Metafour is the latest offering from Pact Theatre; four short plays with no break spanning one hour, developed through a creative exchange residency granted through Ashfield Youth Theatre.
Quad (1981) the first play, originally a television play, is dance-like and acts as a palate cleanser for what is a very enjoyable and thought provoking evening of timeless drama by the well-known Samuel Beckett. He was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris.
Metafour offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, coupled with black comedy and gallows humor. Beckett is considered one of the first postmodernists.
The plays are pure poetry in motion, a moving art form, with themes of timelessness, fear and hopelessness with a surrounding of silence. The actors observe The Suzuki Method of Actor Training.
The second play, Come and Go (1965), opens with three figures sitting quietly on a narrow bench-like seat surrounded by darkness. They are childhood friends making uneasy small talk, it’s memorable but has less than 130 words spoken.
The third, a one woman play entitled Rockaby (1980) is a performance poem using a pre-recorded voice, recounting details from her own life, and that of her dead mother’s. The synchrony of the rocking motion plays against the recorded narrative. It is eerie and beautiful at the same time.
The last play, Catastrophe (1982), has a political theme and was dedicated to imprisoned Czech reformer and playwright, Václav Havel and deals with the act of defiance. The play can be viewed as an allegory on the power of totalitarianism and the struggle to oppose it, the protagonist representing people ruled by dictators.
All the plays are constricted by strictly controlled and exactingly detailed stage direction in a fashion typical of Beckett, who was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature. (MS)
Until August 15, Tues-Sat, 7.30pm. PACT Theatre, 107 Railway Parade, Erskineville. Tickets & info: www.pact.net.au
