Red Boots and Half-Smoked Cigarettes (Owl & Cat) – theatre review

A dozen years ago, Gabrielle Savrone, one of the co-owners of The Owl and Cat, joined a cult and for the next 36 months she was prey to its whims and fancies. She has channelled that experience into Red Boots and Half-Smoked Cigarettes, an esoteric play set in an art gallery. Why that setting? Because apart from being a theatre proprietor, director and actor, Savrone is also an avid painter. It is an environment in which she feels comfortable.

The title refers to the emancipation she experienced when she managed to extricate herself from the cult with the help of her psychologist mother. Her mum knew Savrone was keen on ballroom dancing and convinced her to take a lesson wearing her favourite red boots. One lesson was all it took and Savrone was on her way, charting a new course. Part of that direction involved thumbing her nose at what went before. To that end she took up smoking cigarettes, rebelling against her “puritanical” past, only she used to butt out the fags after a few drags. Out of that emerged Red Boots and Half Smoked Cigarettes.

Of course, the audience is not aware of the background I have just provided, save for the fact that Savrone, writing the “director’s note” in the program, gives the play some context. “Leaving a cult has taught me so much, but the most important thing has been to trust my instincts and listen to myself.” Savrone maintains that lesson is a universal one, applicable to many situations. “Abstraction allows … the viewer to apply their own circumstances to what they are seeing.”

When you enter the theatre, wearing black plastic eye masks – so you don’t feel intimidated by your proximity to the actors – you are immediately confronted by two back-to-back rows of bench seating (nine per side). There are eight actors – six dressed head to toe in white and two in black (including Savrone) – and 13 art works of various sizes on the walls and towards the back of the theatre, painted by Savrone and another actor, Indiana Tali. You are invited to partake in the crackers, cheese and grapes tastefully spread on a table containing tea candles, some in black and white lanterns, along with flutes of champagne and a few small, neat floral arrangements. During the next half hour you can sit or wander about trying to made head or tail of a series of seemingly mystifying developments.

With blonde locks, a tallish, thin man dressed in white washes the hair of an attractive woman, symbolising baptism and cleansing of the soul. Another man, in pristine white, presents an engagement ring to a member of the audience. Back in her day, the leaders of the cult tried to marry off 17-year-old Savrone to a Nigerian man she had just met (her parents wouldn’t hear of it). Another white-clad woman looks ruefully at a large container of red baby jellybeans, the colour and size chosen to represent the cult’s attitude to abortion. In one corner, another true believer (Savrone) is ripping page after page from a book, screwing up the paper and dropping it into a pile around her desk – the action representing a disavowal of the cult’s teachings. Later, cult members run around and kowtow, chanting, for all intents and purposes displaying obsessive-compulsive behaviour. The two dressed in black are desperate to escape and that they do as the action takes to the internal lane through which the audience has earlier walked to access the theatre. Thereafter, in the laneway cult members share stories of the ordeals they faced, before they step back inside the theatre and start playing games and socialising, free of the constraints and restraints that had ensnared them.

Existential would be a fair description of Red Boots and Half Smoked Cigarettes. As such, its lack of narrative structure will perplex some and engage others. It is very much a performance piece that appears to favour the impromptu actor and liberated theatregoer. With the background I had it all made sense. Without it, much of it would have appeared just plain weird. One thing I certainly applaud is the look and feel of the theatre, something I have noted from many of The Owl and Cat’s shows. They change it up every time and make it exciting and special. I also commend the diversity that truly independent theatre can produce. The Owl and Cat is never backward in coming forward and so it is here.

Ultimately, interesting and unusual though Red Boots is, I am just pleased that Savrone was “liberated” and could thereby lend her experience to help shape her theatrical destiny. With a running time of one hour, Red Boots and Half Smoked Cigarettes is playing at The Owl and Cat Theatre, 34 Swan Street, Richmond, until 23 December 2016.

Alex First