On the way to the theatre on a Sunday, the streets of Kings Cross are slightly stained with the night before’s rambunctious pursuits. The train station feels like a haunted bathroom, and in doorways are bottles in brown paper bags and hollowed out beggars loiter near the pizza shop.

At the Old Fitzroy pub, it feels like any Sunday afternoon – with the usual punters with pints and the half empty fridge and the weary kitchen staff scribbling down another request for chicken laksa. There’s the stale smell of beer, and cigarettes. And at 5pm the light is already fading… it’s a cosy, wintering day worthy of log fire and some casual theatre going.

As we line up and descend into the theatre, a beautiful woman, with her mouth gaffa taped shut, wearing a long white gown, embraces each and every one of us as we enter the space.

But its clear. This is not the Old Fitz as we know it. Hemmed by plastic, it’s like a dirty swimming pool -the seats are covered in plastic – there is something clinical and medical – yet dirty and sinister about the space. We sit three rows from the front – we are the first line of defense for the rest of the audience (its a small house this Sunday).

You won’t have seen anything like this at the Fitz.

I promise you.

The woman (Sarah Enright) and man (Simon Corfield) are involved in a cheeky game of push and pull – a seduction, a dance – a little rough, but not unkind. She blindfolds him, and leaves with a suitcase. Silence. Anticipation turns into suspicion: has he been abandoned? Where is she? Is she coming back? Why did she wind him up and then desert him? He calls again, and leaves an inquisitive voice mail message. He waits. He dials. Leaves another message – distraught. He waits. Dials. Another message – dark and desperate and frighted and angry – a black outpouring of ugly need left on a machine.

As the play progresses we are drawn into his transformation – he is shamed and emasculated… and so the dance continues. At time the fearless perpetrator of emotional and physical torture, he is rebuilt.

What I loved about this piece is that it utterly terrified me. The smiling circus/cabaret gave way to something much darker -emotional terrorism, sexual deviance, physical torture. For those who like their theatre calm and predictable, clean, wholesome and written with grand poetry – this is not the show for you. Instead, I found myself genuinely enthralled and very uncomfortable – as though my own safety was being genuinely threatened. Perhaps it was – there was a climb through the audience where one of my theatre going accomplices had her crotch on his face as she climbed through the audience. But more than that – there were moments where the fighting stopped and the banal or the everyday was let in. There was also, for me of a recognition in the characters – the profound hurt, the genuine desire to love/beloved/destroy and self-destruct.

This for me was not a show about sexual perversity, or extreme acts of subservience and bondage. This is about the level to which we terrorize those we desire -through withholding or forcing ourselves on them. You may find interesting Kevin Jackson’s review here or perhaps Jason Blake’s review here – there is more to this show than just a bit of gratuitous button pushing (of the live sound variety and the audience’s sensibilities) it’s a truly difficult experience as our imagination begins to drive us to the end of terror, then churns our stomachs and forces us to swallow epic, unexpected images of interpersonal, intimate destruction – of sex, of love.

The production is slick – and epic. Shannon Murphy has done a stunning job wrangling content and production – without losing the heart and humanity.

Where pain and horror brings the characters together through being locked in an intimacy only survival can offer – I must admit that after the show I too felt a degree of intimacy with those I had seen the show with, for we had emerged from the dungeon different to when we entered.

The lady who takes my pre-loved “ticket” when I descend the stairs at the Old Fitz, warns me to be careful where I tread when crossing the stage. Covered in scattered newspapers – fringed by piles and piles of clutter – the theatre is like the bottom of a budgie cage – except it’s not budgies that live here, there is hard (well, soft actually…) evidence that dogs inhabit this space.

A woman in a neck brace, a neck brace supported by a snooze cushion sleeps in a well-worn beige bed. A girl in torn cartoon pyjamas and a t-shirt emblazoned with “I’m about to do something AWESOME!” on it, scuffs around in old slippers, cracking opening a can of Chum, picking up sticky dog turds off the newspaper.

