★★★★
A couple are sitting down to dinner. They’re having a tiff. She’s losing patience as he annoyingly asks for every detail about each dish on the menu. He’s trying to keep her happy – tonight’s the night he’s going to pop the question.
So far so normal. It’s a perfectly rich situation for comedy, there are some funny quips, dry lines from the waiter, good old-fashioned Fawlty Towers-esque skit material. But it’s a deceptive start – 80 Minutes No Interval is not that kind of play. It’s not like any kind of play.
From genteel beginnings it ascends rapidly into gore-fest tap-dancing sci-fi insanity. The audience starts off tittering at witticisms. By the end they’re laughing inanely while trying to keep down the vomit.
Hapless hero Louis (Ryan Johnson) is an aspiring but so far failed novelist. He tries to be too clever; why can’t he just write straight and mainstream? Write a Pollyanna? His girlfriend Claire (Sheridan Harbridge) wants him to focus more on theatre reviewing, but his main income is threatened by a little red computerised box that uses algorithms to pop out perfectly formed reviews. Well, perfect enough for his editor, who has got the publication’s bottom line to think of. In short, bad luck follows Louis around, and his situation is only getting worse when his parents decide to kick him out of their investment property.
By the time Louis finds a publisher (Robin Goldsworthy again playing a walking heart attack waiting to happen) for his novel we know the meeting is going to go badly. Few will imagine quite how badly, but the sight is sure to stick with audiences. It’s hilariously appalling.
80 Minutes No Interval is a play about being a writer, balancing art and life, weighing creative integrity against commercial appeal. It could have conspired to be an introspective piece full of industry in-jokes. Luckily it’s bold and bloody with broad appeal.
Each scene ups the anti on the last, the whole thing like watching an angry stomach ulcer bulging ever closer to bursting point. It mocks pretension, putting a crooked middle finger up to every wanky piece of theatre you’ve ever had to endure. Pollyanna it ain’t.
Photo: Rupert Reid
80 Minutes No Interval is playing at the Old Fitz Theatre until Saturday April 9.
