Performance theatre is often most effective in the context of a paired back stage and minimal props. In Monster – Directed by Kim Hardwick – a talented cast give compelling performances and bring Duncan Macmillan’s cracker of a script to life. This is the first time his characters have come to Sydney, and the intimate setting of KXT Theatre in Broadway was the perfectly suited venue to see them play out. Audience members bear witness to the type of theatre in which the flicker of a flame sparked makes a room to hold its breath, and a small box on the dinner table transforms the promise of engagement into a complex and foreboding omen.
The “Monster” in Macmillan’s play is seemingly clear from the moment that stage lighting illuminates the youngest face of the cast. Campbell Parsons is electrifying as Darryl, a budding psychopath who speaks with convincing intensity about burning buildings, setting off fire extinguishers and playing with knives. Darryl idolises notoriously evil figures like Charles Manson and Jack the Ripper and informs his new teacher Tom (Tony J Black) – or as he calls him – “Agency” that he has aspirations to be just like these people one day. Daryll seems to have an eerie level of unspoken insight into his situation, and Parsons – as an actor – is able to use physicality and tone to accurately command the audience’s attention.
Darryl is a child whose pain has rendered him so incapable of anything productive beyond creating a spectacle of it. He exposes his new teacher’s vulnerabilities with ease; collecting them as ammunition to be inflicted at the right time. Black holds the character of the frustrated teacher well, and when he is regrettably drawn into comments about his race and level of affluence, it is clear that Darryl has successfully projected his own feelings of difference and shame onto his next unwitting victim. Darryl’s feelings seem to be so unbearable that even his Nan is not safe, evident by a moment in which he expresses to Tom that he fantasises about stabbing her in the back when she cooks his dinner each night.
The themes in this play are not for the faint of heart. Mental illness, social class, trauma and despair bounce around the room, as the stellar acting exposes the machinations of truly flawed people. Grey areas in moral culpability are explored, and when new characters enters the stage, they serve only to ask more questions than to answer them.
Tom’s soon to be wife Jodie (Romney Hamilton), as well as Darryl’s Nan ‘Ms Clarke’ or Rita (Linda Nicholls-Gidley), both do justice to the part of people who are trapped and out of their depth. Rita’s constant and fraught attempts to avoid associations with her surname – or to take any accountability for her grandson’s behaviour – are revealing aspects of the script. It is clear that despite being lonely, Rita does not want to be bound to the responsibility with which she is endowed, and she instead chooses to find what little solace she can in her “faith”. Her partner Carl – who only ever appears as a name in this play – is a character that seems to supersede all evil that Darryl mentions he is capable of to Tom.
There are glimmers of hope and humour in the performance and in one scene, Darryl hints of the notion that a child who has been written off as “inherently bad” may perhaps be capable of empathy (or at very least guilt) if someone were to truly care for him. However, what follows this scene adds an even greater depth to the plot, in the idea that people can inflict ferocious pain onto others when their own has gone completely unchecked.
In its intimate exploration of familiar but profound themes, this is a play – and venue – that allows for a communion of thought from an invested audience. The Director and cast treat the subject matter with respect, which means the themes are capable of reaching a thinking and feeling audience. It was – at some stages in this performance – difficult to avoid exchanging furtive glances with audience members on the opposite side, as they navigated their own visceral reactions to the many transfixing moments in the play.
More than ever, it is important that human beings continue to explore the puzzling moral issues within this play. Conversations ignited after this version of Monster are likely to spill out of the theatre bar and onto the streets well after the last scene. Don’t miss out on this one, and be sure to take a good friend or family member to yarn with after the show.
I give this one 4 stars (and a fantastic director)!
To book tickets to Monster , please visit https://www.kingsxtheatre.com/monster.
Photographer: Abraham de Souza
