When humanity runs amok

By CATHRIN SCHAER

You would be forgiven for thinking that the folks at the SiLo Theatre want to feed you a steady diet of sex, drugs, rock'n'roll - and atrocity.

The torments of sexual jealousy and lust were examined in the recent Closer; retail therapy and other transactions involving bodily fluids were subjects of Shopping and ****ing; and the final play in the SiLo's IMPORT season of contemporary international scripts will be Stephen Belber's Tape with its themes of shocking confessions and unresolved lust.

But before that comes Bash, the third play in this festival of humanity run amok.

Bash is by controversial American playwright Neil LaBute, who has also wielded the pen for movies such as In the Company of Men and Nurse Betty, as well as another play seen here not so long ago, The Shape of Things.

Bash is one of LaBute's more recent pieces. Staged since 1999, it has garnered plenty of rave reviews and even starred a few big name actors, such as Calista Flockhart and Jason Patric.

But LaBute's work has also gained a fair few criticisms - it can be so uncomfortable that viewers have been moved to describe his pieces as misanthropic and cruel, "the psychological equivalent of a snuff movie".

"I think he writes about the way we manipulate each other," explains Shane Bosher, director of the SiLo version of Bash, "and I think that's why people have a problem with them."

Perversely, that's exactly why Bosher was drawn to this particular play. "It's the most brutally honest play I've ever read. It talks about ordinary people just doing awful, awful things. Evil, or the capacity for evil, is within everybody, it's whether we choose to indulge it or not.

"Everybody is capable of anything and that's what makes it so scary and confronting. And it talks about how we justify what we do, how we create our own template for morality."

It does this by offering up three modern amorality plays loosely based on Greek mythology. Two feature monologues - one by a respectable salesman (Oliver Driver) talking about how he is tormented by the death of his baby daughter, the other is by a young woman (Toni Potter) brought in for questioning by the police.

The third involves an apparently cute dialogue between a college-age couple (Mia Blake and David Van Horn) out for a big night in the big city; they are going to "the bash" of the play's title.

We never see what the characters actually do and all of the relatively simple action takes place in an even smaller space than usual for the hundred-seater SiLo - this is designed to make sure everyone gets uncomfortably intimate with the narrators.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for something from LaBute, who says "atrocity is the new black", the triptych of tales ends with truly shocking confessions from all of the storytellers.

"We did our first run-through this morning [in rehearsal]," Bosher recounts, "and it was really interesting. Toni said she totally understood why Oliver's character did what he did but she thought what her own character did was completely wrong. Whereas I sat there watching her and I completely understood why she did what she did."

It is all about subjective - or maybe complicated might be the better adjective - morality.

"He takes a calculated risk," says Oliver Driver, who is returning to the stage for the first time in three years, after assorted stints as a director and television presenter.

"He hears his daughter cry out but he thinks sometimes you have a bigger part to play in God's plan. So he makes a spur of the moment decision. I suspect maybe he even felt proud, a little bit smug, that he had helped in doing God's work. And no, I don't necessarily have sympathy for him but he is not a psychopath. Because in a lot of ways [what he did] was a hard thing for him to do."

When audiences find out what this affable Mormon fellow, Driver's character, actually did, they probably won't like the result. But like Driver himself, they may find themselves understanding the guy.

Driver chose to return to the SiLo stage with this work for the same reasons as Bosher chose to direct it.

"This is what theatre is for - to make people think. For instance, I hated Elephant [the latest film by director Gus van Sant] but I know other people who loved it. And we argue about it. But to me, that's much better than just going and sitting there and not feeling anything. The best theatre makes you question and argue and fight and think; it stimulates conversation."

Which is why, Bosher explains, the four plays in the IMPORT season were chosen. No, it wasn't about making sure there was plenty of tabloid appeal, nudity and swearing in there for Auckland's younger would-be audiences.

"It is true that all the four plays are dramas or thrillers," Bosher agrees. "But I think because of its smaller size and nature, the SiLo often provides opportunity for work that is a bit more challenging. I also think the programming in general is diverse enough to get past that. Anyway our audiences don't want to see a romantic comedy. They want to see something that makes them think. We want people to engage in things and I think that requires a bit of conflict."

On stage

* What: Bash, by Neil LaBute

* Where and when: SiLo Theatre, July 14-31