Mojo

Lachlan Houen’s first directorial venture is a play billing itself as a tightly wound thriller, and certainly it has the necessary elements of uncertainty and threat as well as scenes of dramatic action.

Apparently the play’s major conflict concerns commercial rights over the performances of a young singer named Silver Johnny.  Its second act begins making sense of the characters’ recent histories and the relationships between them, and the first act sets us up for the second act through some of that dramatic action.

Unfortunately, on opening night, the first act set up that mystery largely through making almost none of the dialogue comprehensible.  The actors involved made sterling efforts to master British accents, but the combination of thick accents and rapid-fire speech left us picking out perhaps one word in ten of the lengthy loud discussions between the two principal characters in that act.

The second act, far better-paced, let us pick up at least the major threads.  Though it contained references to topics evidently raised in the first act — principally, I think, concerning sex and sexual abuse — the motives generally driving it emerged through clearer dialogue as well as clear, and at times exaggerated, action.

The verisimilitude of Taylor Barrett’s performance as club manager Mickey, which stood out in balancing energy with calm, imbued the surface and deeper impressions of the character, and there was no mistaking the thoroughness with which all members of the cast had learnt and rehearsed their parts; the play never faltered, and the cast’s energy never flagged.  In general, both the physical acting and the forcefulness of dialogue throughout could profitably have been pared back a long way; with some restraint (especially in light of the theatre’s intimacy), the play will undoubtedly make a fine entertainment.

— John P. Harvey.

Image: [L–R] Lachlan Herring and Taj De Montis, in Mojo.  Picture: Ben Appleton — Photox Photography.