Gross und Klein

I must first apologise. I don’t do reviews usually, and now there’s two close together. Tonight, I saw Sydney Theatre Company’s Gross and Kleine, a play by Botho Strauss, in a translation by Martin Crimp. The last show I saw by STC was not good in my opinion.

Tonight was very different.

The script is fragmentary. The piece most theatrical. The performances range from complex psychological to the edge of performance art. The work only has traces of narrative, and as I like a good story, I struggled a little in the first half, but in the second I decided to just take each moment as it comes. I enjoyed the second half more.

The play IS weird. It’s unconventional and if you have a fixed idea of what a play should be, you may upset. But it’s beautiful too, immensely theatrical, beautiful pictures.

But what about Cate? The play surrounds one character, Lotte. This role was played by Cate Blanchett, and I was very interested in her performance. I didn’t believe it all the time, often it was too much for my sensibilities but it did seem like she was always serving the play.

The most powerful impression came from her opening monologue, a rambling woman. Blanchett delivers this with such confidence, that I am drawn right in. Despite her movie star roles, she is capable of delighting a theatre audience, but when you see her, you are aware of just how effortless she makes it look. She makes everything seem natural even among the surreality of Strauss’ play.

She is captivating, I want to watch, I want to know what happens next and that helps to fight the fractured nature of the narrative. But do I watch because she’s famous? Many there this evening were, I’m sure, but I was keen to see someone at the pinnacle of Australian acting.

I was not disappointed. She was free, playful, uninhibited, focused, truthful, theatrical, at ease with herself on stage. All this makes her supremely watchable. All this is something to aim for.