Genet's men at play
Author: STORY BY RUTH HESSEY
Date: 20/07/1995
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald

 
Take eight of Australia's sexiest stage actors - from the elegant Ralph Cotterill to the movie-smooth young Teo Gebert - 
and confine them in a theatre space dressed like a movie set for Marilyn Monroe. 

Amid the velvet drapes, glamorous staircase and hundreds of mirrors, what do they see? 

After an hour or so of gangster strut and gun-barrel repartee at the Belvoir Street Theatre, the audience starts to see it, 
too. Rampant testosterone, fear, bravado and cynicism are all reflected here. Not much love. 

Certainly very little affection. Here is the 20th-century male ego in all its wounded glory, arguing with its fractured 
self about power and society. As David Wenham, one of the energetic stars of the show, says: "Close to nothing happens, 
but it's absolutely fascinating to watch." 

Although Jean Genet's Splendids was written more than 40 years ago, its analysis seems as fresh as a Tarantino script. 
With considerably more depth than Reservoir Dogs, but with a similar premise, Genet explores the last hours of lives 
dominated by violence and crime. While it's set in the gilded cage of a luxury hotel, the play concerns itself with the 
intangible prison in these men's minds. Or, as Wenham explains: "It's about a bunch of petty crooks who have made a mistake." 

The mistake they have made quickly becomes apparent. Their hostage (also the only female character in the play) is already 
dead when the lights go up. It is not only her life but what "she" represents in each man that has been destroyed. 

Jacek Koman, husky-voiced to the point of exhaustion after opening night, explains that Genet himself was "a thief, a 
homosexual, a leftie". 

"He grew up in jails, amongst men," says Koman. "At a very young age, he rejected the society that had rejected him. 
He had every right to be bitter and sad." 

In the second act when the dead American heiress's satin gown is resurrected and Koman's character is forced to wear it, 
Koman says "he is stripped of his masculinity and his right to defend himself". 

Koman's hairy chest and muscular biceps make a disturbing contrast with the lush cleavage of the heiress's costume. 
This is no Priscilla-esque drag show. Treated like a woman, the object of the other men's power fantasies, his degradation 
is complete. 

At the same time the police close in. Without a hostage, the gangsters' fates are sealed. 

While the actors say the rehearsal process was "extremely painful", there is no lack of humour, or erotic undertow. 
A playful element to the performances suggests a private joke backstage. It could be, as Wenham suggests, that beneath 
their tails and trousers, "all the cast have made secret fetishes of women's underwear". 

Genet was, after all, exploring the tension between the private and the public realm. 

Unlike the Carry On version, starring Julian Clary in London last year, or the French production which was set in a circus, 
this Belvoir version (conceived by Jim Sharman and directed by Bogdan Koca) is like "dancing to poetry", as Wenham says. 

"It's very bleak, very dark. And now we're playing to audiences, a lot of the humour and irreverence is coming out." 

Splendids is on at the Belvoir Street Theatre until August 6.