Less-than-Furious Mattress

A note to contemporary Australian playwrights:

If you have something to comment on, make sure you get around to it.

The final of the three performances of Melbourne 2010 was FURIOUS MATTRESS. A play inspired by a true story of a Victorian backyard exorcism that resulted in the death of the subject.

Now lets just say, the play has a few things going for it. One was you didn't quite know if she was possessed or if the Catholics were being truly insane. When the play went and pointed that out to you with extra cheese and tack-a-rama to spare, it lost its, err.. contemporary drama feel and dawned a new Benny Hill farce approach.

When the mattress itself had a puppeteer inside and started walking around angrily, i just about lost all respect for the independent theatrical group that funded the new work. OH! METAPHOR! BETTER SLAP THEIR FACES. *face palm*

The violence was comically and poorly staged. with sound effect slaps and punches that were all off. There was no physical contact between the cast. And when it came for someone to really show some insanity, their ability just couldn't hack it.

What I refuse to acknowledge is when one of the cast emerged from the legs of the possessed woman dressed in a giant half rat half mole costume. This appalling display of disrespect to the true story just had me beside myself.

So here was its problem: It TOLD you Else was possessed. and CLEARLY her husband was a nut job hiring two other equally deranged idiots to assist him with his wife's "cleansing".

So it would make sense to have your audience either follow one side or the other OR make it ambiguous enough that audiences were forced to choose a side THEY wanted.

INSTEAD what you were left with was no compassion for any character and hence a sense of "eeerr... so why did I waste my money on this plotless thing?"

Also, the set with furniture from the 1920's, costuming from the 1950's AND since the DVD player wasn't introduced in Japan in 1996, how would you expect there to be one in a rural Victorian home in 1993? This show just lost the game. Cool promo shot tho (above).

Fruit of the Moment: *sigh*