Who doesn’t love a play within a play? We’re all babushka dolls at heart – break through one level, and you’ll find a competing form – and so it makes sense that the stories we tell have stories of their own. In that regard, Shakespeare might be king. The play within a play is used as a plot point in Hamlet, of course – and later down the line, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead – while A Midsummer Night’s Dream has the rude mechanicals. After a celebrated season in Adelaide, the story behind these misfit thespians comes to Sydney in The Popular Mechanicals. Director Sarah Giles discusses her involvement with this odd and engaging comedy.
“A day in the life of me is, I’m either with my extremely incredible toddler, who is two, and so there’s a lot of pouring imaginary cups of tea and going to the museum. Or I’m in a weird rehearsal room. And this one kind of is a weird room. But you see, the history of this show is, we first did it when my baby was just three months old, and so my mum took long service leave; we all came to Adelaide to rehearse here. And I was sleep-deprived and breastfeeding during rehearsal, and it was completely hilarious and absurd. And this time around, we’re only back [in Adelaide] for about a week, throwing it together before we all schlep across to Sydney. But I’ve left my toddler back with my husband in Melbourne, so I’m a lady of leisure!”
The script itself doesn’t feel like a script.
It’s more like someone has notated down this really bizarre production.
She laughs, and you can just imagine Giles reclining on a crushed velvet divan, all chiffon robes and champagne. The Popular Mechanicals first saw the light of day under her stewardship back in 2015 for the State Theatre Company of South Australia (STCSA), and proved to be such an outrageous success that a revival was surely just a matter of time. Written three decades ago by Keith Robinson and Tony Taylor (and premiering over at Belvoir under the direction of a certain Geoffrey Rush), it’s a comedy that has lost none of its absurd charm – although after all this time, certain jokes needed a bit of nudging along.
“We all mentioned the other day [in rehearsal], the difference in revisiting something is that usually, you know that it works. When you’re making something new, particularly in a script like this, you just don’t know if it’s going to work. It’s not like we’re doing Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman. That play works. This one, it’s a really peculiar thing in that it came out of a bunch of people back in the day, mucking around, improvising, and using their own niches and talents to make a really…” She thinks, and then laughs. “Well, the script itself doesn’t feel like a script. It’s more like someone has notated down this really bizarre production.
Any good director or artist sees the world through their own prism.
“So when we picked it up, it was more like, ‘Oh, God. OK, that joke really doesn’t make sense any more, that line is clearly from the ’80s.’ So we had to find our own way through it, and work out, ‘Is this funny today? If it isn’t, how do we find humour through it?’ So the anxiety was just how to own this play and make it funny – how do the actors find their way into such peculiar roles?”
I’ve been fortunate to catch several of Giles’ productions now, and there seems something quite protean about the scripts she is drawn to. Perplex was absurd with lots of character swapping, and Mariage Blanc was full of magical realist transformations just as The Popular Mechanicals has magic and shape-shifting unfolding in the wings.
“I find it really hard to look at my own body of work and say, ‘What does it all mean?’ I feel any good director or artist sees the world through their own prism. They see peculiarities, things that pique your interest. I don’t know what I’m interested in, but I do know what I’m not interested in.
“I didn’t pitch this script to Geordie [Brookman, STCSA artistic director]. We gave him some ideas, and then he came back to us with this script thinking it would be worth a revival. When I looked at it this time, the thing that intrigued me was the notion of modern-day clowning, and what that is. I’d seen some work over in Germany, and there’s a particular director called Herbert Fritsch, and I found his stuff quite inspiring.
“Popular Mechanicals is really weird. We had this hilarious moment in round one, where we were doing this description of it for State Theatre subscribers. And we were saying it’s really funny, it’s stupid, there are fart jokes, puppetry. And at the end of this question time, someone put their hand up and said, ‘I go to theatre to be asked big questions, to wrestle with things, and I get that this sounds fun, but is there a greater meaning here?’ And I said, maybe a little sleep-deprived, ‘Well, no! There’s not. It’s just pure entertainment. This piece is about the theatre, it’s about the silliness and joy of the theatre, and that’s about it.’
“So I guess I’m always pulled to things that might expose the bleaker side of life, but in a very funny way. Comedy can be the best way to talk to people. If you get them laughing, they’ll listen to you.” ■
[The Popular Mechanicals photo by Kris Washusen]
The Popular Mechanicals runs until Saturday May 13 at Wharf 2 Theatre.
