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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 14. June 12 1978

Red Mole — Twice More Into the Breach..

page 13

Red Mole

Twice More Into the Breach...

Photo of Debbie Hunt

Debbie Hunt

Crazy in the Streets Our World

A man dressed in strange costume stands at the back of the stage moving his arms in perfect symmetry up and down at various angles to his body, while a musician holds a portable metronome to the microphone. Another man dressed in a hard hat, PVC parka and shorts announces in brash American tones to a disconcerted couple in a restaurant that he is looking for oil. Oil? The restaurant's as good a place as any to look in a country that hasn't got any oil, he states, but who's to worry when the NZ government is paying him $93 million a year? Australia's got oil though, he says, and leaves.

You don't have to admire the technical precision or laugh at the humour, but one thing is for certain in both parts of this double bill: actors are to the fore, they know what they are doing and they do it well. So well in fact that Crazy in the Streets, the second part of the show is the best thing I have seen Red Mole do.

I didn't see them at Ziggy's so I can't comment on how much was taken from that season or what signs of development recent Red Mole work is showing. But gone are the occasional clumsiness and lack of polish of the Balcony days. Gone too is the heavy reliance on enormous props and masks which reached its extreme in Ghost Rite and too easily served to disguise a lack of disciplined effort on the part of the actors or relegated them to an importance which gave them no room to move.

Now it's back to the actors, supported by Jan Preston's consistently fine music. There are some old routines (the dance/fight between Debbie Hunt and Sally Rod-well, Alan Brunton's mc) but they are unassuming and blend well into the overall shape of the pieces. Red Mole are doing what they know they can do in style without resting on their laurels.

Crazy in the Streets is the better of the two pieces for a number of reasons. There is more exploration of new material, sequences are better linked and the action is tighter. Thematic expectations are more fully lived up to (cutting out the bullshit in the programme like, "the play leans towards the fierce logic of Greek tragedy and the audience should experience Crazy in the Streets as a community, waiting perhaps for the paper factory to close down while the weekly rag advertises The Last Picture Show").

Whether the stories of Sargeson, Maurice Gee and others have common roots with this work or are its roots is hard to say, but the feeling of small town isolation is certainly there.

Our World, on the other hand, claims to be "a sharp attack on the economic policies of the present Government as they are reflected in the lives of ordinary people." It's not, opting instead to use the present economic crisis to highlight some of the absurder aspects the imagination is capable of drawing from everyday life.

Above all this however there is one difference between Crazy in the Streets and every other Red Mole show: the protagonists are played not by Hunt, Rodwell or Brunton, but by John Davies and Ian Prior. Both are movement specialists, Davies tending towards an energetic outgoing stage presence, while Prior is a past master of precision and control.

Their different styles of work and the close interaction they have developed seems to have created in the whole company a stronger sense of working together in a context of maintaining separate identities. Energy is shared, discipline is greater. In a company where so much emphasis is placed on movement it is good to see the limelight taken more by people who really know what they are doing. Prior's old man, with leg insanely wobbling at every second step and fixed expression is a minor masterpiece. The performance suffered from the atmosphere of the Memorial Theatre: the stage was a bit too large, the proscenium sometimes restricted sound projection, the bland walls were terribly out of place.

And what will Red Mole do now? They're off to Europe, we are told, after one more trip around the country. Their politics are as rotten as ever, as Davies underscores near the end of the show when he sings a song which suggests the only thing to do in these troubled times is to piss off. At least now they're moving towards a form simple enough to allow such sentiments honest expression.

Simon Wilson.

Red Mole has a large following. That is almost like saying there is coal in Newcastle, it's so obvious. Unlike other forms of theatre, theirs is full of colour, movement and images that seem to pile on top of one another, often for their own sake.

In the programme notes they talk about hallucination, randomness, volatility, A reflection of their view of present-day New Zealand? Or a reflection of the 'Hippie world' from which they and much of their audience maybe come? For what other reason was the dialogue between the boss as he fired the worker or the father as he talked to his daughter in Our World filled with such unnecessary movement? It kept the visual energy up, it alienated the audience from the actors, but did it add anything to the total picture?

Any work in theatre, as in any other art, must have shape or form. By that I don't mean necessarily a beginning, middle and end but a coherency and logic ail of its own. To add a piece of shadow puppetry that really goes nowhere, says and does nothing apart from bridging a costume change and to show that you can do a bit of shadow work (witness Crazy in the Streets) seems to me preposterous and extremely self indulgent. But the audience applaud. Is that ever any justification...

For Red Mole maybe it is. They are following the trend common to much modem theatre of heading towards so-called 'popular theatre' i.e. circus, clown, music hall and all that surrounds it. If the audience like it, it must be right. The intellectual justification could possibly be that images assault us with far greater rapidity than previously. One day National is in power the next Labour and then back again. Jobs are easy to come by one day, the next day you are on the dole. To quote from W. B. Yeats, 'Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world'.

Photo of Ian Prior

Ian Prior

Maybe the Second Coming is at hand. If it is, theatre must reflect it. That is its job. But if one merely presents a chaos of images rather than the chaos itself one is not fulfilling one's role. Instead of gaining a perception of the chaos that surrounds us, one merely perceives a chaos of images, few of which mean anything at all. One leaves the theatre entertained by the energy and vitality but one's mind is basically numbed. Images are recalled but in isolation. Something for everyone but everything for no-one.

If I may be so unkind, I would suggest such a process hides a certain artistic laziness. An idea is mooted, images spring from the imagination of the participants, masks, props and costumes are made to reflect those images, and they are strung together in some sort of shape. But little or no thought is given to the overall form of the piece. Many of the images are really attractive but no-one has the courage to reject them for the sake of developing some of the more appropriate images. A mask is brought on, it moves around the stage and then it disappears never to be seen again. It has an initial impact but the mask of image itself is never explored or developed.

Photo of Sally Rodwell and Alan Brunton

Sally Rodwell and Alan Brunton

A classic example of this process can be seen in the use of Ian Prior as the extra-terrestial being Herb Charming in Our World. This was one of the most superb examples of concentrated, expressive and economical use of movement seen in Wellington for a long time. His stillness and solidity could have been a powerful juxtaposition to the frenetic movement that surrounded him, as obviously it was meant to be, but it didn't work. Instead of being allowed to stay silent the bass player dubbed his voice with an execrable Kiwi accent. Instead of remaining a powerful silent presence on stage he had to be made into a joke.

If I seem overly harsh it is because their performances always disappoint me. Every single person working with them is an extremely skilled, talented and proficient performer. As a group they form one of the most brilliant and energetic theatre enterprises in the country. But instead of presenting a clear and lucid statement about their perceptions of the present situation they give us a mind besotting drug that tickles our visual senses leaving us cynical and demoralised. They could give so much, they have all the necessary prerequisites, and I look forward to the day when they finally succeed. Up till that time they form a powerful stimulus which is much needed.

John Bailey