BWW Reviews: THIS IS WHERE WE LIVE Delves Into The Minds Of Two Misfits

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Tuesday 12th May 2015

State Theatre Company of South Australia and HotHouse Theatre are presenting This Is Where We Live, which is the State Educational production this year. Written by Vivienne Walshe, the play won the 2012 Griffin Award for new playwrights and the Excellence Award for Best Overall Play at the 2014 New York Fringe Festival.

In an intense hour we meet two damaged and dysfunctional young people, Chloe and Chris, the "odd boy", as she describes him, the unpopular son of the overbearing English teacher at the high school that they attend. Through them, we learn of their families and a little about the others in the class.

Chloe has been dragged in tow, by her mother, to an isolated rural town, where her mother is now in an abusive relationship. Chloe has a limp, from spina bifida, and has reading difficulties due to dyslexia. She has been subjected to bullying all her life, resulting in her building a psychological wall around herself, manifesting in an abrasive personality and a distancing from other people.

Chris, on the other hand is withdrawn, quiet, solitary, shy, uncommunicative, even tending towards antisocial. He is attracted to Chloe's strength and self-reliance, albeit it a veneer, but cannot bring himself to talk to her. She is aware of his interest and speaks to him, playing with him at first, and then a tentative relationship begins.

Walshe does not provide a simple, chronological narrative, and Chloe and Chris only ever share a few brief sections of dialogue. We hear their thoughts, coming at us in a stream of consciousness, words, phrases, bursts of onomatopoeic sound effects, the crunch of feet walking, the tick-tock of time passing, and some internal dialogue. Past conversations and events are recalled in memory, to which we are privy. There are snippets of information from which the audience must work to establish an understanding of these two teens.

This is a cerebral work, but it does not stop there as some sort of clever writing exercise. It has a poetic use of language and plenty of emotional content. It is very much a case of pre-Romantic sturm und drang, and makes reference to the Orpheus and Euridice myth in which, in spite of all warnings, Orpheus looks back when rescuing Euridice from the Underworld, and loses her forever. One could also argue for references to Goethe and to Jung's 'stages of life' in this work. Chloe sees herself as being in the underworld of society, and Chris believes that he can save her.

"Only connect", that vital phrase from E. M. Forster's novel, Howard's End, keeps popping into the mind as Chris and Chloe dance around one another, trying to establish a connection, their protestations of love not quite ringing true but appearing more as two outsiders, each clinging to the other like a drowning man to an inadequate piece of timber, desperately hoping it will save him. They never really do connect, combining the two opposite halves into a unified whole.

Forster puts it succinctly in a couple of paragraphs in chapter 22 of the novel.

"She might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going."

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

Director, Jon Halpin, allows Walshe's text to do its work unhampered by pointless attempts to explain it to the audience. He allows it to flow, the poetry not overstressed, and movement used not to amplify the meaning of the text, but to enhance the clarity of the characters and their emotional journeys.

Designer, Morag Cook, uses a large section of broken industrial reinforced concrete pipe, with a pair of smaller pieces acting as seats, to place us in a wasteland, metaphorically reflecting the futureless existence of the two young people and, I suspect, a reference also to the bleakness of T. S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land. Lighting Designer, Rob Scott, has created a vast array of effects that make use of the neutral colour of the concrete to convey further meaning and composer, Andrew Howard, provides some emotive and evocative background, bordering on the eerie.

Adelaide actors, Matilda Bailey and James Smith, are captivating as Chloe and Chris, drawing the audience ever deeper into their crumbling world and their growing depression, as they face a seemingly unchangeable and undesirable existence. Bailey is both powerful and fragile at the same time, showing us the strong, brittle, outer face of Chloe, and her inner insecurities and hopelessness, demonstrating also Chloe's understanding of her growing sexuality and the control that it gives her over others, as well as the danger in which it places her.

Smith is quiet, but brooding as Chris, letting out his frustration and resignation a little at a time, gradually building the anger and resentment throughout the work and using his body language as much as the text to convey his emotions. His stillness is a telling contrast to Bailey's interpretation of Chloe, setting up a question of whether opposites attract, or their differences will keep them apart.

Chloe is determined to find a way out and Chris pins his hopes on her, but is their bond strong enough to keep them together and allow them to escape what seems inevitable? That question is answered in the final few minutes when we learn a great deal more about the pair and their strengths and weaknesses, but for that you will need to experience the entire lead up, and see the conclusion for yourself.

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