[2014035] WOODCOURT: Carly and Troy do ‘A Doll’s House’
Woodcourt Art Theatre @ The Coffee Pot
8:30pm, Thu 20 Feb 2014
With my first Woodcourt experience being a pleasant surprise, I’d decided to try and see the other four shows they were putting on; A Doll’s House was the first of a double-header for this evening, and came highly recommended by a couple of friends who’d binged on Woodcourt early on.
But I’m not quite sure I share their enthusiasm… or, at least, the extent of it.
As we enter the Woodcourt room atop The Coffee Pot, Carly and Troy are quietly talking amongst themselves in front of a frame covered in brown paper that dominates the rear of the stage. Once the audience is all seated, the door closes, and Carly and Troy raise their voices: they’re keen on performing A Doll’s House, but they’re unsure exactly who wrote it… or exactly what the plot is about.
Once the connection with Ibsen is made, they start assigning roles: Carly, the more steely and assertive of the two, will play Torvald, and Troy is keen to frock up for Nora… and wants Beyoncé to dominate the soundtrack. Pre-production starts, and the two have wildly differing views on how the work should develop; with genders reversed, there’s an odd tension generated by Carly’s domineering ways, and the occasional videos taken during “rehearsals” (that are projected onto the set’s frame) add an additional layer of complexity to proceedings.
But the transitions between the play and meta-play often left me a little confused; I suspect a deeper knowledge of Ibsen’s classic (which I’ve only seen once before) may have helped out in that regard. As a result, I found Carly and Troy to be hard work at times, with the results not really worth the effort. Having said that, the set – what appeared to be a simple, brown paper-covered frame was actually a more complex hinged structure with doors and peep-holes aplenty – was a wonderful example of what can be achieved with no budget and a lot of ingenuity.
I left this show a little upset at myself: I genuinely thought that I would’ve found it much more enjoyable if I’d done my homework before going in. As it was, I could only appreciate a clever set and overt meta-theatre… but the depth of that meta-ness was lost to me.
(35) WOODCOURT: Carly and Troy do 'A Doll's House': Ibsen-ish meta-theatre with a brilliant lo-fi set. #ff2014 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 20, 2014