Two actors, 15 characters and 8 different accents. I could finish this review right here. Wow. What a tour-de-force for Mitchell Butel and Michael Habib as they master split-second changes to become all these distinct personalities. Mind-blowingly they do it without props, except for a cap each, one jacket and a book.
But a reviewer needs to be more than just gob-smacked by the performances. So, I will try to be more critical and delve into the morass of Queensland Theatre Company’s last show for 2008.
Marie Jones’ Stones in His Pockets has won several awards and been nominated for many others but, for me, the script is what lets this play down. It’s funny, but funny in a schmaltzy, clichéd ‘to be sure, to be sure’ sort of a way rather than surprising, belly laugh funny. The characters are caricatures, broad brush stroke representations of people, and that makes for giggles and mockery but nothing deeper.
The premise for Jones’ story is that a big Hollywood production has come to County Kerry in Ireland to film The Quiet Valley. American stars are playing the Irish leads (think Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise in Far and Away) and locals have been hired to play the extras. The play’s heroes are two of the extras, Charlie (Butel) and Jake (Habib). They meet on the set and we learn more about them as they get to know each other. Both of them are chuffed to be on a film set and earning £40 a day and both have dreams of getting spotted or, in Charlie’s case, having his film script, which he carries in his back pocket at all times, picked up.
Butel and Habib also play the film’s director, the big star – Caroline Giovanni, her thuggish security guard and many other sundry characters. Butel’s portrayal of Giovanni as she tosses her hair and fiddles with her earrings and pouts for the camera is hilarious. When she sets her eyes on Jake in a bid to get her accent right by getting intimate with one of the ‘natives’ the scene is set for a long parody. But, here again, we have the cliché of the narcissistic Hollywood star who pretends to care and the noble local who refuses to be seduced. Jones falls into the same traps she’s attempting to parody.
When one of the locals dies, the mood of the play changes and, as an audience, we have to suddenly stop seeing this as an extended piss-take and start seeing the caricatures as real people with whom we’re supposed to be empathising. Not so easy. We didn’t see enough of Sean Harkin (the young man who’s walked into the ocean with stones in his pockets) to feel anything by his death and the play becomes maudlin and indulgent as the townsfolk reel, reminisce and re-invent Sean to be something more than the drug addicted, loud mouth we met so briefly.
Jon Halpin’s direction is sure and he gives the actors the freedom to do their work without having to fiddle with unimportant details. Kieran Swann’s set design and Ben Hughes’ lighting design work well together and are simple, elegant and functional. Brett Collery and Tony Brumpton make the most of the Irish jigs and sentimental effects required by the film crew. The combined effect of the creative team is to put all the attention where it should be – on the actors.
On opening night the characters weren’t always as clearly defined as I imagine they will be by the time you go and see this. The accents sometimes slid about as the actors found their feet, but this is normal for an opening night and what the actors did right far eclipsed any momentary lapses.
For virtuoso performances and the joy of seeing two actors thinking on their feet, you can’t go past Stones in His Pockets.
Reviewed by Katherine Lyall-Watson
Tell us what you thought of the show and whether this review has been helpful. We’d love to hear your comments.
