THREE HOURS' LAUGHTER FROM COMEDY MASTER
Date: 16/05/1992
Publication: The Sun Herald

IT'S a pity that critics don't review more productions after they've
settled in.
Circumstances prevented my seeing Cosi until Tuesday night. Its final
performance is this afternoon at 5 o'clock. Anyone who wants three hours
of refreshing giggles should be there.

Note the duration of the performance. My critical colleagues commented
that the running time was 3 1/2 hours, including two intervals, on opening
night. Shaving half an hour off has no doubt heightened the comedy, as
well as getting people home before midnight.

This is a bold comic idea: Lewis, the central figure, imaginatively based
on Louis Nowra himself, is a new graduate in the 1960s. He's in desperate
need of money, so he gets a job directing a play. The catch is that the
cast are inmates of an oldfashioned mental asylum.

Roy, the dominant inmate, is besotted with Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, so
that's the work they do. To Roy it's inconsequential that no one can sing
or even speak Italian.

As Roy, Barry Otto gives one of the most assured performances of his
illustrious career. Of course, the writing is a joy. In fact, while
praising Otto I must add that it is a bonus to be in the hands of such a
master of dialogue and situation. After much recent exposure to new
writing I delighted in the sustained comic artistry of Nowra's imagined
madhouse.

The cast of eight is uniformly excellent, a significant tribute to Adam
Cook, whose reputation grows with every production he directs. The second
senior actor in the cast is Bob Baines, who came closest to wringing tears
that were not of laughter from me. As Henry, a pathetically withdrawn
former lawyer of conservative cast, he clashed with Lewis's Marxist mate
(David Field in one of three different, impressive characterisations) in
an almost frightening confrontation.

David Wenham's pyromaniac, Doug, contributes to this young actor's list of
eye-catching performances on local stages, while Celia Ireland, as the
relentlessly forthright Cherry makes the most of the best of the women's
roles.

Elsbeth McTavish and Kerry Fox merit honourable mention as a compulsive
perfectionist and a junkie respectively.

A good deal of this production's deserved acclaim should go to the
straight man at the centre of the comic mayhem, Ben Mendelsohn.

Anyone who enjoys laughing in the theatre and who wants to applaud a
splendid cast in a first-rate production, led by a masterly Barry Otto,
should be prepared to do battle for the remaining tickets this afternoon.