Eighteenth century spanish painter Francisco Goya became deaf in the last years of his life. But this disability would not have been an impediment to appreciating Lloyd Jones' latest incarnation of his obsession with Goya's art and life.
With rostra removed and seating rearranged in opposing rows on the floor, under Jones' direction La Mama becomes an open space. The influence of Richard Schechner's Environmental theatre is immediately apparent, particularly in relation to a platform vertically constructed in the northwest corner of the building. It follows then that the audience is immediately immersed within the performance once they enter through the box office door. The large ensemble of actors already occupy the space. The effect is one of entering an installation in an art gallery although, once a behemoth town crier enters and the other performers have situated themselves elsewhere, his operatic invocation of Goya's whereabouts bellows off the walls, floor and ceiling. The dude dutifully wants to know not just the whereabouts of the influential Spanish painter, but also, the pronounced effect he has had on Jones' imagination along with the relevance of Goya's ferocious art in the year 2009.
A dynamic duo of couples resembling misplaced extras from Underbelly give this performance its contemporary perspective, The couples climb to the platform situated in the north corner and do nothing but look cool and slick while watching the action unfold beneath them. The corrupt human heart is central to much of Goya's work. As well as the tendency we as human beings have toward disemboweling, sexually disfiguring, castrating and horse-draw-and-quartering one another when matters don't necessarily go our way. Much like Melbourne's recent gangland war really... Meanwhile, back beneath the gangsters and their tarts, Goya, with paintbrush hanging from belt and fedora on head, repeatedly mutters "Brushstroke, brushstroke..." while the locus of this performance, a bespectacled musician who composes sounds using various found instruments, initiates the performer's charge.
Central to a sense of being immersed within one of Goya's bloodthirsty paintings is the unlikely presence of Marilyn Monroe. Playwright and one-time Monroe beau Arthur Miller also struts his stuff, constantly attempting to impose his will upon the delicious myth of the supposedly 'Dumb blonde'. Strangely though, an elderly incarnation of Monroe, looking more like a ghost of what might have been if Monroe had survived, creeps within and between the performers and the audience. In orbit around this preoccupation with Monroe are various satellite performances: Death enters and drops his hat: a feisty gypsy removes a sex-toy from her underwear and drops this on the floor, before a cackling witch enters with a pronged instrument and momentarily inspects the throbbing phallus, before dispensing with it out the door. Corruption, Jones suggests, is ahistoric; that is, the French-Spanish war that prompted Goya's darker paintings only accentuated the brutality of tyrants. Instead, war elicits from human beings a tendency toward evil that already resides within us, rather than acts of evil originating out of broader social circumstances. Whether brutality towards women in personal relationships, or contemporary gangsters simply blowing one another away, human beings have not really changed much since Goya's time. The recent revelation that the first set of Abu Ghraib photos are only the thin end of further, unreleased depictions of sexual depravity, testify to Jones' ahistorical stance. "Goya" !!! the town crier bellows at the end of this performance. By now, the audience knows exactly where the dead painter is: his work has been right beside us all the time, in exactly the place where we as human beings currently reside.
Beyond Goya: Version 2
Director: Lloyd Jones
Performers: Liz Jones, Maureen Hartley,
Adam Cass, Howard Wilkinson, Germaine
Wattis, Raymond Triggs, Mary Helen Sassman,
Peter Murphy, Pippa Bainbridge, Jessica
Cherry, Tim Ferris, Justine Jansz, Scott Welsh,
Jo-Anne Armstrong
Sound: Alex Selentisch
Light: Pippa Bainbridge
La Mama, Melb., June 4-14
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