Perpetual Wake | Subiaco Arts Centre | Until 7th September | ★ ★ ★ ½

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The Last Great Hunt have established themselves as one of the most interesting and boundary pushing theatre companies in Australia. They’ve had a series of popular productions, Helpmann nominations and garnered critical acclaim. So expectations are high for their latest offering Perpetual Wake. 

Written by collective members Jeffrey Jay Fowler and Gita Bezard – who also directs the production – this comical play sees the collective playing an outrageous set of characters in a melodramatic offering that tackles some interesting themes. Those deeper themes however might be lost amongst the camp and comical over the top delivery.

Chris Issacs plays Paul Creel, a writer who has had one successful novel. While writing his difficult second novel he works as a book reviewer. His wife Bernice, played by Arielle Gray, is also a novelist, but her work is a slushy romance series, while he has the critical acclaim, her work brings in the money. When he heads to his regular coffee spot he discovers a woman named Fiona West sitting reading at his favourite table. She is reading his novel Crocodile.

After an awkward encounter which reveals he is a pontificating and pompous bore, Fiona, played by Charlotte Otton, reveals that she too has written a novel, reluctantly he agrees to take a look at it, but he’s rightly suspicious of this happenstance.

This set up kicks off a back and forth of trying to work out who is fooling who, and layers of deceit, trickery and falsehoods are peeled away. Jeffrey Jay Fowler plays a variety of characters including a brilliant turn as a stag, and a waiter that encapsulates every annoying waiter you’ve ever encountered.

At the same time, Molly and Brack, the characters in the romance novels are brought to life, Bernice swears that she does include moments from their life in her novels, but she clearly does. Comically we get to see scenes replayed in their fictionalised version as Isaacs and Gray take on these alter-egos.

The story within a story is an intriguing device that allows the actors to enter an even more dramatic and comical world. It reminded me of Richard Brautigan’s novel Sombrero Fallout where a novelist’s discarded characters continue on their story in parallel to the author’s narrative.

The subject matter of literary hoaxes is a rich topic to explore, like the case of J.T LeRoy author which was covered in the recently released film of the same name, or Forbidden Lie$ – the investigation by Australian documentary maker Anna Broinowski into author Norma Khouri, we discover that it’s not just the hoaxers who are fascinating, but also those who are enablers, bystanders and victims.

This play is filled with laughs, there are comical one liners and outrageously funny moments. Arielle Gray’s depiction of a vagina is unforgettable, and Jeffrey Jay Fowler is the best deer I’ve seen on stage this year. The cast are clearly having a lot of fun on stage and this is one hell of a funny show, but at times it felt that some indulgence had been taken to allow for comical but maybe superfluous scenes.

The multiple characters and many scenes also leads to a lot of coming and going, never ending entrances and exits, that the heavily curtained setting of the Subiaco Arts Theatre does not lend its self well to.

While on the surface this is a fun plays that aims for maximum laughs, it is also thought provoking. How quickly do we get stuck in a category in our creative lives? How hard is it to break out of those constraints, and how much do we need to reinvent ourselves to break free?

Perpetual Wake is playing until September 7th, tickets are available from Perth Theatre Trust. 

Graeme Watson, images Dana Weeks