Making a play for the TV generation

By BERNADETTE RAE

A gay man in his late 20s, a washed-up child star, seeks refuge in sex - and it takes sex with strangers, casual and dangerous, to whet his jaded appetite. His flatmate and ex-partner, of a similar age, is going through a mid-youth crisis, also a crisis of sexuality. Which way should she go? Then there is the too-good to-be-true bartender, a real ladies' man.

Add a psychic dominatrix, a freak, a stalker and a serial killer and you have the new play at the SiLo Theatre, Unidentified Human Remains & the True Nature of Love by Canadian playwright Brad Fraser.

The publicity does warn it is not a play for Aunty Edna. But director Colin Mitchell, 23, on loan for the SiLo project from his role as Auckland Theatre Company director in training, explains.

"The play is really a reflection on love," he says, "and the characters are not portrayed as feral, on the outskirts of society. It is not about filthy degenerates, in the Trainspotting mode. They are really ordinary people."

Ordinary people - and stylish too. The pace of the play, with entwined storylines and several snappy dialogues all happening at once, means the sets are striking, but created primarily by lighting and some "key sound". But the costumes are special, from some of the country's premiere labels, including Zambesi, Marvel, Wunderkammer and Stella Gregg.

Mitchell describes the production as filmic and "far removed from the stereotype of theatre". It is, he says, a form of theatre that is more palatable to the television generation.

That is a trademark of Brad Fraser's controversy-stirring work in general.

He has written, in his introduction to the published text, that he wants to create and attend theatre that speaks the vocabulary he uses day to day.

"Not the one I inherited second rate from our inbred English cousins or less-than-sophisticated American neighbours. This is not to say I am not interested in exploring multifaceted issues of complex characters. Quite the opposite. That is exactly what I want to do. But I want to do it through what the characters DO, not just what they say and think.

"I grew up watching naturalistic theatre with one set and four characters, all of whom talk about things that happened in the past until they are led to some sort of internal character revelation. Frankly, nine times out of 10, it is a huge yawn."

Film, television, music, video, comic books and computers have changed the way we think, see and absorb information, he says, and we do not need to be told stories in the same way our parents and their parents were.

"We need to reinvent the theatre to serve our own purposes - and we need to do it in a language that engages not only us but also those other generations behind us who share our post-1969 television vocabulary."

Director Mitchell says he and his cast of seven, all up-and-coming "next generation" actors, feel right at home with Fraser's language ("very casual") and the material - "mostly about sexual politics and the interaction between love and sex, and how those things are expressed".

"Most people in their 20s are really used to dealing with all that - there is no taboo about gay relationships any more," he says. "Fraser says it's not realistic to portray modern relationships without the sexual element, and he is right."

Mitchell and company are also relishing the speed of the play's action. "It is a theatrical maxim that you come into a scene as late as possible and leave as early as you can. And all the scenes in this work are really snappy. There are no monologues. The nearest we get to anything like that is when the dominatrix character tells her urban legends - they are scattered throughout the piece."

And Mitchell's favourite scene?

"It is when the sexually confused flatmate Candy is dating a man and a woman at the same time, and they both turn up at her apartment. It is a comedy of errors as she tries to keep them separate."

Human Remains might be volatile, political and very 21st-century-urban style, but it is also warm, funny and not totally devoid of romance.

"The title is a really awkward one," says Mitchell, "but it does sum the play up really well."

PERFORMANCE

* What: Unidentified Human Remains & the True Nature of Love

* Where: SiLo Theatre

* When: tonight until Saturday, June 7