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 | Influence Director: Bruce Myles State Theatre Playhouse Until Sat 4 June  Somehow I expected more shock for my jock...Even so, this imported show from Sydney is the best David Williamson play I've seen in many years. It's good, very good, just a bit sloppy and obvious in its behind-the-scenes thinking. In his role as shock jock Ziggy Blasco, John Waters is a well spoken and mild sort of radio announcer with a need to attack and humiliate public figures. We see him atop his pedestal (the radio studio scenes are on a futuristic rise at the rear of the stage) belting it out to the masses... but then he climbs down and the studio is plunged into darkness, and we see Ziggy the family man, as he arrives home after work. Lighting Designer Peter Neufeld in particular had obviously put a lot of work into the staging of this piece, with complex lighting throws and projections to designate the differing stage actions. Set Designer Laurence Eastwood's task was to come up with a chic and clean performance space which belied its complexity, and this was achieved in masterly fashion. I applaud David Williamson for going past the obvious and showing Ziggy to be a family man, with fears and doubts, and 'Influence' is much the stronger for it. Genevieve Hegney as young (second) wife Carmella is a demanding and spoilt young thing, and she is joined by Vanessa Downing (Ziggy's dabbling and reforming sister), and Ziggy's troublesome daughter (Octavia Barron-Martin), who make his life a little less than perfect. There's also the long suffering driver and hired help (played by Andrew Tighe), who proves to be a dark horse in the script, insofar as he never quite reveals where his sympathies lie... Into this less than felicitous home comes housekeeper (Zehra) Zoe Carides, and her performance really is one of the star turns in the whole piece. There's hardly a scene where Carides is not quietly acting the pants off the others, just going about her business. Then there's Edwin Hodgeman as Ziggy's father, an old man who shuffles in and drops a bombshell on the family, admitting that in the war he was a Croatian Nazi - a murderous war criminal. It seems Ziggy's life is unraveling exactly at the point he needs things most tranquil, for his contract renewal is on the table and ratings are slipping. His father wants to 'out' himself; confess his sins, and Ziggy knows this means ruination. His daughter has moved in, and his young wife is clearly a flake only concerned for money and her derailed career as a ballet dancer. And then... not very much happens... Ziggy derails his dad's great announcement by telling the media he's only a mad old man, his daughter loses a very great deal of money in an Internet trading scam, and some other stuff not entirely pertinent in terms of this revue also happens. It concerns me that Williamson needed his protagonist to have a war criminal as a father... shock jocks might come from any background, I might have thought. It was too easy a cop-out, and not the only one in this script. Far from being appalled at the perfidy of it all, his father seems to accept the outcome of the press announcement and merely shuffles off. On top of this, Ziggy Blasco seems to take the news of his loss of fortune remarkably well - much better than the revelation that his daughter's curious behavior comes from a disorder - which it then appears has been corrected by a single dose of 'drugs'. Lithium, one might imagine. When it all comes down to it, Blasco goes back to work as a shock jock - unchastened, unchanged, and uncaring. Is this the message we are to take away from a Williamson play? Ultimately, it's hard to feel much compassion for any of these characters, with the possible exception of Carides' Zehra, who is stoic and strong in stark contrast to the characters who surround her. Even so, I'm still not sure that I cared enough.  | |
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