Cosi

A play about a play. No, a play about patients in a mental hospital putting on a play. No, a great Australian play written by a great Australian playwright where he draws on his actual experience of once directing a play in a mental hospital!

Confused? Intrigued? Have no idea what’s going on?

Perfect! You might as well be a character in this play!

The Epicentre Theatre Company and Director Christine Firkin must have had an absolute blast with their rendition of playwright Louis Nowra’s “Cosi”, now featuring at the Zenith Theatre in Chatswood from 23rd-31st of March 2012.

University graduate Lewis has just scored his first directing role. The cast – a mis-matched bunch of mental hospital patients who have leapt at the chance to get out of their confined, white and green walled wards where that annoying ‘shock therapy ‘and ‘having to take their medication’ takes place.

Lacking any experience in real-life directing let alone social work, Lewis struggles when he is told the play will be Mozart’s famous ‘Cosi fan tutte’, a comedic Italian opera, and that his actors’ have certain ‘needs’ he must adapt to and fulfil in order to unite them and finish the production.

As soon as the lights go down and the delightfully insane patients make their way onstage, the whole audience is in absolute fits of laughter when they are introduced to Doug – a pyromaniac with an extreme and inappropriate sexual innuendo, Ruth – a middle-aged woman with OCD who repeatedly counts her steps and finds it difficult to come to terms with the fact that she is putting on the “illusion of acting”, Cherry – food-obsessed and Lewis-obsessed who threatens to kill him with kindness as well as actually killing anybody who is interested in him, and Roy – a manic-depressive and the brains behind the idea that putting on an Italian opera in a mental hospital will be a piece of cake.

Minimalistic props, lighting and costumes create focus on the characters and the text, which is less about performing a play and more about acceptance and adaption, with a dash of politics sprinkled amongst the action as the play is set in Melbourne, Australia against a backdrop of the Vietnam War. There are serious moments where you are forced to empathise with the patients and with society as the political craziness outside of their walls mirrors and threatens the craziness within.

On the flip-side there are brilliant one-liners and you realise that perhaps their illogical approaches to life really aren’t that insane after all. It is dangerous territory when you find yourself being dragged in and emoting with the characters.

Music from Mozart’s ‘Cosi fan tutte’ is played during each scene change, the drama and suspense of the opera a sign of what’s around the corner in the next scene. The opera itself is about testing fidelity by lying and cheating those you love, so it’s no surprise when this story is executed by patients in a mental hospital that hilarity and madness ensue as there are personalities being performed by those with multiple personalities!

I challenge anyone to see this play and not rejoice with the characters’ journeys or almost crack a rib in peals of laughter. It is YOU who will be defined as mad!

Reviewed by Lana Hilton

Hear what Aston who played Lewis had to say on Triple H 100.1 fm