Review
DREAM MACHINE
One Yellow Rabbit
Starring Denise Clarke, Andy Curtis and Michael Green
Written and directed by Blake Brooker
Music composed by David Rhymer
Runs until March 15
Big Secret Theatre (CPA)
The Beats – Ginsberg, Burroughs, Gysin, Ferlinghetti – were the wild boys of post-Second World War America. They’ve been the inspiration for countless poets, musicians, counter-culture gurus and disaffected youths. And they’re at it again, inspiring One Yellow Rabbit’s Dream Machine.
Blake Brooker has written a fascinating, plot-less musical which not only incorporates the images and words of the Beats, but also perfectly reflects the "furious experimentation and playfulness the Beats were famous for." From Michael Green’s inertia-building delivery of Ginsberg’s America, to Dream Machine’s lovely whimper of an ending, the One Yellow Rabbit ensemble are, like their Beat forebears, back to doing what they do so well – taking risks and disregarding convention.
But to focus too much on the Beat influence on Dream Machine is to do a disservice to Brooker’s writing and David Rhymer’s eclectic compositions. Their show is much more than an homage to the Beats – it’s a powerful manifestation of the writer’s troubled relationship with words and the act of writing.
Whether this is represented by the tortured expressions on Andy Curtis’s face as he struggles for words that will not come, the tense war of emotions waged between lovers through their letters, the projecting of words in various forms and styles onto a muslin scrim that doubles as a blank page, or the clickety clack of a typewriter that’s used as a musical instrument, we are never allowed to forget the importance of the written word.
Dream Machine situates the written word as the life, drug, god, sex, food, ritual and religion of not just the writer, but all of us who struggle through a day. And Brooker takes his message even further, again invoking the Beats by subtly declaring that written words – and written musical notes – are the tools that can liberate our minds.
But to liberate our minds the words and notes must come alive, they must be summoned from the page and cast into the world – and that’s what Dream Machine does best. Beyond expressing the power of the written word, Brooker and Rhymer reveal the beauty of the word when it is given voice. Sometimes spoken, sometimes sung, always accompanied by the language of music, the poetry of Dream Machine is elegantly conjured in a space that transcends the page only to become a living page of dance, movement and sound.
You don’t need to like the Beats to like Dream Machine – you just need to like words. And if you think you don’t care about words, you just might find that changing as you walk out of the Big Secret Theatre. |
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