[2015068] Tripped
Attic Erratic @ Tuxedo Cat – Cusack Theatre
9:45pm, Sun 22 Feb 2015
Two soldiers walking through a battlefield in another land, regrouping after a helicopter crash… until Norm feels the switch of a landline beneath his feet. Mike leaves Norm for help – not necessarily an easy thing to find in battle. In his absence, a foreign soldier points his rifle at Norm in glee… until he, too, feels the click of a landmine as he approaches.
So begins Tripped, in what should have been a taut and charged look at racial prejudices as – in the face of death – Ahmed and Norm talk… not as enemies, but as unlikely brothers-in-arms. They compare their backgrounds: both have lived in Australia, both have families, both are physically wilting in the desert with rapidly depleting water reserves, and both are a footstep away from a mutual death. With so much in common, how could they be on different sides?
The idea – I’m guessing – is that Norm’s persistent racial prejudices (he’s constantly calling civilians “rag heads”) would appear to be such an unsustainable contrast that we – the audience – would nod sagely and think “yep, those there ingrained notions are bad.” But Norm is so blinkered, and so one-sided, that the script is stretched right out, and becomes too overt in its message. I found Norm to be so unlikeable that I started thinking that the loss of Ahmed’s (relatively) innocent life would be a small price to pay to rid the world of Norm.
And I can totally see why people may rave about Tripped: the performances are great (Ezel Doruk holds Ahmed together really well), and there’s some nice little touches in the direction. But I found it laborious and overt in the extreme… if I’d had my way, the story would’ve ended a lot quicker.
(68) Tripped: Racial prejudice on the field of war. Deliberately one-sided script is… well, overt. Unlikeable. #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 22, 2015