Sunday 5 August 2007

Stretch of the Imagination by Jack Hibberd, July 24, 2007


 Stretch of the Imagination by Jack Hibberd
 La Mama, Courthouse Theatre, July 24 to Aug 4, 2007
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on July 24, 2007

Jack Hibberd’s play, A Stretch of the Imagination, was written in 1972 and is now an Australian classic. Hibberd’s style is related to the absurdists but he adds a distinctly Australian flavour.

Stretch is a solo play about Monk O’Neill (Peter Hosking), a cantankerous and ailing old bloke who struggles through his meaningless daily routines, watching the sluggish clock and waiting for his imminent demise. He lives in isolation on One-Tree Hill - he cut down the one tree years ago – without any creature comforts or human contact and surviving on home grown tomatoes and his addled memories of love, lust and luxury. His only contact is Mort Lazarus, a passing traveller who died of frostbite years earlier and who Monk buried on his plot of land.

Monk is a significant part of the Australian theatrical heritage. Hibberd’s irascible old man is reminiscent of Beckett’s aged and eccentric character, Krapp, but Monk speaks Hibberd’s idiosyncratic poetic form of Australian vernacular and has a distinctly Aussie irreverence and larrikinism. The language blends the sophisticated, the salacious and the vulgar and refers to cultural icons such as the Malvern Star bike, Onkaparinga blankets and the Koolgardie safe.

Hosking, who played this role successfully ten years ago, relishes playing the mercurial Monk. He is monstrous and comical, combining slapstick with elaborate witticisms and cultural references. Hosking grotesquely distorts his mobile face with his grimacing and mugging as he limps and cavorts around the stark space.

Monk’s ailments read like a bizarre medical text: prostrate problems, adenoids, premature rigor mortis cataracts and ossification. His exotic memories contrast with his current comical and often poignant issues with ageing and dying. He recalls scandalous sexual romps with lovers including Muriel the maternity nurse and Dorabella, his friend’s wife, and reminisces about foie gras and champagne at Melbourne’s salubrious French restaurants.

Director, Greg Carroll, keeps the pace rapid and the prat falls frequent. Monk appears in shadow behind a paper screen creating a whole new world of visual gags and Joe Dolce’s recorded sound design adds an outback flavour with harmonica, didjeridoo and percussion.

Monk is grubby, ugly, vengeful, belligerent and decrepit but we still love him despite his glaringly obvious flaws. Hosking’s portrayal is both modern and faithful to an Australian icon.

By Kate Herbert

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