THEATRE: CAGELING

You might be forgiven for thinking the Rabble theatre team Emma Valente and Kate Davis are borderline sadistic. “We had a set idea to put some characters in a cage,” says Valente, “which has turned into an enclosed box with some glass.” This box looms large at 4m x 5m x 3m, but squeezed inside will be five actors and a motherload of surreal nihilism.

Cageling is based very loosely on the 1930s’ La casa de Bernarda Alba by Spanish playwright Frederico Garcia Lorca, in which a malicious matriarch (Alba) runs her household of five sickly and slightly deranged daughters with an iron fist; comparisons have been made with Franco-era fascism. But Valente reminds us that very little of the original remains; “It’s the text turned inside out.” Has the story been tweaked with local flavour? “The themes are universal, so when you are talking about repression not only of grief but of sexuality and of desire. That is a very Australian struggle.”

It could be a new form of Australian gothic; the Andalusian casa has been converted to an outback property that has been ravaged by fire. The Rabble process is a very organic, collaborative one – after choosing the foundation text, they gather thematically-linked resource material, such as images, clippings, stories, and circulate to the actors in a dossier. The Cageling dossier included the cannablistic Greek tale of Philomela and Procne, the spate of news stories about children being locked in basements and the dark Bluebeard fairytales. “The actors will learn bits from the text and then we’ll write a treatment so they know a bit about the characters,” says Valente, “then we go through a series of improvisations to develop a physical language.”

This language includes some script-flipping of gender stereotypes. Both Alba and one of her daughters are played by men. “A man in a dress is a very potent political statement. Audiences have had very different reactions to it – some people find it very confronting and some people don’t care at all.” Care or not, you are sure to be struck by this production. Make sure you walk around the dramatic black and white cube before the show – and consider your part in the drama.

Until Jul 3, CarriageWorks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, $22-30, 1300 823 038, carriageworks.com.au