The Louis Esson Prize for Drama: Shortlist 2007

A Single Act

Jane Bodie
(Melbourne Theatre Company)

Jane Bodie’s A Single Act is an intimate, intense depiction of the disintegration of two relationships in the context of a catastrophic act of terrorism in an Australian city. Two couples, connected, yet unknown to each other, share the space. One story moves forward in time, away from the act. The other story is played out in reverse, as we watch a relationship, marked by terror and violence, rewound to its source. This fractured chronology effectively mirrors the psychic dislocation of the characters, whilst unanswerable questions of politics and morality suffuse the play, infecting all like toxic dust.

This is an actors’ play, rich in its dialogue, and intricate in its architecture. It is tough in its realisation of arbitrary circumstance, yet at the same time sensitive to frailties of heart and mind. Restrained, poetic and unnerving, violence is unseen though ever-present in this chilling work.

Asylum

Kit Lazaroo
(La Mama/HereTheatre)

Kit Lazaroo’s Asylum is a luminous, haunting piece - part fable, part puppet play. An Australian psychiatrist wrestles with self-doubt as she works with a young Chinese woman who has been deliberately infected with HIV. She in turn makes a last ditch bid for asylum as authorities move to deport her. The play is intricately constructed, like a series of Chinese boxes. Full of surprising imagery, theatrical elisions and puzzles for the audience, this is an ambitious and unsettling work of great subtlety and sophistication.

It Just Stopped

Stephen Sewell
(Malthouse Theatre)

Stephen Sewell’s It Just Stopped is a remarkable black comedy about two couples, one American, the other Australian, trapped in a high-rise apartment as the world, as they know it, ends. With masterful control the playwright shifts through the gears, taking us from comedy of manners through passionate debate to apocalyptic nightmare in two brilliantly shaped, action-packed acts.

This play is muscular and provocative, an actor’s delight and a designer’s dream. The characters are big and the text is bold and dense with questions about the problematic relationship between culture and capital, art and patronage, as seen against the death-throes of a materialistic society. This is a triumph of a play, full of wit, horror and spleen, by a playwright at the height of his powers.