| Review by Lisa Bennie, August 2006
As a race we tend to see only what we want to; what’s best for us, what makes life easier to live, to comprehend. We label people ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’, we see a side that’s ‘right’ and a side that’s ‘wrong’. Spurred on by the mass media’s one sided coverage of current affairs and religious belief it’s no wonder our world is so divided and broken. It’s on the edge of this apocalypse with division and single-sightedness that Fringe First winner Henry Adam’s Petrol Jesus Nightmare #5 inhabits.
In occupied territory two Israeli soliders, Buddy (Aleksandar Mikic) and Slomo (James Cunningham), holed up in a derelict house hold back the Caliphate. In a city that’s burning they are joined by their captain Yossariat (Joseph Thompson) and two very unlikely visitors, the devout Christian Texan (Lewis Howden) and the Rabbi’s widow (Susan Vidler). As a bad day turns worse, each character’s deepest secrets are revealed, perspectives shift, and the time of the apocalypse draws ever nearer.
An assault on almost everything wrong with the modern world this production holds back no punches. Along with politics and religion, money, sex, violence and family are attacked, and of course George W. Bush isn’t safe anywhere these days. The defining element to this play though is not its coverage of such topics, but its looking at them from the other side. So easily we hear the British and American views, but here we have Israeli views, and for a people oft personifies as our ‘baddies’ what they think and want turns out to be not so different. Exquisite performances capture each character’s essence and portrayal that whist some merely live to survive, others would rain destruction upon millions just to see their own ends met. Philip Howard sets a good pace for the action which is embraced by Soutra Gilmore’s design of devastation. In the end we are only human, we will never know all sides to the story or the exact truth, but does labelling someone a ‘terrorist’ just to give them a neat box to fit into really make you sleep any better at night?
|
