Elton's Gasp runs of puff
THEATRE
Gasp!
By Ben Elton
2 stars
Black Swan State Theatre Company/Queensland Theatre Company
Heath Ledger Theatre
REVIEW DAVID ZAMPATTI
Black Swan wraps up its 2014 season with revivals of two all-but contemporaneous comedies. The first was Neil Simon's 1993 Laughter on the 23rd Floor; now we have Ben Elton's Gasp!, an update of his Gasping from 1990.
The Neil Simon was a delight, genuinely funny, and a platform for some bravura performances. The Ben Elton? Meh.
Strangely, although Simon's play is set in 1950s New York and Gasp! in present-day Perth, it's the latter that feels anachronistic in both content and form.
The premise is okay; mining company boss Chifley Lockheart (Greg McNeill) looks for a new revenue source after having emptied Australia of its minerals. One of his managers, Phillip (Damon Lockwood) stumbles across the idea of marketing "designer air" while tending to the asthmatic Peggy (Lucy Goleby). The device, Suck 'n' Blow, becomes a huge hit, promoting Phillip past his smarmy colleague and rival Sandy (Steven Rooke) and attracting the carnal interest of the advertising guru Kirsten (Caroline Brazier).
As the profits grow, the air for anyone not owning a Suck 'n' Blow grows thinner.
There are a fair number of topical and local references that raised the requisite snickers from the opening night audience (many of whom, like Black Swan itself, were laughing at the hands that feed them), some well-worn homilies about corporate responsibility, moral dilemma and our fragile environment . . .
. . . and jokes. Lots and lots of jokes.
Fart jokes. Poo jokes. Boob jokes. Political jokes. Race and gender jokes. Good jokes and lots of bad ones. A funnybone-numbing torrent of them, inserted with little apparent regard for the momentum of dialogue or narrative, rather fired at us like someone hunting ducks with a machine gun.
Actually, there are some funny ducks. They're projections on a set by the clever Christina Smith that manage to be both minimalist and extravagant, but eventually painful to look at.
Much the same can be said of a cast who are hardworking and enthusiastic, but unable to break out of the ties that bind them (with the occasional exception of Brazier, who is less nuanced, but just as sexy, as she was as Wendy in Rake).
There are also some clumsy lapses in taste and narrative management for which the director, Wesley Enoch, must share editorial responsibility with Elton.
A strange scene where Phillip and Lockheart hunker down and read each other scraps of Chief Seattle's letter to President Pierce in 1955 is as bewildering as it is pointless; a deeply unfunny and gratuitous poke at Renee Zellweger's recent transformation appears out of nowhere and serves no purpose other than to destroy the momentum of the scene it's in.
Worst, though, is a ghoulish sequence, with newsreel footage, of refugee camps purporting to house the oxygen-starved in West Africa (of all places).
Of course there are good moments, and funny lines. Of course there are some worthwhile points made, and ideas floated.
But Gasp! is not a good or worthwhile play and this makeover does precious little to make it one.
Gasp! Runs until November 9.
