Asylum

Asylum

Kit Lazaroo

At La Mama

Until March 8

Reviewers are often charged that they have the power to make or break a play. That a bad review from Boydy or Croggon can sink a show with the potential audience. Danny tends to think this opinion is a romantic hang over from an imagined fifties Broadway that never even existed in Australia. But even were this so, there is little chance of a bad review from me having any affect on Asylum as it may already be sold out. After all, when you’re on the VCE list as a certain lighting designer told me, every night is schools night. Ah the surest way to the sweet success each of us strives for - cartloads of disaffected and disinterested teenagers who will sit mostly quietly through an evening at the theatre.

Perhaps this audience is the reason for the simplicity of the ideas contained within.

You may recall that Danny interviewed Ms Lazaroo way back when Asylum won her the Wal Cherry Play of the year. She told me back then that the play was based on the real life experiences of a woman she herself had met and we had a long discussion about the politics of asylum seekers in Australia at the time.

Well, the woman has gone from our shores as has the government that denied her right to be here, but the guilt lingers on in the fashionably left of left Melbourne theatre.

Though the play text itself is far from the worst thing I’ve seen this year, I can’t say I’m convinced it’s worthy of the proverbial swag of awards it’s collected on it’s way to stage. The characters are for my liking drawn too shallowly in favor of presenting the politics of the piece, which would be excusable to a certain extent if it weren’t the politics of the bleeding obvious. Asylum seekers should be allowed to stay in Australia if they want to cause the countries they’ve come from probably are pretty nasty. Wow, phew, thanks for setting me straight there with those cartoon sketches of bureaucracy you substituted for characters.

Not much more can be said of the direction either. Encouraging a kind of vaudevillian mugging from the actors doesn’t do the script any favors and though the transformative element of the set and the use of puppets were engaging to begin with, it rapidly becomes a sterling example of how quickly overuse of a good idea turns it into a bad one.

But what does Danny know, oh reasonable reader. You may perhaps like your politics served over easy with a side of ham, the rest of Australia certainly does. For mine however, I fear that I prefer complex issues to be presented with the complexity and seriousness they deserve. Be you left or right wing after all, over simplification of an issue is a sure way to fascism.

Danny Episode