kate Buttery and Justin Bechtold respectively) are having marriage problems. And work problems. Oh, and there’s that odd lump that Marisa has found under her armpit. David is, to be frank, a man obsessed with his own needs. He has a troubled marriage with a wife who has apparently sacrificed much family good-will to marry him, and yet his eye wanders to Amazonian workmate Brigit Ibsen (Marit Ebbesen). His oafish colleague (the traditional cameo from Allan Kerr) isn’t helping much, encouraging him to think that Brigit is interested in him, and helping him to get drunk and disappoint his wife yet again by not calling her.
Brigit, however, is interested in another colleague - Peter McKeown (Johnny Flynn), who David can’t stand. Peter has a very minor role in Tell Me I’m Beautiful, used to highlight particularly important moments rather than to drive the storyline.
Thankfully, Marisa has the support of her younger brother Pasquale (Pat) Di Venuto (James Liotta) and his relatively new girlfriend Pasqualina Ciccone (Nicole Blyth). They are witness to a particularly ugly scene created by David at a Sunday night dinner party, serving to create more tension within the family.
Tell Me I’m Beautiful strays slightly from the straightforward structure of Pass the Stapler with some lovely repeated scenes, where the audience views the actual conversation, and then the conversation replete with the venom, innuendo, frustration and passion actually contained within the characters. This works beautifully in most cases, establishing much greater depth to both the characters and the plot. Pasqualina (Lina) and Pat’s original meeting in a video shop is a particularly lovely example of this, with Pasquale’s version consisting of Shakespearean repartee, as opposed to Lina’s memory of Pat’s slightly off-putting blokiness.
The only part of the play that didn’t really work as well as intended was the data projection scene with David and Brigit, an attempt at a variation on the repeated scene device. Firstly, as anyone who has used a data projector will be able to attest, no matter how meticulously set up they are, inevitably a height or direction adjustment is required (to say nothing of the noise involved with using a data projector in a small theatre). Secondly, the actors were very close to the audience at this point, whereas the projection was way at the back of stage, creating a distance which made the two seem somewhat disconnected. Thirdly, the very difference between this and the other repeated-scene plot device created a slightly uncomfortable difference. It would have provided for much more continuity if the same device had been employed throughout the work. The idea was great, and could perhaps have been made to work better, however the existing plot device was much more appropriate and poignant.
Allan Kerr and Kylie Trask are to be commended for their bold and insightful work with Tell Me I’m Beautiful. Kerr seems able to cut to the very heart of life with his writing, and brings out the best of a cast which consists of a combination of skill and promise. Kerr and Trask’s strong affiliation and appreciation for community theatre is evident, and there is no doubt that their work contributes in an important way to the arts in Melbourne. It would be lovely to see Allan’s works produced on a larger scale, as they would undoubtedly benefit from a larger performance space and increased budget. However, there is a certain smug satisfaction one acquires having been party to such an intimate performance as those at the Melbourne Trades Hall.