False, fallacious, facetious, fake, fraudulent, fiction. These are the F bombs that explode in well timed detonations throughout the drama of A HOAX, directed by Lee Lewis, currently playing at Griffin Theatre Company.
Winner of the 2011 Griffin Award, Rick Viede’s explosive exploration of literary hoax and the reasons they are committed makes for a mature examination of ethics, race, gender and identity.
Hoaxers can be hucksters, pranksters, psycho or sociopaths but Viede’s Ant, the author who perpetrates the furphy is none of these. His charade channels his own life, experience and thoughts informed by toiling as a social worker. He’s savvy enough to know that the best way for his work to find purchase in publishing and find a wide audience is by gilding the truth with a fiction, of tapping into the “misery memoir” that has mesmerised the market and making his creation carnate.
The play begins in a hotel room with a young girl visiting a man for payment. It plays like a hooker/client transaction, and in a way it is. But who is taking advantage of whom? Ant, the bard, needs a beard; Miri, the beard, needs the bread.
The real prostitution here is that of the truth. Ronnie, the literary agent, declares: “people want the truth” in one breath and “no one cares as long as they say it’s true”, in another. She further obfuscates “the only difference between fact and fiction is the way you package it.”
In this mire of masquerade a hoax can be commissioned by culpable publishers complicit in its creation yet hypocritically critical if discovered.
Glenn Hazeldine as Ant is terrifically good in his second consecutive show at the Stables. Talk about own the space.
Shari Sebbens, currently starring in the film version of The Sapphires, is sensational as Miri Smith, a contemporary cut up of Eliza Dolittle and Frankenstein’s creature, both outgrowing and destroying her creator. She charts a coruscating course from clueless to cruelly controlling and destructive.
Sally McKenzie is a force of nature as Ronnie Lowe, the agent once admired as Momma Midas, now known as Momma Shit, a PR piranha who needs a feed.
And Charles Allen, making his Sydney stage debut as Tyrelle Parks, the revenge seeking self proclaiming camp, black, Queenie faggot, delivers the goods.
An exceptional piece of writing – funny, sad, poignant, frightening- excellently executed, A HOAX is a fully fleshed foray into where the truth lies.
Rick Viede’s A HOAX opened at the Stables Theatre, 10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross on Wednesday 25th July and plays until Saturday 1st September, 2012.
© Richard Cotter
31 July, 2012
Tags: Sydney Theatre Reviews- A HOAX, Stables Theatre Kings Cross, Lee Lewis, Rick Viede, Glenn Hazeldine, Shari Sebbens, Sally McKenzie, Charles Allen, Brett Boardman, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter.