The Gates of Egypt

Clarice (Lynette Curran) travels to Egypt to take a spiritual journey to understand life after the death of her husband. But what she encounters there is much more of a challenge to her way of life than she anticipated. At the Belvoir St Theatre from February 5 - March 11.

The 2007 Company B Season opened with this new work from the ever-controversial Stephen Sewell, about the current security and political questions surrounding the Middle East. The main part of the story concerns Clarice, a middle-aged Australian housewife who has just buried her husband and so embarks upon a journey they always wanted to do to Egypt. This is off-set by the staunch opposition of her family back in suburban Australia, and the action cuts between these two situations as well as going into flashbacks and imaginings of other characters. If this structure sounds complicated, then this is misleading because it actually flows quite naturally; assisted by a set that is simply made of wood and curtains, changes in time and place are merely suggested by lighting changes and projections. Other characters, apart from Clarice (Lynette Curran), her two daughters and their husbands, come and go, but thankfully Sewell allows them all a fair go - even the two American tourists are surprisingly fairly treated (given his history in It Just Stopped and Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America) even if the wife verges on caricature at times. I found the less realistic aspects of this production unusually convincing: if you've been married for 40 years to the same man, it is only natural that you continue to talk to him even when he's not there. This contrasts sharply with the violently realistic portrait of the world of the terrorists in the play, a shift to the unsparing verbal and physical violence of Sewell's earlier work.

Yet once again, I feel that his writing simply isn't up to the task of the thematic concerns he outlines (The Sick Room being the worst example for me). Sure, there are some lovely moments, but there are equally as many cringe-worthy episodes where the language simply fails to convince. And once again, modern Australian playwrights seem to have a problem with swearing: it is a given that people occasionally do swear, especially when they're angry, but simply not to this extent. A pivotal argument between one of Clarice's daughters and her husband is ruined by their competition to use the word fuck more than the other. The terrorists are completely verbose by comparison; a much more convincing argument occurs parallel to the Australian one in the Egyptian part of the story. Sewell clearly has no affection for Americans, nor for the Middle East, but he sticks the boot in middle Australia too ("I learnt early on that it doesn't pay to be a smart-arse in this country") and for a play that purports to offer a solution to the hate and violence of the world today, there is quite a lot of it flowing around in this piece. Yet in the midst of this, he gives us a redemptive ending (with not a fuck in sight) which feels contrary to the spirit and tone of the earlier parts of the play. It also closes with a nicely poetic moment, typical of a direction which is unobtrusive yet functional and often offers the rest of the cast silently observing the action taking place.

It is a piece which commands a considerable intensity, most especially in the second act (almost sunk by an odd lighting choice in a key scene which lights zones of the audience) but which is ultimately not as powerful as it aspires to be. It remains convincing for the most part, much more so than It Just Stopped (and Sewell is brave enough here to put his opinions plainly), and toys with some ideas that deserve a more thorough airing, even if it doesn't fully resolve them. The conclusion feels too rushed and stilted, especially given the first act is so much longer than the second: it is not given enough time to breathe or even for the audience to fully comprehend what has taken place. That said, it is hard to be too harsh on a play which ought to be appreciated for the impact which it commands (rare in the theatre) even if the piece itself still suffers from some problems.

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