Theatre: Borderline

Written and performed by Evelyn Snook

Music by B Gosper

Directed by Kylie Bywaters

Design and AV by Clare Testoni

Lighting designer Jasmine Lifford

Blue Room until July 31, 2021

 

When an artist like Evelyn Snook stands alone on a stage and tells us the whys and wherefores of their life, criticism is largely an arid exercise, or at least one that operates on the margins of the drama.

A person’s life is, after all, their own, and it’s not for us to pass judgment on it, or even its worth as performance.

That said, Snook is an engaging and accurate performer who is able to convincingly and movingly reconstruct their battle with Borderline Personality Disorder, the insidious and potentially dangerous condition that affects perhaps one in fifty people, particularly teenage and young adult women.

Its symptoms – among them fear of abandonment, rapid changes in self-image and self-identity, wild mood swings, risky behavior and self-harm – make life and relationships extremely challenging. 

Tragically, the risk of suicide is ever-present (studies suggest up to 10% of people suffering from BSD take their own life).

It’s admirable that Snook can take us through the toughest battles they have fought with candour, positivity and humour. The place they have reached now is clearly precious and liberating to them, and we can do nothing but share their joy.

The other pleasure of Borderline is the quality of the production the director Kylie Bywater and producer Kailyn Crabbe have built around Snook. The involvement of the award-winning shadow puppeteer and theatre maker Clare Testoni is crucial to the productions success. The show looks lovely, and the subtle, unobtrusive AV elements add immeasurably to it.

The revelation of Borderline is its musician, B Gosper. They sit quietly in a corner, with just a small smile and a guitar, and the songs they sing that punctuate the performance are sweet, gentle and deeply moving.

I would gladly listen to to the songs alone; as part of this extremely moving and uplifting show, they are a small miracle. As is Borderline.

Theatre: The Double ★★★★

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.

Theatre: Tale of Tales ★★★★½

Written, directed and performed by Clare Testoni
with Paul Grabovac
Sound design by Joe Lui
Lighting design by Rhiannon Peterson
Blue Room Theatre until May 9

Tale of Tales is a small, brilliant gem of storytelling, and a breakout achievement for its deviser and performer, Clare Testoni.

Testoni’s previous work, including The Beast and the Bride and West of the Moon, has explored her interest in fairy tales, but any concern that her imagination and talents are confined to and by them is quickly dispelled in Tale of Tales. 
She uses the fairy tales collected by Giambattista Basile in the 17^th century (which include the earliest known versions of Rapunzel and Cinderella) as a jumping off point for a wider and deeper story of four generations of her own family, the rise of Fascism in Italy and the resistance to it, the flight of many Italians to Australia and their fate here.

It’s a passionate statement against fear and prejudice, and especially the practice of interment that is often its consequence. The parallels to the same practices in our own times are clearly and powerfully made.

It’s also the true love story of her great-grandparents, Sante and Antoinetta, and their strange, sad parting and estrangement. Their story is paired with Basile’s The Princess Who Couldn’t Laugh or Cry, The Crystal Tunnel, The Dragon and the Flea and others. The narrative technique give Basile’s stories new life and meaning – it’s a lesson in the purpose and power of fairy tales as well as a wonderful device for the telling of her own story.    

Testoni is a shadow puppeteer, and she takes her craft to a new level. Working alongside the excellent actor Paul Grabovac, shining torches on tiny cutout figures on tables, she throws silhouettes of people and places – villages and cities, internment camps – onto the white-papered walls of the stage.

The images have a magical three-dimensionality, and move with an almost cinematic quality. They are interspersed with family photos and archival material, some very shocking, of Mussolini’s Italy and internment camps.

Tale of Tales is an honest show, and a heartfelt one; as Basile says in The Sun, the Moon and Talia, “a story left untold is destined to repeat itself.”

It’s a good thing, then, that Clare Testoni has told hers – and that she’s done it so very well.

This review has been archived by The Press Reader (link here)