Things go better with Coke
In
the opening scene played in darkness, the actors recite a list
of missing person cases and the few details leading up to their
disappearance but who lend a sense of uneasy coincidence by appearing
in the play. Unable to deal with his crammed work life but empty
existence Charlie (David Passmore) fills that void with cocaine.
But his addiction leads to excess and embezzlement and, having
a worse than bad day after his mother's funeral followed by a
fainting spell on the tube and being caught out by the company
accountants, he flees. On the run Charlie's escape is split into
two narratives, one described by a pathologist (Tory Rodd), the
other taking place in Charlie's scrambled mind, a nightmare vision
where he witnesses his own death and resurrection in a drug fuelled
merging of reality and fantasy. As if by magic Charlie stumbles
across a shifty conman, Mike (Michael F Cahill), coincidentally
operating out of a seaside fortune teller's booth, who offers
him the perfect escape - a change of identity where Charlie can
escape both the law and his dead-end existence.
Fin Kennedy's play is a dark comedy. Clutching an
urn containing his recently cremated mother's ashes as he runs
from his real and imagined demons, while doctors harangue or chatty
railway employees philosophise over mundane lost property, Charlie's
predicament could almost be a modern day comedy by Joe Orton.
In other aspects it is laden with symbolism, almost like one by
W B Yeats while the fateful meeting with Mike has overtones of
Faust, with the Mephisto-like Mike guiding Charlie into his new
identity. The chosen name for Charlie's new identity is Adam -
"the first man" chimes Mike almost like a devil who
may have know that first sinner personally. And while 'Adam' now
runs to create a new life for himself the slow reality of his
situation, with the ever present mortuary table and the matter
of fact presence of Sophie the pathologist, is always following
him like the figure of Death in a morality play. Even the final
scene of Charlie/Adam, stripped to his underwear and scarred by
his post-mortem becomes a Christ-like figure.
How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found
starts out as almost a corporate thriller but then becomes a psychological
thriller with existential dimensions. A missing fisherman is linked
within the fantasy to be Sophie's father and none other than the
elusive Mike which suggests these disappearing acts (as many as
250,000 per year in the UK) are done with desperate or even criminal
intentions but Charlie is not a condemning portrait. In his notes
on the play Kennedy feels the "phenomenon speaks to me of
something deeper than relationship break-ups and debt. It seems
to go to the very heart of how we define ourselves, leaving one's
former identity behind and starting over seems to be an almost
existential act." In fact, didn't God/Christ change his identity
and, as some assert, still do so?
Charlie is a terrific part, like an existential
Jimmy Porter, never able to understand his lot and going to fate
unenlightened by the experience of life. Passmore gives him a
very moving sadness, the twitching and scratching like a tormented
soul. Although the play can be very funny, and could be played
as high farce, Passmore and the other actors give the story a
serious edge. Cahill establishes his series of characters, beginning
with a sinister lost property clerk, as an ever present nemesis
seeming to lead Charlie to his fate. Paul King's direction and
design is simple and direct, the mortuary table an ominous ever
present feature, allowing for the play, which seems simple and
direct but is far from that, to speak for itself.
Michael Magnusson
To read more of Michael Mangusson's theatre reviews,
check out his blog at
On Stage (and walls) Melbourne.
