Written and
directed by Clare Testoni
Lighting
designed by Rhiannon Petersen
Sound
design by Jou Lui
Performed
by Phoebe Sullivan, Amanda Watson and Michelle Aitken
Blue Room
Theatre
 |
| Phoebe Sullivan meets her double |
The Blue
Room theatre has broken with tradition and combined both its 2019 seasons (not
counting its Summer Nights fringe festival and Winter Nights development
offerings) into one year-long celebration of WA’s independent contemporary
theatre.
Whether that’s
clever marketing or sheer one-upmanship, the fifteen productions from now until
December shape as an impressive, attention-grabbing body of work.
And its
opening production, Clare Testoni’s sci-fai fable, The Double, is a perfect
pilot for the series.
Testoni has
made a quantum leap as a deviser and executor of theatre over the past couple
of years, exploiting her skill as a shadow puppeteer, image-maker and
imaginative interpreter of fairy tales.
Through it her
work has become provocative, sophisticated and highly entertaining. Her
developing power was demonstrated last year by Tale of Tales, a highlight of the
Blue Room season, and the startling intergalactic panorama she created with Tim
Watts for The Last Great Hunt’s Stay With Us.
The Double
is even more ambitious, incorporating digital imagery and masking in the
Faustian story of a struggling actor who sells her image to a megalithic
corporation, risking her identity and soul in the process.
It’s richly
intriguing to see how Testoni has used her skills and interests in new ways, so
that you’re rarely aware that The Double essentially remains puppetry and her
story a fairy tale.
Her three
actors, Phoebe Sullivan, Amanda Watson and Michelle Aitken, morph skilfully into
the central character, Victoria, her computer generated doppelganger, Vivy, and
the relatives and friends, agents and corporate geeks who regale her (Aitken,
in particular, is strange and compelling).
We most
often see them as distorted projected images, accentuating the shape-shifting,
manipulated realities of modern marketing and image creation. Testoni, who also
directs, handles the metatheatrics of this process with aplomb
The story
progresses with unhurried clarity through all this technology and theatrics,
even if it finally doesn’t yet quite achieve its emotional potential. It
provides a solid platform for Testoni’s Cartesian thesis on the reality of self
in a digitally generated world,.
In
fairytales and science fiction, the creator has to go beyond present reality to
fetch her story, but, for The Double, Testoni doesn’t have to go too far to
find it.
So much so that I couldn’t
help wondering, as I watched this pertinent and excellently delivered production, how Gabrielle Miller must feel when she sees
herself, everywhere, as the Trivago Girl.
