To be penultimate creator is every playwright's dream. Eventually though, the world of artifice created in the theatre must be evaluated in relation to the actual life experience of an audience. Here, Neil La Bute's script for Some Girl(s) makes questionable assumptions about the battle of the sexes. (I'm specifically referring to La Bute's script here, as opposed to directorial or actor nuance as it appears in the current production of this play at Dante's, Fitzroy).
Guy is a once virile college jock fast approaching marriage and middle-age. He refers to himself as a writer, and has had the odd piece of fiction published in minor literary magazines. But claiming to be a writer, and the act of writing, are two vastly different types of behaviour. Guy appears to spend more time teaching literature, as well as ploughing through a passing parade of females who in Neil La Bute's world, cannot help but throw themselves at this hunk's feet.
In four different U.S. cities, over a period of some months, Guy sets up liaisons with four old flames on the presumption that he would like to clear the air with these women before he himself settles down and marries his fiance nurse. And even though Sam, Tyler, Lindsay and Bobbi each harbor resentment toward Guy over being unceremoniously dumped, all four of La Bute's female characters agree to meet their sexual nemesis in the same motel room that was once the site of their past sexual peccadilloes. (The aging Lindsay is even driven to this liaison by her 'supportive' collegiate professor husband... He has apparently agreed to his wife having one last bonk with the same man who once back-doored him, while he waits outside the motel, calm in his car).
Of course, La Bute defines each female presence in the play using well crafted character techniques that have Sam, Tyler, Lindsay and Bobbi each responding to Guy and his unlikely request in different ways. Sam is curt, and would like to get straight to the point. While Bobbi is initially flattered and made curious by the requested liaison. Eventually though, all four women are united in their expression of deep feelings of hurt and bewilderment prompted by Guy's thoughtless behaviour. Guy himself, forever the slightly dumb and disarming dude, (apparently), is portrayed as a charming emotional lightweight who just cannot help himself. Until, at play's end, he is revealed as a man of much more Machiavellian motives. By this time though, and in different ways, each of the four women have been conned by Guy. (The one exception is Lindsay, who plays a deception of her own. But not before the audience is titillated by her strip to suspender belt, panties and black stockings, and she performs simulated oral sex upon the unwilling stud).
La Bute's deception is to create female characters who are outwardly strong and independent, but inwardly victimised. Recently, a female friend of mine complained about being harassed by her first boyfriend's on-line request for Facebook friendship. Like La Bute's character Sam, and married with two children, my friend found the request for friendship to be such a banal and pathetic intrusion into her present life, that rather than acknowledge the request, she simply deactivated her Facebook account. Even so, Some Girl(s) is a thought provoking night in the theatre. La Bute is skillful in the construction of male fantasy, so skilled that he quickly has you believing that his play is an accurate reflection of your life. In the hands of such a canny writer, the art of fantasy can be a powerful and persuasive device.
Some Girl(s)
Writer: Neil La Bute
Director: Louise Howlett
Producer: Natalie Gee
Performers: Luke Prendergast,
Emma Townsend, Natalie Gee,
Harriet James & Katie Bull
Stage Management: Anneli Dyall
Light: Ed Marshall
Production Crew: David Peterika-Williams
& Natasha Mateus
Dantes, Sep. 1-5, Melb.
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