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Leof Kingsford-Smith and Lucy Miller in Unit 46.

POSTED: 08 JUNE 2009

Unit 46, by Mick Barnes

(Factory Theatre, Marrickville, Sydney | Until 19 July)

Unit 46 is a nice idea that potentially should have plenty of appeal in a city teeming with apartments.

Residents in blocks, large and small, usually coexist pretty well and tend to just get on with their lives, largely oblivious to what’s happening across the corridor or on the next floor.

Occasionally, though, conflict is bound to arise and, obviously, there’ll sometimes be ample humour to be drawn from the situation, even if the participants don’t see anything funny in it at all.

Writer Mick Barnes’ and director Andrew Doyle’s construct of having two feuding dwellers live one above the other on adjacent floors, yet theatrically share the same space as they go about life — eating, drinking, sleeping, showering and soliloquising about their lot — works exceptionally well.

The problem is that the two inhabitants — Tim (Leof Kingsford-Smith) and Diane (Lucy Miller) — are stereotypical caricatures rather than well developed characters, and that they’re not particularly likable stereoptypes who the audience is likely to sympathise or identify with.

Tim is a pedantic former public servant who regularly checks his stools, does everything precisely and regularly by the clock, nitpicks grammar, and can’t get over his forced departure from the service as a result of having written “the perfect letter”. No wonder his wife left him.

Diane is a more tragic case. Her husband has left her for a younger woman and she sits alone in middle age, examining her vagina in the mirror, reflecting on past glories through the guise of the Greek goddess Persephone and yearning for someone to fill the void in her life. You just wish she’d do something about it.

As I said, a nice idea that’s well worth pursuing. But right now it’s still a work in progress. The bones are there. The characters just need some real flesh.