Ugly Mugs

A corpse opens its eyes, sits upright, and with all the grittiness of the darker beats, half raps her world into view as a doctor investigates the body. The world of Peta Brady’s Ugly Mugs is a seedy suburbia and with death right at the door every action played out is marked with potential danger, darkness.

The poetry with which the sex worker opens the show continues, later tumbling out of her mouth (Brady a ball of energy), and coming in more taciturn bursts from the teenage duo whose eerily affectionate arguments form the supporting, entangled storyline. Unfortunately, it remains as a supporting story and it feels as if there was more to be explored with both.

Lines, rhymes and rhythms collide every so often, resulting in a word or two of dialogue that feel as if they pack physical punches. The script feels like a collage – snippets of graphic details from the Ugly Mugs booklet from which the play takes its name, banal facts that somehow gain impact through their accretion, realist dialogue and the jamming joust of the poetry so often gifted to the characters – and in Marion Potts’ hands it works brilliantly.

The bare set smooths these transitions, and projects the stories into empty space in which they can collide and be re-examined by both the characters and the audience.
The only shortcoming is the short running time; it feels as if the supporting storyline of the younger duo does not reach its full potential, as though there is more that could be examined. Thanks to strong performances Ugly Mugs strikes the balance between surprisingly upbeat and truly sinister.