One of those shows that I went to just on spec, without much of a sense as to what it'd be like. On Friday, an email had gone around from the MS social club advertising free tickets, and since I didn't have plans for Saturday night and it looked interesting, I put my name down, ringing Swee Leng in since they were double-passes.
The premise is this: in some place, at some time in an unspecified but presumably not too distant future, a city has been largely destroyed by invasion and bombing, aggressors also unspecified. The extent of the ruinedness is laid out for us in the opening monologue by a sinister man in a buttoned-down dark suit, standing partially in shadow, likening the topography of the city to a decapitated head while illustrating this by tracing outlines on his own face (shattered gravestones to the north, the cries of the refugees to be heard in the stadium in the south, and so on) - and is capped off by the man's deadpan continuation to the effect that 'the company' is pleased to offer this unique investment opportunity to its investors, and suddenly the nightmarish litany of the city burning by night and shuddering itself apart by day simultaneous takes on a hue which is a different and darker shade of black, and reveals the sharp edge of its social commentary.
We learn that the man in the black suit is named Aschenbrenner, and that he is the head of the mentioned company, which is selling property - and dreams - on the surface of a ruined city. His second in command, Anton, has been forging Aschenbrenner's signature on documents, and he is humiliated and dismissed by Aschenbrenner early on; much of the rest of the play chronicles Anton's subsequent mental disintegration, which is paralleled by the collapse of the tenuous order that has been established by the military in the city below, as insurgents revolt against their imposed rule. Anton is married to Thekla, a highly-strung and only moderately successful pianist, and the couple have purchased and developed in lavish style one of the city properties. Then there's Greta, Thekla's decadently rich mother, who keeps a pretty boy, Oskar (who grew up with Thekla and still carries a torch for her), for amusement; and rounding out the company is Manuela, a student of Thekla's.
All of the action of the play takes place behind a row of glass panels dividing the players from the audience. This division serves primarily to dramatise the way in which the characters are all sealed off from the city below them, and, in so doing, builds a sense of unease in the audience (who's watching who?), not least as it becomes progressively more smeared as the play goes on, and it also serves a dramatic function at times (people are pressed up against it, use it to support themselves as they sit on a non-existent piano stool, and once, memorably, drool saliva down it and allow that saliva to mingle with the hair on their naked belly as they continue to converse). Sets are moody and effective - lots of green lighting to evoke night-time, much in the way of shadows and smoke - and the props are effective and integral (a piano, a birch tree, a lobster, a strap from which to hang oneself).
There are really two main threads to it: the narrative of corporate rapaciousness in respect of the destroyed city (and the haste to capitalise - word deliberately chosen - on the human tragedy and destruction of history); and that of Anton's descent into what appears to be a complete schizophrenic breakdown. Swee Leng focused very much more on the first thread and, once she'd pointed it out, the parallels with the situation in Iraq weren't hard to see (putting another gloss on the screen between us and the players - cf Baudrillard - and also spinning the title, "Eldorado" - ie, 'city of gold' - in a new way given that oil is, natch, often known as black gold...). I thought that that element was certainly a major part of it, but my attention was more captured by the Kafka-like downwards trajectory of Anton, dramatised on stage by the device of sometimes having the other actors actually act in the way that Anton perceives them (taking on the guise of lobsters or fish - a reference back to the initiating trauma of his dismissal from the company), which is weird and effective (in a similar, if anything more extreme vein, is having the student mournfully sing a few lines from "Heart Of Glass", then to be joined by all four of the players bar Aschenbrenner standing absolutely still in a row across the stage, intoning that "ooooh-oooh-ooh-oooh" over and over, turning it into a deadpan dirge).
All of that left us both a bit confused at play's end - while it had been an interesting ride, it seemed, straight after, ultimately undermined by its messiness and general all-over-the-placeness...the threads didn't seem to be satisfyingly tied together, either throughout the play or at its end. I still feel that that initial impression was fair enough, but now, with a day's distance on the play, it seems more coherent than we gave it credit for in the immediate aftermath - maybe I've since had time to fill in some of the gaps, or something. The overall sense of nightmarishness which it invokes from the very beginning and sustains so well is maybe the thing which unifies the two threads over and above their plot-based connection (and parallels)...it's quite a visceral play, but it also works strongly on the imagination, and it's often funny in a way which makes one feel uneasy - and, at its centre but never thrust upon the audience, sits a rather uncompromising love story.
Anyway, Eldorado is by a German playwright named Marius von Mayenburg, and apparently this is its English-language premiere run. Directed by Benedict Andrew, cast is Gillian Jones, Robert Menzies, Hamish Michael, Bojana Novakovic, Greg Stone and Alison Whyte - apparently at least a couple of them are quite well known, but I'm not really up with tv/theatre figures, especially Australian ones. I'd like to get my hands on a translation of the text of the play, though it seems unlikely that there's any such thing in the stores...in its shadowy, unsettling way, I think that it'll stick with me.
