Nick Maclaine as Mathew in An Almost Perfect Thing photograph by Pixel Poetry.
Chloe Evans re-emerges into the world, aged 18, after being kidnapped seven years previously. With the world waiting to hear the gory details, her refusal to speak about her ordeal mystifies, frustrates and tantalises everyone. Hanging out in bars chasing echoes of the attention and respect he craves, Greg, weathered journalist, is reduced to a newspaper column on page seven. He recognises Chloe, having covered her story extensively when she first disappeared, and feels her story is his ticket back to fame. Mathew wakes with a headache to find the door open, his worst fears realised. All alone in his house for the first time in seven years, he reminisces over how it started, and how things changed.
The three stories interweave, overlap, mirror and contradict each other through this two-part performance. Nicole Moeller’s script deftly overlays characters’ lines, spinning each phrase to create separate realities. As Mathew sought out Chloe to define his life, Chloe seeks out Greg to write the story to position her as the hero of her claustrophobic tale. The relationships between self-isolated individuals pursuing their own dreams are each needy and dysfunctional, Chloe’s words denying Mathew’s re-enactments of recounted scenes and Greg searching for the human interest angle that will sell papers, enthral talk show audiences and promote his eventual book.
Daisy Coyle, Nick Maclaine and Andrew Hale deliver the script’s complexity in a compelling manner. Coyle’s depiction of a young girl who rejects the role of victim and refuses to comply with expectations impresses by retaining a core vulnerability while manipulating any opportunity to create her own reality. Coyle brings the right level of assertion to Chloe’s demands to develop the ambivalent nature of truth at the heart of the play. Hale is the right mixture of amiable and pathetic, playing faded man about town Greg with self-deluded self-pity, and his character’s eventual fame and respect as a triumph. Hale’s rapport with Coyle emphasises the awkwardness of their characters’ conflicting needs and mutual dependence, and his tight timing with Maclaine highlighting the repeating patterns in Chloe’s relationships. Maclaine portrays Mathew with perplexing ambiguity, his actions and reactions refuting Chloe’s narration. Maclaine’s depictions of Mathew’s sad dreams and responses to Chloe’s manipulations are resolved in part through delivering his manuscript to Greg and entrusting him with his own truth.
Tyler Hill’s sparse set design allows contradictions and ambiguities to intertwine and unravel, although the outsized and ugly portrait is a feature that fails to add to the layered conflicting truths. Christian Peterson’s sound design drives split second switches between characters and scenes, and allows moments of Chloe’s past and present to fuse together.
Director Gabrielle Metcalf keeps the compelling story moving at a good pace, fast enough to keep attention levels high and with enough time to reflect on Moeller’s meditations on competing subjective notions of truth. Her direction has pulled a diverse cast together to create a fascinating play with a strong narrative and consideration of many aspects of biography, integrity, and the demands of the modern media cycle. Despite the length of the performance – nearly twice the running time of most Blue Room offerings, including an interval – An Almost Perfect Thing is a slow burning thriller that engages on several levels.
4 stars out of 5
An Almost Perfect Thing
Written by Nicole Moeller
Directed by Gabrielle Metcalf
Assistant Director: Riley Spadaro
Producer & Production Manager: Emily Stokoe
Set & Costume Designer: Tyler Hill
Sound Designer: Christian Peterson
Lighting Designer: Rhiannon Petersen
Stage Manager: Jessie Atkins
Performed by Daisy Coyle, Andrew Hale and Nick Maclaine
The Blue Room Theatre, Perth Cultural Centre
11-26 August 2017
