Review: Moving Target

Moving Target by Marius Von Mayenburg
Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Opera House and Adelaide Festival production
The Studio, Sydney Opera House


After presentations in Adelaide and Melbourne, the reputation of Benedict Andrews' Moving Target preceded its Sydney showing.

Cameron Woodhead of Melbourne's The Age said that the production takes "us to a state of shocking indifference through hilarity and disgust".

Lola MacMillan of Australian Stage found it a "self indulgent exercise in over intellectualizing theatre games".

And Alison Croggon thought it was "one of the most intriguing pieces of theatre you will see this year".

The pure contention that this production generated was enough to raise my interest and ensure a place to experience Moving Target myself.

What was interesting about the audience that piled into the theatre on opening night was the mix of practitioners and supporters that were attending - half from the traditional script based theatre crowd - the other half from the performance art and dance fraternity. It is rare that these crowds blend together at any one event.

It says a lot about where director Benedict Andrews is positioning himself - for it isn't often that a child of the script based world dives into the world of performance art with such intent. It is much more common for the performance world to neatly extract from the text based brethren.

The staging of a white blank space that acts as a cube of confinement for the performers greets the audience as it walks in. The performers are placed on stage in a formation that wouldn't be far removed from a Diesel Jeans commercial with their trendy inner city garb and sun glasses, waiting for us to settle before they can start their game.

Using each others real names we find Julie (Forsyth) sitting quietly behind a kitchen table. Alison (Bell) sits like a naughty girl in a corner gazing into the centre of the space. Rita (Kalnejas) is situated side by side with Matthew (Whittet) on a bright red lounge. Robert (Menzies) hunches up the back, watching over his companions. And Hamish (Michael) looks intently at the others looking ready to pounce or move at any moment.

And as the lights fall, so the play (and playing) begins.

The premise of having adult actors playing children role-playing adults is not new to theatre from central Europe and is useful to wash down serious and grating adult themes with a good dose of innocence.

In Moving Target, the game is hide and seek played out within a space where there is no where to hide. However the child characters on stage ask us to use our imagination, as the game is played over and over again with each character taking turns to hide and to seek.

Underneath these games a narrative starts to float out through a series of monologues that the performers deliver, often to the strains of a severely striking sound design. And the story emerges - it is one of a mysterious woman and a green parcel she leaves behind in a very public place.

The characters on stage act almost like the Famous Five, as they watch the woman, follow the woman and share intrigue as to what is in the green parcel.

It is a long show (one hour and fifty minutes) but is carried by a beautiful text that has endless opportunities and it makes Marius Von Mayenburg one of the most exciting playwrights around. The delivery of the piece however, left me cold.

Central to the problems suffered by the staging is that often there was very little reason for what the characters did on stage. From the sticky tape to the painting, it felt more like a text based piece trying to be performance art rather than just being performance art in its delivery.

The result was that it left the piece with a distinct lack of intrigue, and by about half way through this reviewer had had enough.

In one way, the set design is extremely clever and unique, but it also creates certain problems. This was especially highlighted when Whittet breaks a convention established from the very beginning of the show - no one is to leave this space and nothing from the outside can come in. And yet, three-quarters of the way through he reaches out from the iron curtain fourth wall, under the stage and grabs a whole pile of paints, brushes and paper for the 'kids' to draw.

In one way it is a simple thing, but on a much larger level, it showed that the world of the games was not created. The end result is that it left very little room for any elements of surprise - a vital element whenever you deal with either innocence or children.