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DARKNESS is currently running at the old 505 theatre in Eliza Street Newtown. The theatre production has gone hand in hand with a substantial and expensive designed fit-out of the downstairs foyer, along with a full 360 setting of theatre itself. The foyer seems inspired by Harry Potter, the theatre by the symmetrical classical windows of the Villa Diadati where Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Byron’s personal physician, John Polidori, Mary Godwin and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont, stayed in 1816. Design along with pre-publicity and dramaturgical notes promise a deep probing into gothic horror at the time of English romanticism with direct relevance to the catastrophes of war and climate facing the world today. Unfortunately, starting with the divergence of design (populist Gothic and classical) in the two spaces, the show does not live up to the expectations that its remarkable production design and blurb engenders.
Hollywood can use myth and history as convenient toolkits of postmodern story telling. It is possible the writers of DARKNESS could have stretched the nature of the 1816 stay at Villa Diodati next to Lake Geneva to make it echo today. But there are limits. The English Romantics were young, and on about the pursuit of joy and beauty – and discovery of new humanity. They sought a revolution of the imagination, in union with new found experience of nature, and If they indulged in drugs and sexual freedom it was not to escape the world but to fulfil it.
True, the summer of 1816 in Europe was very wet, due to the volcanic explosion in Indonesia. The group had a brief time of rain and inconvenience – they waited for the rain to pass, not for the end of the world. They looked outside and celebrated any break in the clouds, or sudden appearance of Alpine mountain tops – and were quickly out and about after a few days when the sun finally came forth.
They waited for the rain to end and wrote and read gothic stories for three days – hardly the stuff of a contemporary climate change apocalypse.
The fact Byron suggested Gothic stories for entertainment is the erstwhile raison d’être of Darkness. But one can imagine the friendly banter, intelligence and humour that would have accompanied these concoctions of the populist Gothic genre. Here is how Shelley recollected his friend Byron – he “did he display himself to more advantage than on these occasions; being at once polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and the most perfect good humour; never diverging into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up the spirit of liveliness.” The foreboding of revolutionary Europe has died down – and these young people had optimism and history on their side in their buoyant fantasy making.
However skewed the depiction of events of 1816 might be, they are made worse through the amalgam characterisation of the show. The cast (Caroline L. George, Zoran Jevtic, Jerome Meyer, Imogen Sage, Alec Snow and Drew Wilson) were all capable, hardworking and exemplary as far as the script and direction (Dino Dimitriadis) would allow, as they were given the difficult task of quickly embodying historical and modern persons, in increasingly earnest, desperate and sometimes overacted tones, and without real character development or diversity of action and scenes. They all very much looked the part of historical personages, spoke and dressed well, although not particularly English. They had to embody modern unnamed characters trapped vampire like by climate emergencies and dystopia outside, and debauchery and disloyalty within, and debating with exponential seriousness the meaning of life, death, identity sex and drugs. The narrative was like the inner city Detroit vampires in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive – but that film was blessed by subtle charm and distinct irony.
If only Andrew Bovell, the senior and experienced of the four person writing team (including Zoey Dawson, Dan Giovannoni and Megan Wilding ) had better decided what was the context of the play, past or present. You could switch between past and present in alternating scenes, with actors doubling, but even then there would be problems linking the themes of two settings. Bovell uses the same amalgam method of characterisation that was present in Ship of Fools, done recently and very well as the graduating play at Chippen Street Theatre school. The same historiographical problem seems present in both plays, conflating history and present in the same characters.
No list of stories or individual writing credits were available. Do the stories select from the actual stories told in 1816, including the popular Fantasmagoriana volumes, or Romantic writing and poetry generally – or Mary Godwin own Frankenstein and the seminal Vampire story by Polidori – soon adapted by Byron in his own fragment – that were commenced during the Geneva stay. Mary was the daughter of William Godwin, a famous political democratic writer of the time, and her own story is as much about authoritarianism as it is about personal well being or horror as such. It was motivated by readings on popular science that the group were also doing during their three day rest. I am not sure these rich resources were fully or well exploited, and to do so might have required a more experienced team or a solo writer. How much freedom were the writers afforded? They might have attempted to keep faith with historical sources, but without program notes it is hard to know. There was a sense that the 1816 meeting was mainly a pretext for quite digressing horror stories by modern writers, complete with lashings of sexual play.
Now the good news. The concept in itself is excellent, and the show was on the way to something very special. Some moments and stories shone. Imogen Sage delivered the Little Lost Girl tale with great clarity and understated assurance. Full marks for lighting and direction. Her English background provided an appropriate tone for the primary Romantic personages. This story could be a benchmark of a less is more horror style that would work well on a small stage and could have underpinned the whole show. The lighting (Benjamin Brockton) sound (Danni Esposito) and design (Isabel Hudson) were all of high standard and exemplary – but all limited by the script, which omitted any lyricism. On the other hand, it is quite remarkable and rare to see such a transformation of an existing location for a standalone production, especially in Sydney – Living Room Theatre achieved something like it years ago at the unrenovated Peir 1/2 Walsh Bay. The seating for DARKNESS was pew-like and custom built, and business class in term of spaciousness, and the floor looked and shone like funereal (or was it classical) marble.
Now the questions. In terms of this production, why was the spec built stage so narrow (3metres)? It is very hard to light an area as wide as a corridor outside, and it is even harder to locate furniture, or have actors interact. They were forced to find distance by sitting in the aisles. The stepped platform upstage looked great but not fully practical, and was mainly occupied by a (filled) bath that was only used a few times. Was it really needed? A table could have worked well. Was the bath a place of cleansing or sin? I know it is Pride month but did the explicit sexuality throughout the play really do the thematic trick?
In terms of the production, this occurred in the old 505 venue. That space has many followers of its stage and music productions. Two million dollars has been given by the NSW government for restoration of the venue this year, and use for access by small groups. How does the current complete fit-out fit-in with those funding plans? Why wasn’t the old working 505 layout and use continued until funded restoration takes place? Does the current production benefit from the funded restoration? I assume the answer to the last question is no, but the program (such as there was a program) should have clarified the venue’s status and future. The impression was created that the gothic bar fit-out downstairs would continue on a commercial basis – and that the run of DARKNESS
could be long (at least 29 performances this month). Finally, why is the new venue renamed The Library (it is not the real Newtown library)? Gothic allusion aside, is this a permanent or project specific name? The project announces itself as being more than a performance – but a full site specific installation. It is fair to ask questions such as these about the background of the project overall.
These are only questions – at first impressions there is cause for much excitement about the show and its venue, and a visit could well please and entertain.
Featured image : Jerome Meyer and Alec Snow in DARKNESS. Pic Phil Erbacher
