It’s a section of tiled floor, shaped away from the audience but leaning in at the same time. Rachel Stone’s set design has been fashioned at an incline. Over the course of Kristen Smyth’s extraordinary show, this space is many things: a stern London street, nightclub dancefloor, stained bathroom tiles, an operating table, a mortuary slab. Has a séance ever been told as immaculately as this?
Kristen’s character stalks and floats over the space, caught in a moment visually reminiscent of Derek Boshier catching David Bowie in freefall on the cover of his album, Lodger. Here, however, we’re in the next decade as Kristen in a moment of affirmation finds herself in communion with the past.
Memory is a treacherous place, let alone for a young human in 1980’s UK whose gender and sexuality is being navigated among racists, bigots, and politicians attempting to legislate queer out of the national lexicon.
Kristen’s immaculate storytelling is supported wonderfully by Di Drew’s sound design and Ashleigh Shearman’s lights, both rising up and falling away throughout to perfection, giving Cruel Britannia a palpable and captivating momentum. Because a story of becoming is a story of momentum – the unstoppable kind.
One of the great qualities in Kristen’s writing is the balance struck between the personal and universal. In an electrifying moment of theatrical shorthand towards the end, we’re given examples of political defiance and queer artists whose identity and existence could not be denied. We have always been here and we always will be.
You’ve be forgiven for thinking there’s something of Bowie’s clown from Ashes to Ashes in Kristen’s white-powdered face (indeed, a couple of lines from the song are sung at one point). But Costume Designer, Jessamine Moffett, has Kristen in English court dress, because she is no jester. In a show that demonstrates so beautifully the strength and hope of lineage, she can only be royalty.
Cruel Britannia: After Frankenstein
The Show Room – Arts Centre Melbourne, 100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Performance: Thursday 21 November 2024
Season continues to 30 November 2024
Information and Bookings: www.artscentremelbourne.com.au
Image: Kristen Smyth in Cruel Britannia: After Frankenstein – photo by Mark Gambino
Review: David Collins