Do You Mind?

The smallish (16) audience enters the Old Fitz theatre via the stage, on which sits a box about 3’x2’x3’. The play begins when the lid flies open and out pops Melbourne writer and performer Shay Debney, in a blue jumpsuit, bearded, intent and full of questions.

He talks very fast and the few questions are for his audience. Well, more than a few actually. He’s got an inexhaustible flow of mainly unanswerable questions – 294 noted at one point – and many, many more after that.

‘How many times smaller is an ant to an average human?’ is a typical Debney question, and there’s no allowed time and no attempt at supplying an answer, beyond a passing reference to ant-thropology.

There is an absurdist bent to Debney’s prose, a vibrant silliness. You soon realise that there are NO answers to the hundreds/thousands of questions raised, that every single sentence has a question mark at the end of it. 

He relates to the audience: ‘Would you? Is it? Should I? Was it worthwhile?’ To some on that Anzac Day/Night it definitely was.

Julia Robertson has added her own directorial twists to the tale and it stands up well in the experimental Old Fitz atmosphere.

This absurdist play has come together over the past four years while Debney’s career as singer/actor/dancer has blossomed in Melbourne. Now he has stepped out of the box.

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Julia Robertson