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The Book of Life

A grandiose shaggy-God story, complete with Deus Ex Machina denouement.
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The Book of Life presented by Summer Nights & Renegade Productions. Image via Perth Fringe World.

Lily is a moody teenage girl, full of despair at the world around her and even more despairing of making any significant change. Lily commits suicide, and finds a quest waiting for her in an afterlife adventure, rather than the craved oblivion. With appropriate amounts of sighing and eye rolling, she meets her ancestors who have gone before her, learning from their examples and seeking the ultimate argument to save humanity from divine wrath.

Punctuated with blues tunes, vast emotions, swaggering gods and encompassing a mindboggling sweep of history made intimately personal, Joe Lui’s The Book of Life is simultaneously grand scale and an intimate theatrical experience. Lily, played by Morgan Owen, is our own inner idealist, seized with horror at discovering the trade offs made in the process of growing up. Owen nails the portrayal, naivety coated in detached cynical suspicion. Jo Morris’ Charon plies her everyday trade across the Styx for year on year without question, injecting humour into drudgery incarnate. Nicola Bartlett plays the dual role of Lily’s grandmother and Tiktaalik, the first creature to venture into a life on land. Bartlett finesses the role’s knowledge of history’s horrific details and calm drowning of the past in a pot of tea, achieving a synthesis of former sea creature and grandmotherly affection in a surreal but accessible blend.

As Tyrannosaurus Rex and the quintessential dodgy uncle, Paul Grabovac makes his cantankerous composite character come to accessible afterlife in his gruff interactions with the increasingly hostile Lily. Contrast is immediate with Indigo Keane’s graceful portrayal of the sweetly suffering, sensual Pikaia and her fervent passion for reproduction as the ultimate survival strategy in a world of armoured predators. The quest’s narrative arc is punctuated and guided by interjections from the band. Hard worn lyrics snarl their ways across dense guitar chords, tight percussion in a range of styles keeping things together. Nick Pages-Oliver grabs attention as he struts with the microphone stand, his narrator’s omniscience revealed as divine awareness only matched by its callous indifference. Charon’s revolt against the status quo triggers an abrupt change to ensemble workshop style performance, in which all performers collaborate to reveal the ultimate fallibility of the playwright.

Sally Phipp’s costume design reflects the duality of forms in challenging character development, with tails, fins and simply depicted proto-vertebrae framing the explanations given in the spoken lines. The original score from Brett Smith stays in close sympathy with unfolding events. The musicians are part of the set, Lui and Smith playing with accomplished ease, with Smith further impressing with his insouciant immersion in a novel as events take their twist.

A well-researched play that casually presents a series of manifestos for life at every scale, The Book of Life abounds with humour, thought and curiosity.

 


Rating: 4 stars out of 5

The Book of Life

Presented by The Blue Room Theatre Summer Nights and Renegade Productions
Directed and written by Joe Hooligan Lui
Stage Manager Meabh Walton
Set & Costume Design Sally Phipps
Live Music by Brett Smith
Performed by Paul Grabovac, Indigo Keane, Jo Morris, Morgan Owen, Nick Pages-Oliver and Nicola Bartlett
State Theatre Centre of Western Australia, Perth
31 January – 4 February 2017
Part of FringeWorld 2017

 

Nerida Dickinson
About the Author
Nerida Dickinson is a writer with an interest in the arts. Previously based in Melbourne and Manchester, she is observing the growth of Perth's arts sector with interest.