Is Don... is good
Last
year Red Stitch staged Patrick Marber's adaptation of Strindberg's
Miss Julie. It was brought forward to the immediate post
war period and, like this adaptation of Moliere's Don Juan,
transferred to England. At the time there was still enough class
and sexual prejudice for the tragedy of Julie's randiness to cut
deeply. Moliere's Don Juan is a dangerous comedy about
a swaggering atheist. Mozart's Don Giovanni, was equally
scandalous presenting as it did, in a court theatre, a corrupt
aristocrat blaspheming in a cemetery and literally defying God.
Creating a modern counterpart is a tall order which Marber fills
fairly well in all but the supernatural circumstances of the 'Don's'
death. Marber's Don Juan is renamed DJ (Dan Wyllie) and as modern
day London is still teeming with aristocrats is the son of an
Earl (Bob Hornery) totally unconcerned with upholding the family
honour. He is a randy little sod who prefers to hang around with
his 'minder' Stan (Daniel Frederiksen) in sordid Soho.
All the trappings of the Don Juan legend, especially
as filtered through the sources we know, Moliere's 1665 play,
Don Juan, or the Banquet of Stone, Mozart's opera (1787)
and (to a lesser extent) Pushkin's take on the legend (which in
turn was the basis of Dargomyzhsky's 1872 opera). DJ is sex addict
who would, in Stan's words, shag "a hole in the ozone layer."
In his pursuit of a minimum of three sexual conquests per day
he has gone so far as to marry on of them. She is Elvira (Katie-Jean
Harding),a pious and loyal woman who determines to pursue DJ until
he repents while her outraged Irish family determine to track
down and kill him. Unconcerned, DJ is off pursuing his next bit
of skirt which entails him pursing her and her fiancee's river
cruise ramming their boat with fatal results. Unconcerned and
aided by the reluctant but compliant Stan DJ continues his debauchery
and while high on drugs in Soho Square invites the statue of Charles
II to join them. The statue accepts and as in Moliere, Mozart
et. al. the consequences are famous.
If you know the references then they are hilarious.
The statue, Stan constantly nagging DJ for his years of back-pay,
even the notorious catalogue listing every one of Don Juan's conquests
is here a conspicuous consumable in the form of a BlackBerry with
a chock-a-bloc address book (I bet the producers of the Bond movies
are kicking themselves for not beating Marber in using mobile
phones as a modern day sex aid). And Marber wouldn't be Marber
without a few of his own notorious touches. DJ has barely ended
one liaison when he is in pursuit of the next in a widely reported
scene where DJ is on the receiving end of a blow job while chatting
up his next target.
The updating works fairly well. The outraged Elvira
remains a final straw in the level of DJ's debauchery. She is
so decent that his bad treatment of her, thug brothers or not,
makes a moral point. Marber does introduce one scene, where DJ
bribes a Muslim tramp to blaspheme against Allah, that turns the
play around exceptionally well. Up to that point DJ's carrying
on almost becomes tedious. At that point and in the following
scenes where DJ dives fearlessly into a fight, Marber suggests
that his (anti) hero is mentally unstable. Wyllie's DJ certainly
appears deranged with an affected voice and posture lolloping
around the stage like a born-again Charles Laughton. Frederiksen's
Stan harks back to Sganarelle, the servant in Moliere's play,
making asides to the audience.
Despite moral implications in his staying with DJ
his was largely a comic performance. The same applies for Harding's
Elvira. Her piety is interspersed with gratitude for the sex she
had with DJ and, in total opposition to DJ, considers it an important
part of her path to spiritual completeness. The final scene with
the statue is difficult to bring off and the suggestion is that
DJ is so drug addled his journey to some dark corner of Soho to
meet his death was under the statue's guidance. Under Peter Evans
direction it just seemed to part of the comic retelling of the
legend and got on with, but the sight of Charles II riding a Singapore
peddle cab around the stage would look odd even at Circus Oz.
Another link with Moliere was made by the staging. Using a bare
stage the only suggestion of location is from a painted backcloth
rolled down to suggest each scene similar to the scenic machinery
of a 17th century theatre.
When the destructive insensitivity of Marber's Don
Juan becomes well and truly established in a way that strikes
a chord with a modern audience the evil-doer is one we want to
see career towards destruction. As he gets closer to his end his
self-indulgent self-justifications make him even more repellent.
Michael Magnusson
To read more of Michael Mangusson's theatre reviews,
check out his blog at
On Stage (and walls) Melbourne.
