Review
13 September 2024
Canberra Youth Theatre is dedicated to raising the voices of young people, and helping them have their say about theatre, the arts, and everything in between. Our Young Critics program provides emerging voices the platform to share reviews such as the one below. The views expressed are those of the writer and do not reflect the views of Canberra Youth Theatre or its staff.
Lucinda Ferguson, one of our Canberra Youth Theatre Young Critics, reviews the The Seeing Place’s production of Mark Ravenhill’s The Cut at The Mill Theatre.
Image Credit – Andrew Sikorski.
Mark Ravenhill’s The Cut throws the audience headfirst into a dystopian world concerned with the changing social attitudes to a mysterious medical process – ‘the cut’. At first, Paul (Ali Clinch), an administrator of ‘the cut’ˆ, faces off against a willing patient (Diana Caban Velez), who seeks the lobotomy-like procedure. Later, we glimpse Paul’s home life, particularly her fractious relationship with her wife (Hannah Tonks). In the last of the three scenes, an imprisoned Paul faces her son (Maxine Beaumont) from jail, as the cut has been outlawed.
The Seeing Place’s debut production is an astute choice for a Canberran audience. Centering questions around power, it hints at various ethical quandaries – the Sartre-esque freedom (of thought) as burden, the effect of the obfuscation of truth on domestic life, and the dangers of remaining complicit in unethical systems that have been passed down, to name a few examples. In this way, it roves across philosophical grounds, raising more questions than it answers and providing ample fodder for car conversations on the way home.
Somewhat stilted delivery leads to flagging tension (though pauses between lines may allow the attentive audience member ample time to ponder the grander ideas at play). A particularly engaged performance from Caban Velez, who is not afraid of using the full range of dynamics in her voice, raises tensions where possible.
Stand-out sound design from Marlene Radice haunts the play with hypnotic whispering and unnerving score, at times completely immersing us in the minds of those driven to seek the cut. A minimal set provides just enough for each scene to be hatched out, and in its sparsity drives home the uncanny quality of the play’s enigmatic dystopian world.
The Cut adds to Mill Theatre’s continual efforts to host provocative, intellectual theatre (June’s Terror comes to mind), and in essence bodes well for The Seeing Place’s promise to bring bold, political theatre to Canberra.
Takeaway: The Cut contains rich veins of intellectual questions, if one can muster the energy to dig for them.
Lucinda Ferguson is one of Canberra Youth Theatre’s 2024 Young Critics.
