AK03: Control Freaks: Tangent at Rip, Shit and Bust, K Rd

By TIM WATKIN

It's a hard job making incest theatrically interesting, let alone humorous. Yet up the stairs and past the tins of spaghetti on K Rd, the Tangent Theatre Company is giving it a shot.

On a sparse set of pink and orange, a twisted version of Control Freaks by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley is being given its New Zealand debut in a clothes shop. At Rip, Shit and Bust, the fashion is cleared out each day and the actors move in. It's a nifty venue in keeping with the festival ethos of art here, there and everywhere, but the play is harder to enthuse about.

The 1991 black comedy opens with Sister, suffering multiple personality disorder and blind to her family's dark past, just home from jury service to find her brother Carl married to the seemingly subservient Betty.

Carl and Betty are 50s-style suburbanite caricatures desperate to break free from their own failings and middle-class expectations. Furniture World is their escape route. Paul, due for cocktails later in the play, will sell his building cheap, if only they can get their hands on Sister's inheritance.

The brave cast doesn't lack energy - Claire Waldron is intense, at times disturbing - but the play does.

This is hardly Henley's best work, compared with Crimes of the Heart, which made her name, and the first half is a pretty plot-less affair. It's not until Paul arrives for drinks and murder that the play gets any sense of purpose.

In the 12 years since it was written, sexual abuse themes have become so mainstream in film and TV they've lost much of their power to shock. Director Celia Nicholson seems to be trying to compensate by having the cast play it in hyper-reality - a loud, cartoon cut-out version. To add edge, she's relocated the LA play to New Zealand and got Betty and Paul played in drag.

It's hard to see the point of these ploys. A weird play to start with, these tangents make it weirder and no more satisfying.

It's a gallant attempt to bring something genuinely edgy to AK03. Hopefully next time the risk will pay off.

* Showing 8pm nightly (except Mon), until Sun Oct 5

Herald Feature: Auckland Festival AK03

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