Idle Lies

31 March 2015 | 9:34 pm | Sean Maroney

"It’s raw and it’s cool."

A box is presented.  It’s too soon.  A man and a woman shout over each other: contradictions.  The audience stands around the pool table and the band has stopped: “We should have waited.” “We did” echoes. What does it mean? A box is left in the centre of the pool table. What’s inside?  Go and see Idle Lies.

A fine pastiche of physical theatre, dance, theatre of cruelty, and anachronistic period drama, Idle Lies by Sydney-based collective Doll pARTS disappoints nobody.  A band provides atmospheric sometimes narrative-based music while the audience drinks their “libations” as the host suggests.  The audience chats.  They are having fun and then the lights flicker and out of the walls come a cast of actors and dramas without explanation – and just enough storyline.  Each scene is a jigsaw to be put together.  More action occurs off stage than on but you have the feeling while you drink away in merriment between scenes that the very walls ooze the stories untold of the twisted family.  It’s raw and it’s cool.  This piece reminds you to keep living your life through it, simultaneously telling you that it will live through you. 

And the box was left in the centre of the pool table when it ended and people had to find out what was in it.  Doll pARTS was raw.

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