Nurse maid and bed fellow to her bitter, vulgar bed-ridden mother, Anna Robi dreams of a Doris Day fantasy wherein Roger- the anonymous heavy-breathing spam-slammer on the end of a cordless phone, rescues her from her life. Sexually frustrated, stuck in a stamp-licking day job she spends her time papering over the accidental pisses of her mother and a collection of mongrel dogs.

This is an incredible production of Maxine Mellor’s new play. Iain Sinclair has masterfully created a world of dank, desperate, grotesque horror. Designers Teegan Lee (Lighting), Steve Toulmin (Sound), Tobhiyah Feller (Set/Costume) with puppets (by Meg Ashforth & Jemima Snars) create an all too possible hell. Jeanette Cronin is horrifyingly compelling as Mother, and Stefanie Smith is brilliant as the trapped, naieve and enthusiastic Anna. Dean Mason is a delightful dream that descends into a nasty brown stain of a man.

Most impressive of all is Mellor’s writing – brutal, shocking, disgusting, surprising and visceral- she goes there. This isn’t some soft and comfortable domestic Australian story – this is big. Epic observations on gender, sex, lust, men, female urges, mother/daughter dynamics, female body parts, masturbation, dependency, fantasy. We laugh at the descriptions and the images of this world- we recoil at the biological descriptions of a seeping, leaking wound that never heals – the baseness of the lipstick dick of the dog – the mother who demands Garbo brows and geisha lips and the junk mail catalogues. The horror rings true. The struggle of it all. The dirty, smeared, the torture of having no where better to go – like waiting for Godot, but waiting to lose your virginity to a mumma’s boy pervert. With similar psychological torture to that of Bette Davis in “Whatever happened to baby Jane?” laced with occasional wins for Anna – the brilliance lies in the casting – Smith and Cronin are evenly matched – sparking, snarling, spitting, howling at each other.

It’s no wonder Mellor has two shows on in Sydney at the moment (catch her other play Desiree Din and the Red Forest at ATYP until Dec 4th)- and a bag full of produced plays to her name… she is one of the most remarkable writers of this generation – Brutal, brave and authentically, unapologetically unique.

It’s true that I spend a good deal of my time looking for, creating projects for, promoting new writing talent. In the last 3 years I have created 3 independent projects (Metamor/phases, Brand Spanking New, Stories from the 428) and a script development hothouse (Off the Shelf) culiminating 64 opportunities for writers/directors/actors to develop/practice/ showcase their art. In the middle of all of this- working a full time job, maintaining my relationship and writing for myself and for a company in Canada when I can. I’ve tried to create opportunities that I would want – places of experimentation, colleagiate regard as opposed to competition, places where work can be written, developed and produced within a year (yes- how novel!). How delighted I was when Phil Spencer contacted me about putting a little something forward for Cut and Paste!

According to the blurb “Cut & Paste is an evening of short plays, theatrical scraps and script-in-hands, brought to you by some of Sydney ’s most exciting theatre makers. This month’s line up includes Lexi Freiman with Pip Smith, Talya Rubin, John AD Fraser, Augusta Supple, Brooke Robinson, Sean Barker and Phil Spencer.” Last year’s cut and paste session inluded work by Caleb Lewis, Scarlet McGlynn, Sean Barker and Phil Spencer… and Phil has spruiked the idea to me as a testing ground- a kind of “balls to the walls” theatrical showing- rough, ready and high energy.

My offering is called “Boxed Carnation” and is a short monologue that looks at the world of Internet dating. I am a firm believer in writers not directing their own work- and I have enlisted the directorial help of Gavin Roach (who I met in 2008, and who was my Assistant Director for Brand Spanking New 2009) and the acting talents of Lucy Goleby. I have attended a rehearsal, tweaked the script… but really the test of a work is in the watching.

For those free on a Sunday evening the 21st Feb.. make your way to The Old Fitz Hotel for a lemonade and a laksa and experience some very new works from a diverse range of practitioners… you might meet some people, see a new idea or even see the start of something great!

CUT & PASTE
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21st @ 8.00pm
THE OLD FITZROY HOTEL
$9 on the door. First in best dressed!