Aleksandra Andrea tortures Tina Rizzo with her dreams of stardom and success in The Audition.

Theatre
The Audition
Atriju Vassalli, University of Malta, Msida

Plays exposing the inner workings of the theatre business itself have been around for a quite a while, and can often give their audience a closer look at the intimate behind-the-scenes occurrences that make up the more mundane life of thespians.

From comedy to serious drama, this subject matter has spanned a range of genres. James Johnson’s The Audition, directed by Joe Depasquale earlier this month as part of Evenings on Campus, was bizarre to say the least.

The play featured Tina Rizzo as young undergraduate and aspiring actress Lauren and Aleksandra Andrea as the manipulative and steely Stella, a theatre director/producer with a sinister ulterior motive at a very odd casting. The story revelled in several aspects of pop psychology without really exploring them in much depth.

Johnson was clearly going for a postmodern slant with what appeared to be a self-critical play which introspectively mocked the more philosophical aspects of certain theoretical theatre practices. It also focused on the power struggle between abuser and abused and the odd fascination that a victim can have with the extent of her abuser’s devious methods.

Lauren is no idiot in spite of her youth and apparent innocence, which Stella keeps goading her with. She has a couple of dark secrets in her past which rise to the surface and from which she draws on to simultaneously do Stella’s bidding and defend herself against her twisted tricks.

The play’s overly ambitious script attempted to touch upon several related themes while disregarding their development

Rizzo gave a rather hesitant performance as Lauren, with occasional bursts of emotional connection with her character and she was rather unclear in the delivery of certain key speeches. Hers was a good casting choice in terms of character type and fit, and would certainly have worked better had the play not been in what appeared to be its workshop stage.

The same can be said for Andrea’s performance, although in her case, the emotional disconnection and clipped sentences reflected her character’s cynical, vindictively caustic attitude.

The overall impression that could be discerned was that the play’s overly ambitious script attempted to touch upon several related themes while disregarding their development – there was simply too much to handle and the two young actresses could have done with much more direction and character analysis than was evident in the production.

This is, of course, ironic, because the one underlying theme which emerged at the end and gave the piece some continuity, was the loss of self and the replacing of one’s individual response with the required emotional response from the director. The idea of complete trust and submission to a director – a god-like figure who decides the fate of the characters he or she chooses – is a tried-and-tested postmodern device and the irony lay in the fact that while the concept of ‘puppets on strings’ was put forward quiet strongly, the emotional output of the actors did not quite seem to connect.

The Audition did give the audience food for thought, but it did so in a rather unhelpful manner. Although it is admirable to expose others to the sense of frustration and confusion that one may feel when their sense of self and beliefs are challenged, and alert us to the dangers of allowing external forces to influence us to the point where we are no longer in control.

The play was the kind which required post-performative discussion and academic analysis to intellectualise its seemingly abstruse stance.