Experimental in form, intimate in emotion, and often oblique, re:group performance collective’s theatre productions stretch the possibilities of the artform to strange new places while telling small, personal stories. This is the fifth production from the collective to “mash theatre and moving-making together” and it’s the third that I’ve reviewed – and, as long as they keep doing what they’re doing, it won’t be the last. You couldn’t keep me away.
Coil was a kind of riff on what Sydney Theatre Company’s departing Artistic Director Kip Williams calls “cine-theatre”, utilising a combination of video and live performance to tell the tale of a dying video store. A live film element was also deployed in UFO, which utilised a set comprised of detailed miniatures to explore the gig economy during an alien first contact scenario. Now, there’s POV, which has taken over Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre. A three-hander with a cast of 36 unrehearsed actors (keep reading, it will make sense) this new show again utilises video, this time to look at the impact of mental illness on a modern family.
But there’s an added twist – one that means the performance reviewed here is not the performance audiences will see on any other night, and not just in the regular live theatre sense. Two thirds of POV’s cast are fresh and unrehearsed for every performance – going in only lightly prepared and guided through the story, much as the audience is, by our, uh, point of view character, Bub.
Bub, played by Mabelle Rose on opening night (who alternates in the role with Edie Whitehead) is a precocious 11-year-old girl who is making a documentary with a video camera that was an extravagant gift from her father to make up for forgetting her birthday. What’s her documentary about? Ostensibly, it’s about her mother’s upcoming ceramics exhibition – but it's more so about her mother’s increasingly erratic behaviour.
It's important to note that the actors playing Bub’s parents – on opening night that was Tom Conroy (Belvoir’s Holding the Man) and Vaishnavi Suryaprakash (Nayika: A Dancing Girl) – are essentially going in blind, being guided and directed in real time by Bub. There’s a lot of improvisation involved, and both the actors and the audience need to trust that we’ll wind up where we need to by the time the curtain falls.
It takes a game and nimble performer to pull this off, and both Conroy and Suryaprakash excelled in their roles. We can assume that the other brave performers stepping in will hold their own too. The list includes (deep breath) Violette Ayad, Danny Ball, Nicholas Brown, Michael Cullen, Gareth Davies, Chloé Déchery, Eden Falk, Eamon Flack, Charlie Garber, Janie Gibson, Harriet Gillies, Benedict Hardie, Lucy Heffernan, Nikki Heywood, Michael Ho, Shelly Lauman, Ewen Leslie, Rose Maher, Rebecca Massey, Harry McGee, Katia Molino, Zindzi Okenyo, Tony Osborne, Ella Prince, Duncan Ragg, Julia Robertson, Grace Rouvray, Charlotte Salusinszky, Jack Scott, Yael Stone, Simon Vaughan, Tim Walker, and Jane Watt.
They’re in safe hands with Mabelle Rose (and presumably Edie Whitehead as well) in the demanding role of Bub, who essentially orchestrates the drama, corralling both the cast and the audience to make her film. To fully engage with the work and what she’s doing in it, audience participation (yes, that dreaded phrase) is involved. The stage is kept minimal to facilitate this – a couple of chairs, an air mattress, a section of dolly track, and a few screens scattered about, on which we view the feed from her video camera.
POV is a very, very funny play. There’s a lot of laughs to be had as the performers get into the groove, finding a handle on their characters and taking direction on the fly. There’s also a terrific running bit of business with revered and eccentric filmmaker Werner Herzog, whose exact presence in the story it’d be a shame to spoil. There’s a nervousness to the laughter, though – both from the inherent tension of live improv, and the fact that we’ve been warned by the play’s content advice to expect to wind up in some dark and potentially troubling places. The experience is a lot of fun as viewers/participants, but while we laugh, we must wonder: when and how will things take a turn for the sombre?
Happily, re:group – in this case that’s Mark Rogers, Solomon Thomas, Malcolm Whittaker, Steve Wilson-Alexander, and Carly Young sharing the bulk of the creative duties – bring it home beautifully. This is a company worth keeping a close eye on. They’re clearly comfortable working on a low budget (POV was reportedly staged on a mere $2,500) and their lo-fi DIY ethos has so far paid huge creative dividends – but re:group will surely be painting on a larger canvas before too long. Get along to POV for some of that “before they were famous” cred.
POV is playing in the Downstairs Theatre at Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills, as part of the 25A program until June 16, 2024. Tickets are $25 and you can snap them up over here.
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