Review: THE AJOONA GUEST HOUSE at Bakehouse Theatre

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Thursday 2nd December 2021.

Travellers' tales have always enthralled us, since Herodotus, and even before. Our imaginations are caught by stories of other places, exotic and distant or, perhaps, more excitingly, by a traveller's view of a place we hold as familiar. The Ajoona Guest House is, we are told, a dump, but full of character, and of characters. Three of them are brought to us in this accomplished one-man show.

Stephen House, traveller, writer, and actor has, over the span of his activities, created a very personal art form, storytelling that uses sparse sets, costumes, and effects to frame his narrative. Interviewed recently for Arts on Air at 5EBI FM, he was careful to explain that the play is not autobiographical. While it is infused with his experience of being in New Delhi on an Australia Council Asialink literature residency, the narrator is not Stephen House.

'Not Stephen' has spent many years in India and returns to the Ajoona Guest House. It is cheap and rundown. The front step is a great place to observe the crowded life and lives of the street. Among the other residents are two Australian junkies, Rosie, from Parramatta, via Byron Bay, and a guy known as Sydney, because that's where he's from. We see so much more of Rosie, lank red hair, faded floral frock belted with green tinsel. She's vaguely certain that she knows 'Not Stephen' from somewhere way back, maybe, when they were extras in Bollywood movies. She called him Buddie, and they were lovers. In fact, it's true, and her growing certainty, and his final acceptance that he is the man from her past, leads to a tragic revelation at the end. Sydney's story is equally tragic, but his secret is touched with beauty. He dies of an overdose, but watched over by angels, pictures of the handsome young Indian men he invites up the stairs to his room. The narrator takes us along with Rosie to a stinking underpass where she buys brown sugar heroin, and tries to share with him. He gave it up years ago and will not indulge. Even his chance of happiness, in the arms, or at least the storeroom, of the handsome cafe owner, ends when the man's wife and son intervene.

The text is evocative and draws you in completely. The direction, by Rosalba Clemente, to whom House gives equal credit for the play, gives him a real workout. There are ritual gestures, and prayers to Ganesha and Shiva, but it's House all the way, prowling the tiny studio stage at the Bakehouse. There's barely a design statement other than three saffron shawls. There is music from Alain Valodze, of which I'd love to have heard more, and Stephen Dean's sparse lighting kept us all focussed on the man with the story.

This is the third and, so far, final play along these lines that House has created. Appalling Behaviour, and Almost Face to Face, had him or his narrator down and out in Paris, and Dublin. This play is set in New Delhi. When and if COVID and its variants are under control and borders open, maybe there will be another fruitful journey for the enterprising Mr. House.

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