Machine-gun surrealism
Author: PAMELA PAYNE
Date: 15/07/1995
Publication: Sun Herald

 
THE production begins and ends with machine-gun fire. In the interlude - death briefly suspended - Jean Genet's vision is 
stark and disturbing. 

Splendid's, withheld by Genet from publication during his lifetime, is an essay on criminal psychology - not only confined 
to law-breakers. And in the course of his text, Genet probes a fascination of ideas: from the irrationality of the survival 
instinct to multiple variations on the player and the played. 

This is not a plot-driven work. From the start, the end for all but one character is, inevitably, death. And, although 
thematically he is pivotal, this one character - a policeman (Daniel Rigney) - is not intended to provide the kind of 
suspense that impels a plot. 

Instead, Genet proffers an experience that is cerebral - and provocatively so, emotional, that slashes at assumptions of 
morality, of social order. 

Nor does Genet establish a realistic world, although he borrows its trappings. This world - superbly realised by designer 
Michael Wilkinson - with its emphatic lustre, its extravagant elegance, has that heightened familiarity, dream-plausibility 
of surrealism. And through it - their reflections mocking from the massive, mirrored walls - eight men glide, change rhythm, 
cut and twirl in a monstrous dance of death. 

Seven of them are gangsters - The Reapers - under police siege in a luxury 1940s French hotel (Splendid's). 

Their kidnap victim - American heiress, "beautiful bauble" - is dead. 

Strangled by Riton (Colin Moody)? Their policeman-hostage has crossed the border from "brutal servant of the State" to its 
brutal enemy. "He's seduced by our legend." Perhaps. 

Bogdan Koca, who took over direction when Jim Sharman withdrew early in rehearals because of ill health, establishes a tone 
of seedy indolence. 

This is a stylish production - not yet as compelling as it might be, but wonderfully eloquent and restrained. Koca's direction 
has the kind of confidence that pulls back from over-explanation. He lets Genet's meanings sit; leaves space for contemplation 
and interpretation. It's the silences in his production that shriek tension. 

Jacek Koman as Jean, called Johnny, is at the centre of this macabre dance. 

His final exit in heiress finery - like some grotesque, forgotten bride - stays in the memory: an after-image, superimposed 
on the play's last scenes. His performance is unerring. 

All the other actors on this stage add particular detail and audacity to Genet's grim canvas - like Moody's dangerous Riton, 
for example; Ralph Cotterill's Scott with his cruel decadence; Teo Gebert's puffed-up, hot-headed Bravo; or David Wenham's 
Bob, all unpredictable, bright-eyed evil. 

And these actors handle adroitly Genet's language: his linguistic registers that hurtle from the viciously poetic to terse, 
"tough-guy" vernacular. Immaculate in evening dress, "a breath away from death", they're the chillingly dispassionate 
"grinning monsters" of Genet's bitter landscape.