SWEET AS A LIVERPOOL KISS
Author: BOB EVANS
Date: 21/11/1991
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald

THE CASTANET Club, the Newcastle Knights and Peter Brook's "rough
theatre"are two aspects of teamwork and one conceptual approach you
wouldn't normally find in the same sentence, but in a strange, roundabout
way they all come together in The Headbutt.
Here's how. Writer and composer Stephen Abbott has styled his play with
music on the presentational, knock-about naivety of the Castanet Club (in
which Abbott appeared as Johnny Goodman, "resident sad-sack"). As a night
in the theatre The Headbutt is fun, frivolous and audacious in its
nonchalance.

The "roughness" takes many forms: the addition of the Curtis Stand, a bank
of new seats arranged stage-right with homely, hand-me- down 1960s
furniture; the subversion of naturalistic conventions as milk crates are
assembled by the cast to create a car and later a rowing-boat, or the
vacuum cleaner duet between David Hoey playing the domestically
irresponsible, rookie hooker, Chris, and Celia Ireland as his frustrated
housemate, Ruth; the doubling of actor/stage manager, Peter Mahony, as
chorus and MC; and the instant changeability of time and place.

There is an appealing roughness in the casual performance style of the
cast of six, singing their way through "nine hit songs and one dead-set
loser"(which is which?), accompanied by an on-stage tape recorder and
occasionally a guitar.

There's is also a roughness in the way Abbott has constructed his play.
Parts of it resemble the semi- demolished bathroom wall backing onto the
kitchen of 204 Bell Street, Jacksville, where it all happens.

The Headbutt charts Chris's coming of age. In the course of the play he
turns 21, has two parties, makes an inglorious debut in metropolitan Rugby
League, acquires some minor domestic skills (like making tea), learns
there's more to life than sport and sucking "more piss" and that it's OK
to play games other than League.

Around him there's a semichaotic scrum of other characters living in the
shared house at 204 Bell Street: Lennie, his school mate from Taree; Ruth,
a sales assistant in a record store; Nikki (Mandy Salomon), a retro-hippie
nurse always dressed in diaphanous purple; and Paddlepop (Glenn Butcher),
the token gay who works in the promotion business.

Later, there's his dad, in the funniest and most poignant scene - superbly
played in cream flannels and blue cloth cap by Celia Ireland - and the
party animals from Taree, led by the surfie Slug who supplants Lennie,
both distinctively characterised by David Wenham.

The plot is really a series of suburban vignettes, blind-turns and dummy
passes that bring country naivety up against working-class sophistication
in ways that somehow always inspire a song.

Again in the Castanet, rough-house tradition of "give-it-a-go", none of
the singing is particularly fine, nor does it pretend to be.

But it has an appealing adequacy that shines through in numbers such as
Datsun Homer Van, with its frenzied rock 'n' roll and the gauche
torch-song, Then I Met Nicole.

The Headbutt doesn't stand close scrutiny but it thrives on its innate
mediocrity.