The Mercy Seat

The Mercy Seat
Neil LaBute
Red Stitch
Until March 8

Neil LaBute is one of those playwrights that everyone freaking raves about right now. Along with David Harrower, Howard Barker and Martin Crimp he’s one of the top names to throw into pretentious foyer conversation for a short cut to contemporary theatre aficionado cred. These are the names you see on the marquees at the flagships and so these are the names that you see at Red Stitch.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Red Stitch, I really do. Those guys have been going hard core all year every year since 2001 and you just gotta give it up for that. They’re some of the most talented young actors in town and the times they’ve done it right; by Christ they’ve done it right.

Neil LaBute’s The Mercy Seat however aint one of those times.

I doubt it’s giving away a great deal to note that its set in New York a day or two after the September 11 attacks. In a loft apartment a young executive agonizes over a decision to use the tragedy as a cover under which he can disappear, leaving his family for his boss who he’s been having a three year affair with.

Leaving aside the plays gross misappropriation of the murder of 3000 people to tell a turgid love triangle story, The Mercy Seat is far from imaginatively new ground. I mean, cheating on the wife with the boss? YAWN.

LaBute writes with that choppy, cut off half sentence style that the leading Australian theatre companies seem to think represents good writing these days – provided the writer has an American or English accent. So here’s Doc Episode’s regular whinge of the review: if an Australian playwright wrote this play it would be subjected to three dramaturgical workshops and a staged reading before being told that there was no room in the season for new Australian work. There are any number of Australian writers who can write as well as this so why don’t we stage them.

You could say ol’ Danny’s being parochial when he’d rather see new Australian writers being developed on the big stages, but Danny says it’s the Cultural Cringe and wonders when Australian Theatre is gonna grow the f*** up and take itself seriously.

Danny Episode