Rolling stones
Sam
Shepard once confessed he didn’t want to be a playwright,
claiming instead that he began writing plays because he had “nothing
better to do.” That sense of nothing better to do often
hangs over the action in his forty or so plays. The subject matter
of Sheppard’s work that is most praised are the resonating
use of American stereotypes; the elusive American dream, the decay
of national myths, the search for roots and the travail of the
family. He is at his best he works those themes with another of
his specialities, a feeling for multi-layered isolation. Firstly
there is the geographic isolation is settings, usually the American
western states and far from the big cities. Within that isolation
in place the characters are emotionally and intellectually isolated
from each other. His mid career and recent work also has a sense
of absurdism, adding spiritual or existential isolation to the
layers. With its focus on the relationship between a father and
two sons The Late Henry Moss joins similar father/sons explorations
in American classics before him, Eugene O’Neill’s
Long Day's Journey Into Night and Arthur Miller’s
Death of a Salesman.
Shepard is cagey about his reasons for writing about
fractured families and aimless sons. He stops short of admitting
his writing is autobiographical but has said “I don’t
think its worth doing anything unless it’s personal”.
Some of his personal story comes out by way of a feature documentary
film that was made of Shepard directing a production of it This
So-Called Disaster: Sam Shepard Directs the Late Henry Moss.
In it Shepard describes his own father's drinking to the actors.
The connection probably ends there but, judging from the documentary,
this Australian staging is every way as good.
In The Late Henry Moss, brothers Earl (Lee
Mason) and Ray (Mark Diaco) are reunited after the mysterious
death of their father Henry (Bruce Kerr). Reunited in Henry’s
dilapidated bungalow in rural New Mexico there is clearly deep
resentment between the two brothers which is temporarily put aside
while they try to piece together the circumstances of Henry's'
death. Old and an alcoholic Henry suddenly received a lot of money.
He had taken up with a local Mexican woman, Conchalla (Marcella
Russo), hired a taxi and gone fishing. Part detective story part
domestic drama, the play has a meandering quality and cyclic feeling
rather than a linear plot. It begins with the two brothers sitting
at the table in the old family home. The mystery of their father’s
death is eventually solved but instead of resolution there is
recapitulation, the brothers are no wiser to each other and the
play ends with them sitting again at the table. Instead of the
memories surrounding Henry’s death building to a climactic
and violent ending, violent confrontations happen throughout,
the ending is more of a leaving off point.
To explain Henry’s death Shepard uses flashbacks,
beginning them in a variety of ways. In the second act Ray questions
the gormless taxi driver (Justin Hocking) who drove Henry on the
fateful fishing trip. As ‘Taxi’ (his real name is
never sought) talks the action slips into flashback and Henry’s
death is finally explained. When the brothers recall their father
it is in flashback too. No nostalgic ‘memory play’
here, only events dredged unwillingly out of the unconscious where
the brothers buried them. The relationship between the brothers
is not quite a battle of wits; Ray has none, Earl only a few.
What drove them apart is an incident when, during one of Henry’s
violent tirades, Earl ran out on the family.
In absurdist manner, Ray has no knowledge of Earl’s
life after he left and constantly forgets details Earl has explained
to him only minutes before. Absurdist but tragic in that, after
that abandonment, Ray probably began erasing Earl from his memory
and still does. Equally surreal is the scene of Henry’s
death. The aggressive old patriarch goes out, not in a blaze of
violence like the one that shattered his family, but, lured by
Conchalla, he seems to fade away. "Are you seeing me right
now?," he asks Earl before Conchalla embraces him like an
angel of death.
With these alternating bouts of ‘kitchen sink’
realism and near surrealism the play is challenging to produce.
Director David Myles and the trio playing the Moss family navigate
the difficult script superbly. Mason plays Earl like an anguished
cowboy. He looks like the Marlborough Man but behaves like he
is haunted. Diaco is riveting as the volatile Ray. His drawling,
snake-eyed presence; meandering around the stage, uncomprehending
one moment, exploding into violence the next is a commanding performance.
That Shepard reveals so little about Ray makes his presence more
threatening. Kerr softens his voice, his accent becoming at times
hard to distinguish, plays Henry as the old and weak man of recent
events, not the brutal younger man his sons find hard to forget.
Conchalla, like other Shepard women, is a more a symbol of sexuality
or some kind of normal life pursuit that is outside this unresolvable
men’s business. Initially Conchalla looks like some kind
of prostitute putting on a panto-Latino act to satisfy the customer.
She is a fantasy who, Cassandra-like, is Henry’s consort
but who predicts his death. If that isn’t difficult enough
for Russo she has eat a fish while sitting, fully clothed, in
a full bath. As Esteban, the cheerful Mexican neighbour, Alex
Pinder has the same part comic-part serious character with the
result that he speaks like a refined Speedy Gonzales. The small
town friendliness and verbosity of Esteban and the Taxi Man are
so at odds with the anti-social Earl and Ray that they automatically
become comic relief.
Shepard requires Esteban to cook a foul smelling
meal for real on stage which is incorporated into the excellently
designed set. Music often plays an important part in Shepard’s
plays and live guitar music also underscores the action at certain
points, recalling the film Paris Texas (for which Shepard
wrote the screenplay). Human Sacrifice Theatre continues to do
excellent work and although The Late Henry Moss is ponderous
at times, this belated Australian premiere is very welcome.
Michael Magnusson
To read more of Michael Mangusson's theatre reviews,
check out his blog at
On Stage (and walls) Melbourne.
