The Clink (2009)
This year’s Senior School play, The Clink, was a challenging dramatic work with multiple layers and a complex tone; at moments it is a dark political thriller, at others it borders on the farcical and absurdist comedy associated with the Monty Python loonies and their devotees. First performed in 1993, Stephen Jeffrey’s homage to British comedy, as well as to Shakespeare and the Jacobeans, relies heavily on the nuanced delivery of its witty and subversive language and ideas. Its more than two hours running time makes demands on its audience, who must listen carefully. No greater homage can be paid to the outstanding ensemble of young actors who performed it, and who got their tongues around its difficult syntax, and who understood so brilliantly what they were doing, than that audiences on all four nights were wholly captivated by what they were watching and hearing. An audience of such mixed ages and theatre experience remaining so palpably engrossed throughout speaks volumes, not just for the quality of the writing, but for the clarity and intensity of the performance.
The play offers many substantial acting opportunities. There are numerous lengthy parts, each providing interesting contrasts in style, and all were admirably filled by talented and versatile young performers. Martin Quinn as Lucius Bodkin (a fool) is the play’s dramatic lynch-pin, and he simply excelled, capturing perfectly the bitter comedy and pathos of both character and situation. Martin seems born to the stage, and is compellingly watchable; his endearing humanity and vulnerability were spot on, and his daunting Act 2 stand-up comic routine quite astonishing. But he was far from alone in the ”outstanding performance” stakes. Ryan Murphy was a deliciously wicked and conniving minister of state, capturing superbly the slickness of political rhetoric and backstairs intrigue. His presence was commanding. So too that of Annabelle Tudor as his partner in intrigue, the ex-slave Zanda, whose moral ambivalence and outsider status attract unease and sympathy equally. Annabelle’s characterisation and delivery attested again to her dramatic capabilities, evident now in numerous ATC productions. And Elora Ledger, in her first major role, delivered a beautifully balanced Beatrice, a sort of proto-feminist unchaining herself from the great chain of convention in an unexpected and quite terrifying way. And among the principals, Rachael Findlay’s Queen Elizabeth was a perfectly captured portrayal of someone exhausted by office, wearied by life, and touchingly in pursuit of one last laugh.
But there were many quirky support roles to keep the audience entertained; each was beautifully rendered, and testified to the depth of talent on the stage. Chief among these were Samantha Beer, as an eloquently savvy and modernist apothecary; Elliot Munn, Lucius’s brother, a comic of the old school who poignantly discovers he is deeply unfunny; Morgan Stubbs, whose grandiose hypocrisy as an avaricious prelate was uncomfortably convincing; Daniel Dindas, and the seemingly perennial Maxwell Simon, as noblemen with different agendas and confused loyalties; Chris Borzillo, as an intrusive and pedantic (and hence irritating) Guard; Isabella Grabowsky as a slow-witted and lugubrious scholar; and, in a special comic moment, Joey Coley-Sowry as Hieronymous Bodkin, a deceased fool, the father of Lucius, offering a kind of plaintive testimony to journeymen comedians everywhere. The pure comic turns were also nicely judged. Audiences clearly loved Daniel Smorgon’s Gridling, a mixture of High Camp buffoonery and an Elizabethan version of metrosexual chic; and Paddy Martinkus as a John Cleese-like connoisseur of duels, whose ferocious rants and nostalgia for more violent times reminded you of the very core of Pythonesque absurdity. His cheer squads were there most nights.
Nor should the Abraham men be overlooked for their excellent ensemble work. Representing the poor of London, and the oppressed everywhere, they were by degrees dangerous and touchingly vulnerable – both conveyed by fine vocal work and mime. Their role in the play’s most moving ceremonial moment, when the dead queen is borne from the stage by her neglected and gullible populace to the repeated strains of a doleful melody, hit exactly the right note.
The production design thoughtfully complemented the play’s central ideas: a thrust stage with audience on three sides brought the play closer, particularly encouraging immersion by the audience in the plights (and scheming) of different characters. This gave the added sense of the characters bursting free from the restrictions imposed by conventional staging: but the towering stone wall of ”The Clink” reinforced their captivity, and the notion that all are to a degree imprisoned, liberty an illusion.
The Clink was a demanding but satisfying experience for the good houses it attracted on each of the four nights. Under the direction of the Company’s most experienced team (directors Clare Cooper, Dawson Hann and Tony Scanlon, costume designers Stephanie Des Barres and Jill Welch, technical director Sabino Del Balso and designer Tony Scanlon, each with countless productions under their respective belts), the finesse, detail and polish of the production were never really in question.
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