Rash behaviour
Bruce
Norris’s class satire The Pain and the Itch takes
the mechanism of a good farce, one by someone like Alan Ayckbourn,
tweaks it about along the clever farce lines like playing some
scenes out of their time sequence, sets up the characters with
petards to foist themselves on, lets it all play out until it
the situations are totally confusing and then neatly ties it all
up in the last ten minutes.
Kelly (Sarah Sutherland) and Clay (Daniel Frederiksen)
seem the perfect couple. Kelly is a successful businesswoman;
Clay is a somewhat resentful house husband sacrificing his own
career (and cat) to care for their baby and preschool daughter
Kayla (Oregen Guilloux alternating with Cooke and Fantine Banulski).
What isn't explained at first is the presence of a African taxi
driver Mr. Hadid (Terry Yeboah), why he is crying in the opening
scene or what it is that Kelly and Cash are trying to explain
to him. Their conversations ramble, Hadid asking the price Clay’s
shoes, furniture or their property tax. At the same Kelly and
Clay’s Thanksgiving gathering is played out. Visiting are
Clay’s plastic surgeon brother Cash (Brett Cousins) and
mother Carol (Andrea Swift) along with Cash’s East European
girl friend Kalina (Erin Dewar). These two separate time frames
are played together and the first act is mainly taken up with
a litany of inter-family hatreds, resentments and anxiety over
the discovery of a gnawed avocado. The new discovery that Kalya
has a genital rash ups the anxiety that it might be caused by
whatever rodent is gnawing at the avocado.
The real gnawing is the extended family gnawing
at each other’s nerves exposing their prejudices. Clay resents
more successful wife, harbours a life long grudge against his
brother Cash. Kelly clearly loathes everything about Cash, Carol
claims to favour neither son but constantly and unconsciously
reinforces Clay’s claim he was the second favourite. Carol
is the addled mother from Hell and nobody like the bigoted and
self absorbed Kalina. Norris’s trump is that this American
family are series of clichés, long reinforced by television
and film. They merge left wing, radical, and PC chick with every
sort of conservative prejudice imaginable. Presumably this is
why everyone but the child and the taxi driver wear only their
underwear, exposed for us, the audience to see them for what they
are. Unlike the good humoured farces of Mr Ayckbourn and co.,
The Pain and the Itch is a cruel spectacle. Norris creates a log-jam
of individual incidents that make this family a totally unlovable
one. Even the final resolution is made at the expense of their
amorality. The pain turns out an unspeakable pain caused by one
of the many squabbles we witness and the chain of actions it sets
off. The itch is finally explained like Ibsen’s Ghosts or
Arthur Schnitzler’s Der Rondel as a sexual ‘pass the
parcel’. For a final indignity Norris even includes a dash
of 'cruel woman on nerdy guy' action Neil LaBute style in his
finale.
I have to hand it to Red Stitch for finding a way
of navigating through this bitch epic. The long acts, filled with
abuse and ambiguity, were so well balanced. Director Görkem
Acaroglu seems to keep the dysfunction afloat at all times, so
well he might consider becoming a family therapist. The cast,
as usual, are so well selected. Guest artist Yeboah, seeming to
move and speak a little slower while the others buzz around, makes
the enigmatic outsider a constant focus. Who is he, I kept thinking,
what is hiding? (what else can the others possibly have hidden,
I kept thinking regularly as well, right to the end). The small
playing space puts everything up to close scrutiny (literally,
the labels on the underwear and whether the gentlemen dress to
the left or right is readily apparent) so the well controlled
mood was very welcome. When tempers flared, they did so explosively
but when the room falls silent dirty looks carry just as well.
The Pain and the Itch pushes a lot of moral
buttons in what it exposes as well as how it is played. It also
pushes a lot of boundaries in is the situations and characters.
The child actors playing Kala are privy to some fairly raunchy
sights and sounds and the play ends with the only member of the
family with any decency squashed and betrayed while the appalled
Hadid flees the two-faced assembly. Anna Cordingley's set is an
angry red adorned with illustrations of various skin infections
from the pages of medical book. In a way the whole thing gets
under your skin. Norris may have intended it but the laughs often
come with a very unpleasant aftertaste.
Michael Magnusson
To read more of Michael Mangusson's theatre reviews,
check out his blog at
On Stage (and walls) Melbourne.
