Holiday
Holiday
Ranters Theatre
The CUB Malthouse
20 July 2008
Since its award-winning premiere last year, Holiday has fast become known as a new and exciting piece of Australian Theatre. Exploring the relationships between its two characters and their hopes and dreams, the play takes the form of a rapidly shifting, inconstant conversation.
Powerful performers from the two performers (Paul Lum as the younger man, and Patrick Moffat as the older) carry the often difficult to follow show along. With a lack of conflict or much light and shade, it is the transient emotional responses of the actors that makes the play enjoyable to experience.
Much of the play consists of a rambling dialogue between the two characters, flipping between thought-provoking and amusing. As the conversation veers from the perils of aging to the Australian media to history to the nature of celebrity, we get a sense of the personalities of the two characters, and how they ‘tick.’
With an oddly pervasive soundscape, Holiday is almost as much about sound as it is about the disjointed dialogue. Odd pieces of sung music, often old folk tunes, add a surreal air to the piece, and the snatches of car sound, insect buzzing and water noise serve to locate the piece in some sort of space.
Well-known for its iconic image of two men in a paddling pool, Holiday is a strange, unsettling journey through the lives and minds of its characters. Often confusing in its lack of structure, it is an intriguing and oddly engaging piece of new theatre.