Theatre: Stay With Us

The Last Great Hunt

Created by Arielle Gray, Chris Isaacs and Tim Watts

Directed by Arielle Gray

Body sculpture by Tarryn Gill

Devised and performed by Gita Bezard, Jo Morris and Clare Testoni

Stage management by Emily Stokoe and Zachary Sheridan

Riverview Hotel

Until 8 December

When Marcel Duchamp declared that it is the viewer who completes a work of art, he may have had something like the The Last Great Hunt’s tasty exercise in bed-hopping, Stay With Us, presently occupying three rooms in the Riverview Hotel in Mount Street, in mind.

While each of the short tableaux that make up the work might have worked in front of a disengaged audience, it’s our participation – immersion more properly – in them that gives them their hook, and their dramatic power.

There’s little need be said about the plot of each piece, other than they relate back to the show’s title (as, of course, does the idea of us spending an evening with the Hunters in a hotel).

In the first, a woman named Alana (Jo Morris, the only actor to appear in any of the stories) is grieving the death of her twin sister Zoe when strange things begin happening in her hotel room.

In another room, medical staff gather around the body of an elderly woman (a sculpture by the artist Tarryn Gill) while the objects that make her and her life up are revealed.

In the final piece, children in their jimjams clutch teddy bears and listen to a goodnight story (illustrated by Tim Watts and Clare Testoni) that takes them to the stars and beyond.

It’s the how, not the what, though, that delivers these little stories.

There’s no denying the artistry of the work: JoMo’s (Sorry Jo, that’s irresistible) performance, seen up close without make-up or theatrical costuming, is as wrenching and electric as we have come to expect from this fine actor; Gill’s old lady is an abstraction, but captures beautifully (and quite touchingly for those who have seen their parents in death) the sunken calm of the deceased; and, best of all, Watts and Testoni’s projected images, starting small and squiggly, build into a powerful and vast panorama of the galaxies and the forces within them.

What’s most impressive is how we are wrangled into our part in proceedings. We travel in groups of eight from the Riverview’s lobby to the three rooms, guided by a bellhop (in our case Gita Bezard; other groups were led by Chris Isaacs and Watts) who costumes and arranges us, and wordlessly instructs us in our participation.

I can only imagine this duck’s legs are kicking ferociously beneath the placid surface as the stage manager Emily Stokoe and her assistant Zachary Sheridan restore the wreckage of each scene ready for the next audience’s incursion.

The director Arielle Gray, along with Watts and Isaacs, created the whole catastrophe and keeps a sure hand on a very tricky tiller throughout.

It’s marvellous to see the Hunters in action (of them only Jeffrey Jay Fowler and Adriane Daff, who were no doubt furiously busy elsewhere, are absent), and their disparate talents, seen together, gives them a collective charisma different from, if not greater than, the sum of its parts.

They’ve added judiciously to their talent pool with Gill, Morris, Testoni and even the effervescently ubiquitous Scott McArdle – who will be the concierge at my next hotel – front of house.

I believe their upcoming Perth Festival debut, Le Nor, will be the first time all six have performed in one show - this will be another stride forward for this world-class ensemble. 
We’re lucky to call them our own.

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