THE HISTRIONIC
Melodrama. Thespians. Histrionics. All of the drama of the theatre can be found in Sydney Theatre Company’s latest offering, a play that is rarely performed outside of Europe.
Following a successful season at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne, The Histrionic is not a play about someone with a delightfully intriguing but chronic personality disorder.
Its German title, Der Theatermacher, is difficult to translate, but refers to someone with the character of a drama queen, a theatre-maker, the kind of sadist who always seems to make themselves the centre of their own tragedy.
Translator, Tom Wright, says this adaptation of renowned Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard’s 1984 work hopes to draw out the gallows humour common to both Austrian and Australian culture, so our audiences will undoubtedly relate to the black humour in the production.
“It’s a play about theatre people, and theatre people as an extension of all of us,” says Wright.
Unlike his previous translations, including the brutal and absorbing Brecht experience Baal, and the similarly disarming Women of Troy, Wright’s translation of The Histrionic is a more direct one, not allowing much room for imagination and transformation.
“Fundamentally I’ve had to represent the truth of the play. You have this tyrannical director, this monster. His speech is pretentious … he talks and he talks and he talks … He’s afraid of silence, so he constantly tried to fill it up with language. In the end language is all he has,” he says.
The casting of this cyclone of a character, Bruscon, is the real draw card; with the tour de force Bille Brown taking on the great role.
And what better match for Brown than Barry Otto, who plays his harassed landlord, even though he only has about 10 lines in the whole production: “He’s on the stage most of the time but he doesn’t say anything, and that’s the real joy of it,” says Wright.
Jun 15–Jul 28, Wharf 1, Sydney Theatre Company, The Wharf Pier 4/5, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay, $35-79, 9250 1777, sydneytheatre.com.au
