Review: GLORIA is a Sensation, Though No Place to Call Home at Griffin Theatre

The strength of good theatre is its ability to traverse through a range of emotions, bringing along an audience who can explore different facets of their spectrum of feeling and understanding. The best theatre, can take you so deep into one emotion you fear as an audience member you might not come out, and this is the incredible talent of the team behind Griffin Theatre Company's latest premiere, Gloria. Australian work that makes no attempt to relocate itself, justify its idiosyncrasies, or hold back on keeping the audience in the thrill of it, Gloria is theatre with no fear and no fulcrum.

Benedict Andrews' piece comes across like a musing of Play Misty for Me Through the Looking Glass, a narrative that slips around the audience's grasp and a cast of characters whose names stay the same but their place in Gloria's life changes at the drop of a knife or with a sudden intake of breath. The question of who Gloria is seems key to comprehending this spectacle directed magnificently by Helpmann Award-winning Lee Lewis, and will plague the audience long after its relevance is disproven and the lights come up. The text was in danger of invoking too many elements, and becoming far too baffling, but Lewis' direction keeps the wire taut and lengthens the action to draw your interest further and further in, oblivious to the doors closing behind you.

Dusseldorp is chilling in the titular role, snatching herself from each moment to create a performance truly unpredictable, remarkable, as close to home as the bone. Andrews has crafted a definitive, diverse woman here in an ode not just to the Blanche Dubois' of the theatre canon, but the Vivien Leigh's as well. Where the text threatened to assert another maniacal matriarch, Dusseldorp's portrayal choreographs around clichés and leaves the harsh light of scrutiny on the equally unstable male characters. Meyne Wyatt's heir-apparent characters bring elements of the aggressor, whether physical, emotional or sexual, but with each defence mechanism he alludes to deeper pain, fear and torture. Huw Higginson runs the gauntlet of passive-aggression and ego with stamina and great nuances of humour. Pierce Wilcox's appearances comparatively are randomised and dangerous, but you know the performer is in control.

Having seen Chloe Bayliss play a daughter with all the charm of a cigarette caught in a drain in The Whale, to see her play the straight role in the midst of the madness was either a genius decision by Lewis to place that responsibility on her acting talent, or her own set of handling one of the children in the piece ripped along the jagged sides of adult psychology. Louis Fontaine's role fell supplementary to the action, and Kristy Best struggled to be heard above the frayed chords of trauma and riot-terror stagecraft. That being said, their presence on stage were akin to cool flushes of water upon the searing sensations left by the other performances.

Not to be forgotten, in fact crucial to keeping nerves on end in a theatre environment where suspense can falter from the multitude of potential distractions and misfires, are the roles of sound, set, and stagehands. Brett Boardman's videography in the piece proved perfect devices to stretch an already warped work into different touch-points of sensory highs, particularly Dusseldorp's and Wyatt's respective scenes. Steve Toulmin's composition was equal parts Hitchcock and Daft Punk, especially when coordinated by Toby Knyvett with Luiz Pampohla's lighting. The design by Sophie Fletcher of set and costume created a configurable cornucopia of mental disturbance reminiscent of a Cabin in the Woods refurbished on The Block.

Gloria from melissa anastasi on Vimeo.

Altogether, a white-knuckled ode to the artist from which anyone could understand the plight of pursuing one's dreams of creativity, family, stability, immortality, value to the world, or all of these in unequal measure. Worth seeing, not just to support new Australian theatre, but to endure the limitlessness of your very self.

Images by Brett Boardman.
Tickets available here.

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