Relative

As I said to one of my friends last night, I've been doing well in my theatre outings of late. The last few plays I've seen have ranged from excellent to good. Contrast that with the restaurants I've visited, which have ranged from adequate to sub-standard, and we can see that theatre is a clear winner.


Of course, I said that before we went in to see 'Urban Primate'.


It was a local one-act play, put on at the Blue Room Studio in the city's nightclub district. To call the Studio intimate is an understatement. There are only three or four rows of seats, and as I was in the front row, I had to be careful when I crossed my legs, lest I kick an actor in the kneecap. But there's nothing wrong with intimacy, especially when you're seeing a small-scale play about a man undergoing a process of mental and social collapse. When you watch someone's mind leaking out their ears, it pays to be up close.


The story concerned a middle-aged quantity surveyor at a construction company, who daydreams about his past professional successes as he sits in his basement office, while somewhere upstairs his duties are gradually being absorbed by some new computer software. He is relegated to taking measurements for a new monkey enclosure at the zoo, in the process of which he accidentally locks himself in a cage with a troop of tamarinds. He's forced to stay there overnight until someone finds him, during which time he has an epiphany.


Unfortunately, exactly what his epiphany is remains unclear to the audience. It's evident that he identifies with the monkeys and wants to join their simple simian world. But why that is better than anything else is not explored, or at least not explained. Why is he so enamoured with the monkeys? And how are we supposed to identify with a protagonist who is so self-absorbed, disconnected from the world, and in such a state of mental disintegration, that he functions on a plane that is opaque to both the rest of the cast and the audience?


The audience needs to feel that even though none of the other characters can 'get' this man, we can. It has to be us (the audience and the protagonist) versus them. But we didn't get to see his innermost thoughts. We saw that he had deep-seated resentment, and that he was, pretty much from the very first scene, batshit insane. But that's not enough. Not if we're expected to care, and join him at least part of the way on his journey.


All of this may give the impression that it was a rotten play, and that I had a terrible time... neither of which is true. The play was interesting, and I enjoyed watching it, but I didn't lose myself in it. It might have worked better if the playwright had boosted the surreal notes that, as it was, always gleamed brighter than the rest of the performance. For example, I loved the zookeeper, who reacted to everything, from a conversation with a visitor to a mass escape of monkeys, with exactly the same laconic geniality. Or the bitchy efficiency consultant who blamed the falling stock value of a large company on a single potted palm tree they'd put in their lobby. A bit more of that, and the play might have been fascinating, rather than just interesting.