Steve Willems

The Collector is a harrowing tale about an emotionally stunted and lonely young man who abducts a young woman and keeps her locked in his basement. In this modified version of Mark Healy’s stage play, adapted from John Fowles’s 1963 novel of the same name, Frederick Clegg, an amateur entomologist, wins the lottery and uses his new wealth to buy an old country house a few hours from Sydney.

In the basement, he imprisons Miranda Grey, a young art student he stalks and then kidnaps after forming an obsession. Frederick plans to spend time with Miranda so she gets to know him and falls in love, but what follows is a haunting exploration of power, obsession, fear, loneliness, and dangerous delusion.

As I entered the tiny theatre in Redfern, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The stage stretches from wall to wall and takes up most of the room while the audience looks down on the set as if trapped in the basement along with the characters. This sense of immersion and intimacy worked to the play’s advantage. I was sitting in the front row, and several times, the performers almost stepped on my feet. Tigran Tovmasian, who plays Frederick, often stared me right in the eyes as he delivered his monologue just a meter away, which was both unsettling and intensely immersive. Frederick, not Tigran, was trying to make me understand.

Tigran was, without hyperbole, sensational. I was genuinely impressed by his embodiment of Frederick, from the tone of his voice to his body language. He almost had me feeling sympathetic. I couldn’t help but appreciate the tiny character details, such as nervously picking at his nails, picking at the table, slumped shoulders, and even his trembling lips during the intensely emotional moments. Underneath the awkward nervousness and polite frustration was a real sense of danger, and you fear what Frederick might be capable of.

This fear was convincingly embodied by AJ, playing Miranda Grey. Her performance carefully balanced Miranda’s complex emotional journey, moving between terror and isolation to anger and violence and the desperate attempts to manipulate Frederick into letting her go.

Ruby Busuttil’s direction wisely gave us several moments of laughter despite the heavy themes, with small jokes and absurd moments lifting the tension at the right moments without sacrificing the integrity of the drama or being disrespectful to the story. While bad directing is obvious, great directing isn’t usually noticeable because you get sucked into the narrative and everything just works. That’s what happened. It wasn’t super-flashy or overly dramatic or trying to show off. It just worked. Ruby also produced the play, bringing together a solid team that supported the performances.

Adrien Stark’s set design was impeccable, and his experience shows. The set itself represents three different spaces without needing a single set change, and it worked convincingly. Despite the theatre being tiny there was still plenty of room for the action to take place. Making use of the theatre’s own walls and pillars, Frederick’s basement was utterly convincing and didn’t look like a cheap theatre set. Everything from the furniture and set dressing to the props used by the characters were detailed and convincing. Supporting this fantastic set design and Alice Chao’s solid stage management was the impressive lighting and AV.

The lighting was beautifully crafted to represent the various spaces and time of day without being overbearing. It wasn’t stage lighting. It was film lighting, with the character’s faces often beautifully lit as if I was watching a movie. Isobel Rabbidge should be commended for their ability to create a truly immersive experience without drawing attention to the technical components of the play, including the correct balance of additional audio effects to support the changes in scenery. This can often be hard to achieve.

The accompanying music composed by Roger Ly generally worked well, although I felt it was a bit heavy-handed in the earlier monologues and distracted me from the performance. But part from this the music was a strong addition to the emotional content and tension of the performance.

The only real weakness of the entire production was the script. It does drag a little from time to time, repeating itself or not diving deep enough into the darker emotional journeys from the novel. But that has nothing to do with this production or its team.

All in all, The Collector is the best produced play I’ve seen this year, and I highly recommend you ‘catch it’ before it’s gone.

The Collector is showing at the Playhouse Theatre, inside The Actors Pulse in Redfern, Sydney, for a limited run until December 1st.

To book tickets to The Collector, please visit https://events.humanitix.com/the-collector

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