Image credit: Photox - Canberra Photography Services
Yasmina Reza's 2006 comedy is a challenging piece - it's a real-time one-act comedy with no obvious jokes in any of the dialogue, which seems to go out of its way to start after the most obviously dramatic events of its premise have passed (two couples meet after the son of one has injured the son of another in a fight - by the time we meet them, they've already come to an agreement and are fine tuning the final wording on a joint statement). What follows is coffee, Clafoutis and a degeneration into chaos as small differences escalate into major battles and the seemingly sophisticated parents are reduce to their most savage instincts. There's all varieties of bad behaviour, from incessent mobile phone interruptions through petty snobbery to a few violent interractions, as the veneer of civilization is shown to be perilously thin.
Jordan Best directs this in a fine manner, managing the pace between the slow builds up of tension and the sudden explosions into violent outbursts. All four performers are at the top of their game - Lainie Hart as the wife nursing long-held grudges, Jim Adamik as the one preoccupied with his mobile phone, sublimely dismissive and arrogant, Carolyn Eccles as the most precious of the group, self-confessedly utterly humourless (and all the funnier for it), and Josh Wiseman as the solicitously friendly one, infuriatingly capable of seeing all sides of the argument. There's not a wrong note in the under 90 minute running time - the quartet plays this material to perfection, bringing out the character's foibles, agressions, defensiveness and pretentiouns in full glorious display.
This is a great wrapup to the year, seeing a quartet of great actors getting a chance to play with material that allows them to play the full gamut from genteel politeness to mind-boggling rage, and it's a capstone on a great year of local theatre. Catch it while you can!
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