Rust and Bone – Griffin Theatre Co
Ideas of masculinity, violence and corporeality duke it out on the stage, without a KO.
Overview
Craig Davidson is one short-story writer in hot demand. His Rust and Bone collection, published in 2005, is about to be released as a feature film starring Marion Cotillard, but before that happens, a separate adaptation by award-winning Australian playwright Caleb Lewis is on stage now as part of the Griffin Independent season.
Davidson's main theme is masculinity so much so that he once went on a 16-week steroid cycle for research. He writes in the kind of rough, robust language that has earned comparisons to Chuck Palahniuk, but with less of that 'I have a blockbuster movie playing in my head' vibe. You get a lot of time to appreciate the language his mingled with Lewis's in this production of Rust and Bone, which has its three male characters narrate their stories of when their lives brushed with death.
The first we meet is Ben (Wade Briggs), a womanising Sea World trainer forced into reflection after a stunt with a killer whale goes wrong. Alongside him, but not in his world, is James (Renato Musolino), a man it's hard to like, given he spends most of his time training pit bull terriers for dog fighting. When he has a humiliating appointment with an infertility specialist, gladness washes over the audience, and it's cruelly poetic that he carries a "diaper bag packed with narcotics, needles, and gauze". Lastly, there's Eddie (Sam Smith), a boxer with a heart of gold who's about to, fleetingly, feel what it's like to have a family.
The three stories of Rust and Bone unfold simultaneously, with each man sharing a few lines before the action switches to the next. Unfortunately, I had trouble following all three stories. And before you yell "YouTube generation", let me finish. Aside from the first passage of monologue from Ben, the script doesn't let you spend a substantial amount of time with any character uninterrupted. When James and Eddie started talking, I was still listening to Ben, and that pattern continued. There's also very little of the sort of overlapping, of both language and events, that builds so much tension into something like the classic Speaking in Tongues.
To me, this was a problem of the script, but it was not helped by the delivery, which had a samey tenseness throughout when light and shade was longed for. What lacks in the speech, however, is made up for in movement. Rust and Bone has exceptional choreography, which allows the performers to transform into minor characters in the other men's lives, and then with one sudden movement, shift cleanly back into the world of their main character. It's incredibly fluid and precise.
Rust and Bone is a gentle exploration of tough ground and contains some powerful imagery of how men relate to corporeality and violence. But, like its concrete set and man-palette costumes, it's ultimately a bit grey.
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