by Gerald Lepkowski
Universal Theatre II
from October 14, 1998
Reviewer: Kate
Herbert
Diane Arbus should be
discovered at the age of 20. Her photographs are essential stimulus during
that brooding, philosophical period when drugs and suicide seem exotic, freaks
compelling and one is young enough to look artistic rather than deadbeat
crouching in the gutter.
Gerald Lepkowski was so riveted by this American
photographer's representations of the underbelly of the New York population
that he wrote a play based on Arbus' life and work. Dark began its life on
stage in Perth then developed into a play for Radio National. One wonders how
the work of a visual artist could be portrayed with only sound.
This third incarnation has the textual tone of radio but is
enhanced by the addition of projected photographic images. These are not from
Arbus' collection (her estate is tetchy about use of her images), but by local
photographer, Ilana Rose whose photos of people from the "Underbelly"
of society resonate with those of Arbus and are also exhibited in the foyer.
Lepkowski has compressed Diane's (Nell Feeney) life after
her divorce from her husband. She is attracted by difference and depredation:
hermaphrodites, the intellectually disabled, deformed, the freakish. In one
distressing and silent scene she stares obsessively at a man's facial
birthmark, awaiting his tacit approval for her to photograph him.
Her images appear in magazines, exhibitions and finally in a
book and were considered offensive, repulsive, peculiar but compelling. Norman
Mailer said,"Giving Diane Arbus a camera is like giving a baby a hand
grenade." Given her own depressive and dysfunctional personality, it
appears that she contemplates her own internal deformities through the
reflection of her "freaks".
Feeney captures the compulsion of Arbus and portrays her
vulnerability in a face that looks like a broken heart. An ensemble of four
(Mandy McElhinney, Peter Roberts, Louise Siversen and Lepskowski) supports her
superbly, and people the stage with Arbus' associates and subjects.
Special mention must be made of Siversen's numerous
marvellous cameos, which range from a bag lady to Germaine Greer, and of
McElhinney's extraordinarily accurate portrayal of a disabled child.
Arbus may have vowed that she always took photos with the
subjects' permission but her work was invasive and manipulative in spite of
this. She was an artist. Her work was for herself not for the greater glory of
humanity. In the end she was the greatest freak.
by Kate Herbert
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