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POSTED: 06 SEPTEMBER 2011 And They Called Him Mr Glamour, by Gareth Davies | Directed by Thomas M Wright Black Lung Theatre & Whaling Firm & Belvoir | Belvoir Downstairs, Surry Hills, Sydney | Until 9 October Black Lung Theatre emerged from Melbourne’s independent theatre scene in 2006 as a collective of performers, musicians and writers. In Gareth Davies’ self-penned one-man show we have the story of Mr Glamour, a tragic individual who is extremely eccentric and totally lacking in self-esteem. There is no plot as such. Instead, we have a surreal and dark look at the life of an unhinged and isolated man who is emotionally fraught. His monologue darts between sensitivity and lunacy and charts an emotional journey into a dark underworld of his tortured psyche. Davies shares these intimate experiences in a chaotic narrative and, as an audience, we witness the lone demise of this individual as we move, without any particular structure, through Mr Glamour’s insecurities. Davies positions himself to maximise audience reaction and invites the audience to acknowledge and even embrace their insecurities. The set design (Peter Trott) is worth the price of admission alone and becomes virtually a character in itself. Trott has created a self-contained environment — decrepit, with cigarette butts littering the ground, and decay and neglect evident in every detail. Kudos must also be given to Govin Ruben, the lighting designer, who has created a spectacular aerial cosmos. This cosmos is faded and intensified as the lighting strength reveals the changing moods of this most unpredictable character and his existential crisis. This experience is certainly a challenge to theatrical orthodoxies — a noir post-modern discord on all that we treasure and detest about theatre. As an audience we are showered with interesting ideas, but be warned, intentional manipulations of dramatic conventions do peel away decades of theatre-going expectations. The denouement, when it comes, is inevitable, completing the play with a simple, swift and wordless gesture. This is noble effort which shows some real brilliance and panache but one which left this reviewer with many unanswered questions. It is random, confronting, at one time improvised It is brave in so many ways Irreverent, unorthodox, awkward Experiment It is at times uneven but it is overflowing with promise and bravura
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All images: Heidren Lohr
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