Get your motor running
No
matter how much criticism London's Royal Court Theatre may get
it is still a laboratory for new writing that has to be admired.
Simon Stephens' Motortown was premiered there in 2006.
It is a hot, angry, blunt and at times unbelievably violent parable
about Britain's part in the 'war on terror' told through the effect
of it on an 'everyman' soldier. Stephens wrote the play during
the London bombings of 2005 in for days and claimed inspiration
from two fearsome sources, Georg Büchner's fragmentary but
influential masterpiece Woyzeck and Martin Scorsese's'
lusciously lurid and equally influential Taxi Driver.
Danny is a young British soldier returned from a
tour of duty in Iraq. Now on his uppers and living with his intellectually
disabled brother Lee (Dion Mills). Danny's personal life is chaos
and his internal one is in worse shape. As Lee tells him, he even
frowns in his sleep. That Danny, like Woyzeck or Scorsese's' Travis,
will do something terrible to someone at some point in the play
is inevitable. The suspense when we finally learn when and to
whom is ungodly. Danny's personal relationships with Lee or his
his girlfriend of sorts deteriorate just as Woyzeck's and Travis'
did and again like Woyzeck and Travis, Danny meets up with some
very strange people in the course of his day. All but one are
savvy and intimidating and all of them influence the horrible
but inevitable act. As Danny learned in Basra, the most vulnerable
is the easiest victim. Danny has a not so latent crule streak
that Stephens' script and the current prodection is let loose
along with his more recnt war traumas. Manipulation of the weak
is his forte and from the very opening scene where Danny taunts
his weaker gay brother this anti-hero is no better than any of
characters he encounters and hates.
If the text was written in white heat across 96
hours then it is a very impressive piece of writing. Even with
obvious re-writes and polishing that happened during production
it still holds onto that intensity. Few of the characters Danny
encounters reappear in subsequent scenes. The rest are just encounters
that feed into Danny's resentment. But even in their single scenes
they ingratiate themselves into Stephens's picture of the ignorant
and uncaring contemporary 'little' Britain. Some are even very
skillful exercises in character writing that have a Pinteresque
quality of speaking volumes about a subject but staying very ambiguous
about the individual. The disdainful Paul, for example, like the
menacing Hirst in Pinter's No Man's Land is excellently
played by David Whitely. As equally grotesque as Woyzeck's tormentors
is Richard Bligh doubling as two of Danny's. He is real find and
I endorse him to anyone looking for a character actor that can
look large while just standing there. His two essays here in working
and middle class trash were class acts. Brett Cousins as Danny
gives one of his most intense performances ever. As the brunt
of all of those cruel women in Neil LaBute's plays, his capacity
for on stage suffering is memorable. Here he gives a slow, burning
performance of remarkable concentration and energy. An example
of an actor who conveys every word of the script as a truth, no
matter how pleasant or unpleasant, believable or unbelievable.
Director Lawrence Strangio gives Motortown
a simple and direct staging. The virtue of this tiny acting space
is that, when the play is as intense as this, the atmosphere can
be electric. Interestingly Strangio the actors sit on the perimeters
of the stage after their scenes with Danny are over. Like the
actors in Trevor Nunn's famous Macbeth they then watch
the downfall that their character has just presumably assisted.
The set too, with unbuckled seat belts hanging from the rafters,
adds to the suggestion of people and events unrestrained and out
of control. Without giving too much away, the big pause in the
middle where the blood is mopped up and which was reported as
highly effective in the Royal Court staging was as effective here.
Danny's story and Stephens' style may seem too familiar
but this is a powerful and provocative piece the message put across
powerfully and directly by the author and realised with equal
power and conviction by the cast and director.
Michael Magnusson
To read more of Michael Mangusson's theatre reviews,
check out his blog at
On Stage (and walls) Melbourne.
