THEATRE
The Speechmaker
Working Dog, MTC, Victorian Arts Centre
WORKING Dog was striving for ’Dr Strangelove’ or ’The West Wing’.
But in the end, they couldn’t even reach ’Team America’.
’The Speechmaker’ currently showing at the Victorian Arts Centre by the Melbourne Theatre Company, is billed as a tale of the disparity between the lofty oratory of our politicians and their subsequent actions.
In a phrase, it is supposed to demonstrate that famous old political quote of “We campaign in poetry, but we govern in prose.”
The setting has an American president boarding Air Force One after making a rousing speech for humanity and freedom.
But in the air, he is confronted by political realities that require his principles to become malleable – and there’s a high price to be paid.
The play fails at the first premise, simply because the opening speech is not clear or definitive enough to set the scene for the ideas to come.
To make this play work, the scene had to be set with a more definitive speech, with the president then required to do the polar opposite – for example, to vow never to conduct a pre-emptive strike against another nation or terrorist group, then be forced to do exactly that.
But this is not what happens.
In fairness, there is a clever twist in relation to the challenge the president faces, and how he can resolve it – and if he is willing to pay that price.
The play is also let down by a lot of lame gags about our failing technology, and the usual clichés about America, its insularity and self-interest.
It plays beautifully to the left-leaning, quasi-Goth Melbourne arts crowd of trendy chardonnay socialists, who long for a world free of American cultural hegemony – but for the rest of us it falls a little flat, to say the least.
Acting performances are quite sound, but there’s still not enough interest to sustain 90 minutes with no interval.
It’s great that Working Dog tried but, in the end, this complex soufflé simply failed to rise.
– Jason Beck
