NEPEAN'S SONG-AND-DANCE PROLONGS THE AGONY

Author: By BOB EVANS
Date: 13/12/1986
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Section: Saturday Review
Page: 44

THE final-year students of Theatre Nepean made their first Sydney stage appearance in April this year in a production of 
The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Seymour Centre. 

It was a ponderous effort that galumphed its way through Brecht's transparent polemics; its style, an incoherent parody of 
de Mille's Hollywood Babylon. 

Theatre Nepean's October productions of Berkoff's East and its repetitive variation West may have seemed like a mini-series 
in comparison but still the obsession with the grandiose persisted. 

Brecht a la the Bible and Berkoff back-to-back are nothing compared to the excesses of Snatched! - Nepean's final production. 

Snatched! is a group-devised work (seven writers are credited plus director Robert Kimber) which purports to explore the 
wider ramifications of in-vitro fertilisation. 

The play is set 21 years from now, in the year 2007, on an island off the Queensland coast where Dr Genevieve Cresside, 
a female composite of Milan Brych and Dr No, runs a fertility clinic which implants embryos in a ratio of three females 
to one male. 

Her clinical practices run counter to mainland procedures where, following a mysterious gynaecological epidemic in the 1990s, 
all females are sterilised (which the play seems to equate with being desexed) and only male embryos are implanted. 

This extrapolation in time is intended to expose the twin evils of a male-dominated society and the dastardly uses to which 
science can be put by unscrupulous individuals and/or governments. 

Certainly, fertility is a feminist issue, particularly as it relates to women's control over their own bodies, but the 
ideology espoused in Snatched! is questionable if not more seriously compromised. 

It also makes nonsense of a program note in which director Robert Kimber claims to have chosen a production style "that 
has the hard edge of the comic book" to isolate and underline the issues for reflection. 

Snatched! has none of the narrative clarity which is the hallmark of the comic's imaginary world and which might help 
distill its pretentious social comment. 

John Studholmes "comic" design uses black frames to contain the action but they impede the performance and offer no help 
to the audience in this desperately confused production which progresses not by dramatic action but by sporadic exposition, 
broken by set-piece song-and-dance routines which ought to comment on the issues, but only prolong the agony. 

From the cast Kate Cordukes manages well as Micki Matters, TV anchorwoman; Elizabeth Williams establishes a striking 
presence as Dr Dorsey-Hunt; David Wenham demonstrates his versatility as the bucolic father-to-be, and John Simpson makes 
the most of his appearance as Archimedes, the slave trader. 

But it's unwise to put largely untested actors in an untested play, with obvious structural problems and a set that is more 
of a hindrance than a help 

Looking back on this year's three productions, I don't think Nepean's Class of 86 has had a fair go.