Queensland Theatre is back with an expletive riddled cracker of a play
It has been eight months since Queensland Theatre straddled the stage and now they are back in the Playhouse with a gritty but engaging play that has more swear words than anything seen before at QPAC.
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After eight frustrating months of closed theatres due to the pandemic Queensland Theatre is back on stage with a f----ing ripper of a play. Pardon the French but I’m just trying to get in the spirit of the piece which has more F-bombs and C-bombs than anything I have ever seen on stage at QPAC.
Presumably the original script of Scottish playwright Kieran Hurley’s Mouthpiece is as blue as this version but having never seen it before I can’t say for sure. And while it’s a Scottish play (not THE Scottish play) it has been tweaked to reflect a more familiar setting. So when we talk of class differences between suburbs it’s Ascot and Logan that are poles apart and the young man in the piece, Declan, played by promising newcomer, Queenslander Jayden Popik, is from Logan and apparently he speaks the local lingo peppered with the C-word.
That was shocking at first, like listening to a Derek and Clive (Live) comedy record for the first time. (Derek and Clive were, you may recall, the foul mouthed drunken alter egos of the brilliant duo Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.)
The more mature character, Libby, played by veteran local thespian Christen O’Leary joins in the cussing party too and the pair punctuate their dialogue with F-bombs and C-bombs as they explore the meaning of life and the meaning of theatre.
It all starts with playwright Libby on the edge of a cliff considering suicide, a theme that pervades this play within a play.
Young Declan hauls her back from the brink and they become friends, rather awkwardly, friends with benefits at one stage.
As a playwright Libby is fascinated with Declan’s shabby life and it inspired her to create her play, Mouthpiece. I was reminded of that Seinfeld episode where Elaine’s boss, J Peterman, bereft of any decent stories for his own memoir steals someone else’s life – Kramer in that instance.
And so it is with Libby appropriating Declan’s story and this play is about her writing that play and about the aftermath and about the whole process of theatre itself.
It starts slowly and for a while I thought … oh no, this is going to be tedious – but the flair of Hurley’s writing, the cleverness of the plot and the acting and superb staging build momentum and I found myself pretty engaged by the end. Very f---ing engaged actually, Pardon the French again.
It is described by Queensland Theatre as “startling, audacious and gripping” and I would have to agree. The set and graphics and music all help create the minimalist atmosphere and director Less Lewis has done a terrific job. I would shave five minutes off it but I would shave five minutes off everything, except my own life.
O’Leary is masterful and Popik is entirely believable as the foul-mouthed, intense young artist from the wrong side of the tracks.
If it sounds grim it is at times but hell it’s also funny in that dark Scottish fashion we are so accustomed to.
I thought that Queensland Theatre might choose something a bit more innocuous to announce their return to the stage, something a bit less confronting perhaps. A musical even? But times are tough and this spare two-hander was probably more economic.
As it turns out it’s the perfect way to start up theatre again – dive straight in, don’t hold back, give it a red hot f---ing go. Pardon the French again.
The play runs at the Playhouse, QPAC, until next weekend and there are still some tickets left so snap them up if you can because the word’s out.