25/08/2018
First review is in!
“Hard boiled bush noir”
“Now I’ve seen two of Shane Grant’s plays. The first was an adaptation of Georges Arnaud's The Wages of Fear, and now Hard Boiled Bush Noir, a Metanoia show at St Martin’s. Grant has spun closer to home with this genre story, from French colonial high tension thriller, now to outback South Australian noir… think Wake in Fright, Wolf Creek… even Kill Bill. These are the kind of stories that take me back to the beginnings of spoken theatre, pot-boilers and cliff-hangers where an actor has learned the words and takes an audience into the dark ironic heart of local concern. The milk crates and canvass set in which Lara Week places Adam Mattaliano and Miles Paras to spin their yarns has the transformational utilitarianisms that we love of the ingenious low-on-budget big-idea theatre of Melbourne. Stand and deliver performances of Grant’s grimy witty stories that concern ice in roadhouses, Bengal tigers bartered from travelling circuses, wily crocs, pelicans, returning to suddenly flooded inland lakes, headless bodies disturbing them and the revenge of beaten women are shock horror, funny, enthralling and strangely truthful. The video interview projected skew on ribbed curtain of mis-chance head-removing shotgunning and ‘swear on your mother’s grave to keep it secret’ is magnificent. Clean and passionate delivery, gaudy lighting (thanks Niklas Pajanti), Iris G*illard let’s her actors be confident with the story-telling and understands the arc. Getting the bums along is never easy in short seasons, under-resourced in the marketing, but honestly, go… go! This is a little over one hour of your life that will be better spent there than here. One week to go.”
Matt Crosby
Metanoia theatre presents:
3 tales of ice crime in the out back by Shane Grant.
Directed By Iris G*i
