For anyone who hasn’t experienced ‘cinematic’ theatre before, Kip Williams’ reimagining of Tennessee Williams’ 1950s classic Suddenly Last Summer may be a little disorientating and dizzying at first.
The production should really come with a motion sickness warning, as the first half-hour is entirely filmed live on tripod-held cameras, behind a white wall that’s used to separate the actors from the audience and act as a giant projector screen, revealing the hidden drama.
The play opens with a camera weaving its way through tropical palms and ferns in a single fluid motion, bringing the audience into a lavish greenhouse or sunroom, in what seems to be a very old and wealthy New Orleans home. It feels a lot like voyeurism, and it is, as we’re confronted with a startling conversation between wealthy socialite and matriarch Violet Venables (Robyn Nevin), trying to bribe the young neurosurgeon Dr. Sugar (Mark Leonard Winter) into lobotomising cousin Catharine (Eryn Jean Norvill), who has been spreading damaging reports about how Violet’s son Sebastian died.
The tension and power of the play is centred around the dark and twisted truth of how and why Sebastian died, a mystery that slowly unravels in a Twin Peaks-esque, dreamlike reality, in which the audience can’t be sure how much of the narrative and events is an illusion created by the characters. This fantastical atmosphere is masterfully reinforced by Stefan Gregory’s spellbinding score and some ingenious camera work. During one scene, a single camera dramatically zooms in on Catharine’s dilating pupils as she catatonically recounts the finals hours of Sebastian’s life, projecting these enlarged and terrified eyes behind the actress so that the audience feels like they’re pinned to their seats, unable to get up and look away. The camera amplifies the turmoil of these characters and draws the observers in, making them feel like they’re on that stage, caught up in the horror.
What makes Suddenly Last Summer so immersive is the struggle to discern the truth, with multiple versions of reality placed before the audience in an illusory setting. It is a play that is meant to be experienced rather than just seen, and its innovative fusion of cine-theatre achieves this, creating a psychological drama worth the temporary motion sickness.
The play is a beautiful pastiche of the “horror” of Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, the terrifying drama of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, and the fantastic mystery of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. It is one of the most refreshing pieces of theatre to hit Sydney in a long time.
4.5/5 stars
Suddenly Last Summer is playing at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House until Saturday March 21.
