Violence is a prevalent part of our society, the statistics on it are shocking and present a grim reality that all of us have been touched by in one way or another. Darlinghurst Theatre Company's production of Patricia Cornelius' Savages strikes at the heart of this painful conundrum.
We go along for the "trip of a lifetime" with our morally dubious four characters as they epitomise all that it is to be an Aussie bloke. Runt (Thomas Campbell), Rabbit (Josef Ber), George (Troy Harrison) and Craze (Yure Covich) all vie for top dog as they wade through the tumultuous waters of gender and masculinity.
Throughout all the shenanigans, the fun and games are marked with an air of underlying violence shown in the common and flippant swearing, their propositioning of women and an inherent tendency towards frenzy.
Cornelius seems to have hit the nail right on the head as David Williamson did with The Removalists in 1972, capturing the essence of modern Australian manhood with writing that strays the bounds between repulsion in both its poetic and real forms. The direction and the set lead to a strange hybrid of realism and hyperrealism where the victims remain voiceless and nameless and the light is thrown on the perpetrators.
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The performers embody these occa stereotypes with wholehearted performances that don't easily fray, providing light and shade to present the necessary symbolic retribution of the denouement. Yet, this feeling of catharsis is quickly trumped by a greater animosity and fear caused by the transformation of these characters into wild beasts, snarling and presenting their teeth.
Savages is effective because it holds a mirror to the most salient cause of violence in our society, yet is problematic because it perpetuates the same narrative, casting violence, domestic or otherwise, into the realm of the wifebeater wearing bogan; the tradie; the working class.
For all the insidiousness felt on this ship of fools, the compartmentalising of this narrative (similar in its themes, its tone and its impact to Williamson's 1972 watershed) rehash a well-worn paradigm, if not artfully.
Savages is, at its core, vexing to Australian audiences and all too close to home, yet it also isolates its characters from its audience making it difficult to create real change as any didactic artwork seeks to do.
