BEFORE/AFTER

Fifty one short stories. Forty characters. One hotel stage set, one uber-prolific German playwright, and one up-and-coming Sydney director. It all equals Before/After, the latest production as part of Sydney Theatre Company’s Next Stage program. Director Cristabel Sved (Dealing with Clair, The Beauty Queen of Leenane) says of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s loose, puzzle-like play, “It’s a real kaleidoscope of life … almost like a dot painting in a funny way … you can’t get the whole effect until the end.” The fragments spread from the mundane – handymen fixing a lightbulb – to the miraculous – finding yourself face-to-face with a space organism. “He throws out these challenges, multiple realities and narratives that free up a sense of theatricality,” says Sved. When staged in Hungary, the actors sat amongst the audience, and the set was just mirrors – rather a confronting thought. Here, it is the, “Transient and anonymous space,” of the hotel room, “That explodes into a galaxy.” It’s the first English language production in Australia, with the challenge for Sved to maintain a visual excitement while staying true to the density of the text. The thematic throughlines, that of, “Humanity’s destructive, creative relationship with the world, with each other, and within the individual … the play seems to be saying that it’s tipping more towards destruction,” as well as the reoccurring character and scene developments, help cohere Before/After into a whole. But why our increasing fascination with fragmented narratives (the Oscar-winning movie Babel, for instance)? “The gap between the actuality and the virtual representation is collapsing – they can happen simultaneously. I was at a party, and as I was enjoying it, someone was documenting it and putting it up on the net at the same time.”Hence the before split from the after by only a single stroke.

Feb 4-19, Sydney Theatre Company, $25, 9250 1777, sydneytheatre.com.au