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POSTED: 30 MARCH 2009

Ladybird, by Vassily Sigarev

(B Sharp & Small Things Productions | Belvoir Street Theatre, Surry Hills, Sydney | Until 12 Apr)

Company B’s independent offshoot, B Sharp, has commenced its 2009 season with yet another piece of excellent, compelling, gritty theatre. In this case the grit is literal. It’s all over the place and often all over the actors.

Ladybird is a translation of playwright Vassily Sigarev’s 2004 piece about a group of disaffected youth balancing on the poverty line in his homeland Russia. B Sharp’s version has been localised to give immediacy to an Australian audience.

The themes are as relevant to modern Australia as they are to Russia — or the United States, or just about anywhere. Young people disillusioned with authority, their elders, and society in general — with little to rely on other than each other, or little to look forward to except what brief light they can find in a bleak and aimless existence.

Dima (Ian Meadows) and his alcoholic father (Slava Orel) — “The Waster”, as Dima refers to him — subsist in an apartment block that the sprawling city has deposited next to an old cemetery. Dima and his mates make whatever money they can from stealing and selling the metal grave markers, but supplies are running low. The locals refer to the area as “Dead and Alive”, and it’s easy to see how the two might occasionally get mixed up. This is end-of-the-line existence.

Dima is joining the army — there’s not much else to do — and is having a final get-together with his perpetually wasted mate Slavik (Eamon Farren, an actor who really knows how to play wasted!), his neighbour Lera (Sophie Ross), and her cousin Julia (Yael Stone), a privileged and supposedly naïve university student. Arkasha (Adam Booth), buyer of Dima’s stolen grave markers, is bringing the party supplies.

In spite of their grim determination to have a good time, hostility, violence and resentment simmers. First impressions of characters are turned upside down and no one avoids Sigarev’s pitch-black humour. The sense of hopelessness and inescapability of poverty’s vicious cycle is devastating.

Director Lee Lewis has drawn astonishingly potent performances from this company of actors. Sophie Ross is an absolute standout as the brittle, outwardly brash Lera. Ian Meadows’ Dima is heartbreakingly honest and painful, and Yael Stone’s skilful unfolding of the princess-like Julia’s darker layers is both comic and horrendous.

Belvoir Downstairs is a tiny space. For Ladybird, Justin Nardella’s set design makes it feels even more claustrophobic. Junk cascades from one corner and spills over the stage area, interspersed with flickering television monitors and the aforementioned mountain of grit (okay, gravel). While very effective, I did keep wincing for the actors as they traversed the piles, and fervently hoped no one would get injured.

At face value, Ladybird looks a depressing, dispiriting experience. Surprisingly, this is not so. It’s often darkly hilarious, the human spirit endures, and, despite it all, there are glimmers of hope, fragile as a ladybird but just as miraculous.