Stacey Callaghan, When I was a Boy photo Ross Bird |
The splitting into 3 tough, essentially masculine personalities and the oblique reaching for love bespeak a dogged interiority, initially and hilariously portrayed in her first appearance, zipped up in a small bag. But it is also a selfishness that she needs to overcome and for that she needs us, her audience, in a different way, to address as confidantes, requiring several of us to help her (get her out of the bag, play games with her, help her urinate in a hospital bedpan) and, finally, in a couple of surprising reversals, offer one of us something special. At last the self has met the world, face to face, hands on.
Callaghan is utterly engaging as the tomboy (the best realised of the personae) and the abrasive circus performer (making out in a yoga class), but the Unitard Bomber is insufficiently bitchy, lacking the cleverness to be revelatory, and slows the show down dangerously. Physically, as in the scene where she plays both masseur and client, Callaghan is a dextrous clown. Gail Kelly directs with theatrical verve and inventiveness, working with lighting designer Clytie Smith to alternate a metaphysical circus of life and death with an intimate chat—the lighting is the set. The sound score is less effective, beginning portentously and powerfully, then (if rather literally) paralleling the action with clock ticks and heartbeats, and ending rather soppily with birds tweeting and guitar and synthesizer burblings—then again the New Age it conjures is perhaps part of Callaghan’s new world. Fair enough.
Callaghan’s winning personality, good audience responses in Brisbane (where the work was orginally commisioned by the Brisbane Powerhouse) and Sydney, and an evocative production suggest that with a bit of re-working (of the Unitard Bomber in particular) When I was a Boy warrants a longer life, to take audiences around the country on a fascinatingly bent path. And it’s great to see a physical theatre performer’s life realised on stage.
When I was a Boy, written & performed by Stacey Callaghan, dramaturg Shane Rowlands, director Gail Kelly; Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, Performance Space, Feb 20 - March 2
RealTime issue #42 April-May 2001 pg. 29
© Keith Gallasch; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]