MKA + Kings Cross Theatre: Puntila / Matti by Doppelgangster.
Sat, Oct 14, 2017./noise/theatre | LinkBooked 2017-09-30, $35 + 2.76 booking fee = $37.76. First time at the Kings Cross Theatre, which is upstairs and around the back of the Kings Cross Hotel, opposite the (new) Coke sign. Closing night; about a third full with perhaps ten friends-and-family or other indulgent types.
I went on the basis of the blurb they flung about and Jason Blake's review, both of which I found misleading after the first five minutes. In brief: I found it boring. It felt more undercooked than experimental, and trite with little in the way of set or acting. Trolling and hassling the audience has always struck me as cheap, a cop out for those who cannot unsettle with powerful material or performance. Often the music is too loud to make out what's being said.
The cast: Tobias Manderson-Galvin, manically; Grace Lauer, who honestly does need a better class of gig; Antoinette Barboutis as the stage manager in a quiet, incompetent and totally cliched key. Notionally based on Bertolt Brecht's Mr Puntila and his Man Matti, but mostly incoherent and shotgun. Billed as 85 minutes uninterrupted, I was looking at my phone after the first 30 minutes, and they drug the whole thing out to two hours. I sat too far from the door to walk out. The only way to win was to not be there.
That morning Dave's mate Mona observed that most of Sydney theatre is $50 to see a bloke sitting on a bench, presciently describing something of better value than this.