THE HIGHWAY CROSSING
“I did it because of money,” is the kind of grenade statement sure to incense any arts community.
Estonia, 1999, proved no different when playwright Jaan Tatte cheekily tossed off the crack.
“Half of the motto was a joke because he was commissioned to write the play,” says the director of the latest staging, Iain Sinclair. “However the Russian fairy tale (The Tale of the Golden Fish) it’s based on is about the idea of ‘plenty’ and what happens to you when you actually get what you ask for.”
Following a pair of itinerant lovers, Laura and Roland, the ‘what you ask for’ here is a spicy mix of sex and opportunity. Taking shelter in a house owned by Oswald during a storm, a strange proposition is put to the hitch-hikers. An Indecent Proposal, you might say.
“It speaks a lot to our secret evils,” says Sinclair. “It’s also a very special blend of piss-funny stupid performance style and deadly serious Eastern European morality. I love putting on plays that are a mystery to me before we get them in front of an audience.”
Sinclair will not only be directing, but fronting the audiences, so he will be able to see their reactions first-hand. “Oswald is the principal storyteller in the piece in the old fashioned fairy tale sense. I’m playing a man who has fallen so deep into his own storytelling that he can’t tell what is dream or not.”
Describing the play as one-part Grimm fairytale, the other a Tarantino-esque, “piss-take on post-modern theatre,” at the time of its debut it highlighted the cracks experienced by the Baltic nation undergoing the shift from a Soviet to Capitalist economy.
“Taate then [got] his torch out and [shone] a bright light through them to reveal uncomfortable truths about us all. The world is full of important plays that not enough people know about so it’s great to acknowledge at least one Estonian gem.”
Jun 9-29, Bondi Pavilion Theatre, Queen Elizabeth Dr, Bondi Beach, $33-42 (beer, taco, show), 1300 241 167, rocksurfers.org
