Skin Game 2002 (reviews)

From Urban Press

Bats Theatre, Wellington, 2002

Written and Directed by David Foote.

“This Game is too elusive to get under the skin”
Someone could write a really thick thesis on David Foote's Skin Game. They could deconstruct the post-modern mix of influences from the existentialists, absurdists and poetical playwrights, then analyse it in terms of Howard Barker's notions of catastrophic theatre and the poststructuralist philosophy of Jean Francois Lyeotard. Meanwhile, I'll attempt to capture something of the live theatre experience offered by Foote with actors Suraya Singh, Ella Watson, Adam Jones, Clare Kerrison and Kinloch. The white-draped washing line, newspaper strewn ground, wooden ladders, chopping block, brazier and clothing redolent of pioneer farmers combine to evoke a remote hinterland. Of the mind, I suspect, but I'm not sure whose. The only word I can confidently apply to this play is "elusive." Just as the confusion seems too great, something recognisable happens. A lost motorist asks to use the phone. Sexual tension arises between total strangers (or are they?). A knowing yet innocent child subverts an old woman's folk tale. A young man with a head full of knowledge but little wisdom resorts to ritual and self-mutilation. An adolescent girl is more at home with the Marquis de Sade (in a book) than her own family ... The exotic grot of the Paris Metro is evocatively contrasted with the wilderness of New Zealand's deep south-west coast. Many visual images are memorable. The themes of guilt, loss and recovery permeate the action and seem to bind the disparate parts. Not that they add up to a coherent whole. There is a rich imagination at work here, no doubt about that. David Foote has a facility with verbal and visual language that cannot be dismissed. He and his actors create rich characters with strong wants, needs and concerns, and authentic speech patterns. Even so, the play and production fall short of connecting and communicating, with me, at least, to a level of satisfaction. Let me hasten to add that "satisfaction" for me may well include leaving the theatre disturbed and/or confused and searching, or simply knowing I'd witnessed some sort of "truth" without being able to define it. But Skin Game is just too elusive, obscure and discursive to inspire the trust I need to feel, to willingly suspend my disbelief and engage with this view of the human condition.

John Smythe, The National Business Review, 18-Jul-2002