A Large Attendance in the Antechamber

This is not a review. This is the rambling of a person consuming Thai food (from somewhere she once thought was an Indian take-away shop with many Asian people working in it), and watching the first season of Black Books... This evening I attended a performance of 'A Large Attendance in the Antechamber'. I chose my own adventure. I sat in the front row. Directly in front of what I described at the time as "a Punch-and-Judy like booth". I tend to scrawl such descriptions on my program ... little did I know. The first thing that caught my attention was the stillness of Sir Francis Galton (Brian Lipson). He sat frozen, his lips pursed, the only thing he moved was his eyes, darting about the audience. I caught his eye at one point and considered attempting to out-stare him, but decided against it. Lipson's performance broke through the fourth wall, or rather, he broke down his own walls. Not only did Galton/Lipson engage with the audience, make them participants in his Lecture/Show, but he questioned the very rules of performance. He questioned the artifice, whilst creating it. The performance created a sort of anti-realism. Galton spoke of the actor speaking him. The character questioned the author and the performer, who were both one and the same. As the performer/character declared, there was no beginning, middle or end, but somehow it seemed they became no longer necessary. The effort of the performer, the power he commanded over his world and in turn the world of the spectators for the duration of the performance, was so intense, it seemed the rules of the 'well made play' flew out the window. Punch became God and Lipson became a very sweaty actor. For further details see: http://www.malthousetheatre.com.au/whatson/ante.html