Sharing Is Caring

Daniel Keene's The Share is a play that director Corey McMahon has lived with for a while now. His Adelaide production of the show won Best Professional Drama at the 2010 Adelaide Theatre Guide Awards, while the Adelaide Critics' Circle nominated his directing as worthy of Best Individual Achievement in the same year. It's a dark piece about a share in a drug deal, but it's not all doom, gloom and despair, either. “It is dark, but the first half of it's actually quite funny – really funny,” McMahon says. “It does do dark humour, and it's a really gritty, visceral play, so it is a bit in your face but it's also really exhilarating. The way I'd liken the experience of the play is it's a bit like getting on a roller coaster, putting on a seatbelt and getting on this ride for an hour. At the end of it, you're going, 'Holy cow, what did I just go on!?' And it rarely stops. It's a really fast play and a lot goes on in an hour. In a good way, though.” The ride is driven by three key cast members: Scott Marcus as Tex, Tom Conroy as Sugar and Time Spencer as The Kid, which makes getting to such intense levels impressive.

It's been a couple of years since the Adelaide production of The Share, and McMahon first got acquainted with the piece a few years before that. “My association with the play actually goes back to my days at drama school in Adelaide,” he explains. “It was put on by a bunch of students there and I'd not really seen anything like it before – it was quite a revelation to see a play that had such an impact on me. It's always stayed with me because it's so high impact, and so high energy. But I've always wanted to put it on myself, and the writing is just so clever. Daniel Keene's probably one of our most impressive playwrights.” As a result, McMahon couldn't walk away from the production for too long, and the chance to show a new audience was particularly tempting. “When the opportunity came to do the show at The Seymour Centre we leapt at the opportunity,” McMahon explains. “It will be a different show for various reasons. It's essentially a new cast, and so when that happens you can't really impose what you had before on the new actors, you have to make an environment where they're able to [take] their own ideas into the rehearsal room. At its core it is the same, but it's got a new edge.” In key parts of The Share, and Daniel Keene's work generally, McMahon has also had a chance to think about different audiences around the place and their sensibilities. For Sydney, he's planning to go forward again. “I think this time around there'll be more depth and we'll be a bit grittier. We heightened the comedy last time and while that's still there, I think this time we've been a bit more courageous exploring the dark parts as well. And now I know the play so well, I'm able to look for other layers I didn't find before – I'm able to keep digging.”