TIDY TOWN OF THE YEAR

Andy  Leonard makesd a grisly discovery in TIDY TOWN. Pic Katy Green Loughrey
Andy Leonard makesd a grisly discovery in TIDY TOWN. Pic Katy Green Loughrey

Two directors – who to praise, who to blame?

Three writers, likewise, who to praise, who to blame?

Three performers all credited with writing the show. It’s a three way split and the divergence is palpable.

Play opens with an unnecessary solo spot from Hope (Sarah Hodgetts) desperately trying to contact someone via mobile phone.

Lights up on a motel room at the Gandiddyup Motor Inn, a strangely decorated abode which includes a photo portrait of Joe Dolce – apparently he once slept here – and a painting of what looks like Al Pacino, a telegraph to Scarface style shenanigans that litter the narrative.

Enter Pamela (Victoria Greiner) cleaner and convenor of the boondocks’ bid to become Tidy Town of the Yeartitle holder. She’s preparing the suite for Tony Claire, the Minister for Tourism, whose judgement bestows the beneficent title, an honour she has more than civic pride riding on.

A problem punter, Pamela’s bets driven debt ridden life has kept her in a parlous and precarious pecuniary place and the win will alleviate her perilous position.

Enter Rover (Andy Leonard) a slacker workmate of Pamela, whose baleful refrain is that his name was a human nomenclature before it was a canine’s and that the word “was” is subordinate to “were”.

Enter Hope on rubbish pretence that she is a new member of the sanitary staff and immediately intent on being inseminated by Rover, a character who presents as if he’d be a dud at a dry hump.

Exit the corpse, discovered dismembered in the suite’s ensuite, behind the bathroom door scrimmed by a shower screen from PSYCHO. Is it murder, suicide or Toni Colette?

There are buckets of energy from the cast; trouble is it tends to trash the timing.

However, the script is such a disparate mishmash of styles, timing takes on an abstract terminology. Absurdist farce gross out comedy is the mix but a mess is what you get in the mop up. T’aint tidy.

TIDY TOWN opened at the Old Fitz and Thursday 6th March and runs until Saturday 22nd March, 2014.