Caress/Ache

A surgeon loses a baby on the operating table.  A mother argues with successive government departments for financial help; her son is imprisoned in Singapore.  A wife discovers her husband has been unfaithful.  A single mum starts work as an online sex-worker.  An Australian-born Iranian young woman discovers the poetry of her parents’ country and is inexorably drawn Farsi and Iran…  These character strands interweave around the theme of touch - its centrality, its power to heal, its power to destroy when prevented or withheld…  In counterpoint to the dramatic scenes, a cool, matter-of-fact Voice gives us scientific facts about the human body’s senses and sensations, such as, ‘Each square centimetre of human skin contains six receptors for cold, one for warmth but over two hundred receptors for pain.’

I’m unconvinced that this commentary gives us any more than irony or that it contributes to our understanding of the play’s stories.  In any case, it takes us out of the drama.  (In previous productions, these scientific facts have been rendered via surtitles.)  But interweaving disparate story strands is a risky enterprise, especially when - as here - five actors play ten - or eleven if we count a wordless autistic child - characters - and these five actors are not always able to distinguish clearly between their different characters.

Then there is the balance of the story strands. Some are more engaging; some are better acted.  Some feel like interruptions to the flow of other stories.  Perhaps the strongest story - because it has a beginning, middle and end - is that of Mark (Sorab Kaikobad) the traumatised surgeon - even if the story itself strains credibility.  (One death on the operating table renders him debilitated and shunning human touch?  Why now?)  His story is rather subsumed in the others, not helped by director Kate Sherman’s and Sorab Kaikobad’s decision to play the character as so held-back, withdrawn, and inaccessible that he loses our engagement in his first monologue.  His scenes with wife Libby (Fiona Crombie) where he pushes away her sympathy - and touch - are further alienating.

The most engaging story strand is that of Arezu (Delaram Ahmadi), the Iranian-Australian, whose story resonates coincidentally with current events.  The strength of this story (although it has no resolution) is in large part due to Delaram Ahmadi’s performance.  She has a limpid but focused riveting stage presence that makes us listen intently.  It’s surely interesting however that her story alone is told (until her very last scene) entirely in monologues - in contrast to the rather trite two-hander scenes that surround it .  That is, we can imagine her narrative for ourselves without the need for any dramatic scenes with her kindly uncle or her secretive parents.

The marriage break-up strand traps Laura Knaggs as Saskia, the wife, and Taylor Fong, as the cheatin’ husband within two characters we’ve seen before and here depicted with very little insight or originality.  It’s not the actors’ fault.  In fact, Saskia’s relentless probing for detail and her determination to punish are not just repetitious but alienating.  As for the on-line sex-workers, who inexplicably take calls while jogging at a gym, Laura Knaggs is the newbie (at first, I figured Saskia had become a sex-worker - a risk of doubling up) and Delaram Ahmadi (showing a sly talent for comedy as well) as the old hand, are, I guess, the comic relief - albeit that the theme of touch is present as well.

Meanwhile, Sophie Davis’ set design makes clever use of white tubular frames, white stools, and a white table to indicate doorways, booths, a cell, an operating theatre and even a bath, making for smooth transitions in what is clearly a limited budget show - assisted by Darren Thao’s lighting. Thomas Goodwin’s sound is at times just too much, but overall is subtle enough. These accomplished technical aspects, however, don’t rescue this production.

One wonders at the chutzpah of director Kate Sherman and Silver String Productions in mounting Caress/Ache given the often negative (and for me accurate) criticisms of the play itself, first performed in 2015.  Playwright Suzie Miller is riding high at present with her near agit-prop Prima Facie, but Caress/Ache doesn’t have the focus or the nicely judged moral trap of the former.  It’s well-intentioned but lacks the substance or insight to embody that intention.

Miller wrote Caress/Ache in 2015 but began thinking about it in 2005 with the hanging in Singapore of Van Tuong Nguyen, Singapore law denying his mother even a final hug.  Since then, there have been the Bali executions in 2015 of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chen.  Some find these real-world references moving, but I question whether they are manipulative and even exploitative.

There is, surely, one way to make this play work and that is with superb performances. The actors need to suggest depths that are just not there in the text.  Here, a relatively inexperienced cast (given to much significant pausing as well) are burdened with a problematic and unimaginative text and directed into ‘inward’ performances that often forget there’s a paying audience sitting there waiting to be engaged, touched, educated, and entertained. 

Michael Brindley