OBSERVER: Ms Julie Gabler: Trapped
In a premiere at TheatreWorks’ Explosives Factory venue, Kathleen Mary Fallon produced Ms Julie Gabler: Trapped.
While being an ambitious well-intentioned work seeking to explore jealousy, race, power and gender the play, unfortunately, failed to deliver and thus disappointed.
The play revolved around three actors who were vying for parts in a production of Shakespeare’s Othello.
Robert was an Australian Aboriginal man in a relationship with Julie, a white woman, while the third actor, Malcolm, was a gay Australian South Sea Islander and a close friend of both.
Jealousies, real and imagined, professional and personal, lead to tension and conflict between the three of them.
The script was written by Fallon and suffered from several faults. All three characters were one-dimensional, tending to be mouthpieces making grand cliched statements rather than real people you could relate to.
In addition, the theatrical device where characters liberally quoted from either Othello or works by Strindberg or Ibsen felt artificial and contrived, adding nothing to the development of the play nor our understanding of the characters.
The three actors who performed were Sermsah bin Saad (Robert), Ruth Gilmore (Julie) and Lenny Cullen Gorman (Malcolm).
All three had moments of real connection with each other and their character’s angst. Nevertheless, generally speaking there was too much emoting and histrionics with no actual connection between the actors.
As producer, writer and director Fallon was primarily responsible for the play’s shortcomings.
Stylistically it was a mishmash of naturalism mixed with melodrama and surrealism. Bold choices which seemed to be an attempt to investigate or deconstruct the power dynamics involved in considerations of gender, sexuality and race.
Unfortunately the contrasting styles failed to deconstruct anything and, indeed, at times the play appeared to reinforce the very stereotypes it sought to dismantle.
Admirably brave in its ambition then, Ms Julie Gabler: Trapped was regrettably, in several regards, an earnest failure.
Review by Peter Murphy