[2013065] Cracked
Caroline Melia @ Suzie Wong’s Room
6:00pm, Wed 27 Feb 2013
It’s my first visit to Suzie Wong’s Room since the Simple Minds & Devo show last December; a great night capped off by a very uncomfortable drink due to the altercation between my companions. No chance of that this evening, however; when I arrive, there’s just one other (non-staff) person in the place: Arnie Pie.
Arnie is a lovely chap to talk to, and – after discovering that he was here to support his friend Caroline Melia – I asked him about his Fringe assault; he seemed very open and honest and forthcoming, and we swap stories and recommendations. Eventually we’re escorted downstairs into the small performance space, and it’s set up like an seventies-ish kitchen: table in the centre of the room surrounded on three sides by chairs, with a bar in the corner; to the side of the bar sat the tech for the show, looking slightly sheepish.
Arnie and I magnanimously bicker over the optimal seats, and – just before the lights “drop” – we’re joined at the table by two more people. Caroline Melia then gently introduces herself, and set the scene: she’s English, she’s backpacking around the world, she’s found the (gorgeous) city of Christchurch. She’s happily sharing a (dubious) flat with another girl, she’s found a job at an Irish bar, she’s saving up money before moving onto her next adventure, and… an earthquake hit.
What followed that introduction (which included a charmingly lo-fi recreation of the earthquake (and its aftershocks) by a massive bass speaker and the tech wobbling furniture and knocking props over with a broom handle while flicking the lights) had less to do with the earthquake, and more to do with Melia’s interactions with other people in the subsequent days and weeks… and months. And with many buildings becoming unliveable post-quake, the affordability of backpacking had an impact on the backpacking community; as a result, the search for stable (both physical and psychological) lodgings also form a tentpole of Cracked.
There’s a wonderfully gritty tension set up following the quake, with her bar being one of the few spaces for people to congregate, but much of the narrative focusses on Melia’s search for solace in drink. And men, whom she somewhat bitterly abstracted away as bottles of booze – Rum, Corona, Margherita – but those references could inadvertently serve as double-duty for her own alcohol abuse. And this revealed a bit of a letdown with Melia’s storytelling: there doesn’t feel like a cohesive approach to telling her tales… she just jumps from story to story, in the same way she moves from share-house to share-house, or man to man.
The earthquake itself… well, its impact is never really felt (except via the bass speaker rumbles), and only ever obliquely referenced: it forms a very loose framework for the rest of Melia’s stories. And, whilst Melia is conversational in her presentation, she spends a lot of time hiding behind the bar checking her script notes… and the end of the show, marked by the passing around of holiday snaps, was a confusing denouement – was this a happy ending?
In the end, I get the impression that Melia was trying to suggest that the aftermath of the earthquake had a direct and adverse affect on her personal relationships… but I just couldn’t buy that. It felt far more likely that she was choosing to hang around some shitty people – though what influence her experience had on those choices is another story, and one not really explored. Which is a shame, really: Cracked offered so much potential, but only delivered glimpses of satisfying theatre.