Review: 7 DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE Is Live Theatre's Surreal Answer To Reality TV But With More Substance And Heart
By: Jade Kops May. 23, 2016
Saturday 21st May 2016, 7pm, Creative Space 99, Darlinghurst
Carole Fréchette's 7 DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE welcomes the audience in to view one optimistic, entrepreneurial unemployed man's life from the comfort of his warehouse apartment. Bizarre stories of love, friendship, imagination, and innovation unfold as the fictitious Labrosse seeks to provide solutions to a series of society's problems.
Director and Producer Anna Jahjah has transformed the laneway warehouse space of Creative Space 99 into a studio apartment and the audience is positioned within the performance. Whilst the audience is positioned to focus on the central bed and corner platform, Simon (Gerry Sont) warns the audience on arrival that the bathroom and exit entry door will be unavailable during the performance due to their inclusion in the story. Side tables of personal items positioned within the audience and the detail of pictures, posters and furniture around the room indicate that this is immersive theatre and that regardless of where one sits, there will be moments of good and bad sight lines as scenes play out behind the audience.
The premise of the work is that the unemployed Simon has decided to stage a show to raise money to solve both his own financial woes but also to help finance neurosurgery for his friend Léo (Steve McGrath) who suffers from an injury that has left him perpetually negative. Simon tells the story of a week in his life with the aid of Léo and Nathalie (Cassady Maddox), the young woman he's found through an advertisement for an actress. In addition to Simon's story, which is presented as a performance within the performance, we also get to know frustrated poet Léo and self-help and human body obsessed Nathalie as the two seek their own validation, often disrupting Simon's story. . Whilst the work is presented with an Australian accent, the setting remains in Fréchette's early 1990's Canada, at a time of economic hardship and rising unemployment. Maddox and McGrath utilize different accents and small variations in costume to portray the various people that Simon encounters over the week.
All three present Fréchette's play with an honesty and conviction despite the absurdity. As a play within a play, they present their various double roles as performer and characters with a believability and ease. Whilst the base story of a man enlisting his friend and hiring a stranger to help him tell his story is already bizarre enough, particularly with their various backstories, the parts of his life that Simon choses to highlight through the 90 minute play are even more so. As insane as Nathalie's idea that she has something living inside her, Maddox presents this as believable that there could be a person that deluded. Maddox also provides a musical element to the work through guitar accompanied narration and songs. Whilst Léo's affliction serves as an ongoing source of comedy, unable to even express positive words, McGrath stutters his way through the restricted emotions and presents the mad writer with a wonderful physicality. Sont captures Simon's high energy, obsessive nature along with presenting him as a dreamer, living in his fantasy world that fully believes his harebrained schemes which, whilst highlighting a series of human issues from wanting to help people avoid difficult situations and boosting self-esteem, are unrealistic for the common consumer.
As we watch Simon's life unravel, we see a man search for a purpose in life with a desire to be loved. Whilst modern media is bombarded with reality television where we are asked to sit and watch someone from the comfort of our living rooms, immersing the audience in the subject's living room changes the voyeurism to an experience as Simon draws the audience in to be part of the work, even if only to offer out business cards. As with reality TV, this is a condensed dose of life that focuses on the unusual and absurd but seeing the creation and the process behind it in the form of the play within the play, gives an added level of reason and purpose for Simon's creation of a show of his life.7 DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE is an intriguing, well presented, surreal experience. Filled with expressions of human emotions in an engaging manner that evokes sympathy amongst the disbelief, this humorous look at these three pathetic lives proves to be an entertaining night out. 7 DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSECreative Space 99, Darlinghurst (Enter via Crown Lane)
18-29 May 2016
Photos: Emma Lois
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