The Share

Overview

Seeing people at their worst on stage is never fun, but it is the prerogative of theatre to show the full gamut of human behaviour.

The Share by Australian playwright Daniel Keene is a glance at the punishing lives of three young men, Tex (Scott Marcus), Sugar (Thomas Conroy), and the Kid (Tim Spencer). It's a slice of life more than a drama; there's very little context, not much at stake, and no real dramatic drive. If it's meant to be more of a documentary snapshot than a drama, it succeeds.

But the leanness of the play is not a strength. Not knowing who these characters are or what drives them makes it difficult to understand their behaviour. It feels at times as if the script has been too severely edited. As an example, there is no immediate reaction to the Kid's admission of having committed a sexual crime, so Tex's subsequent treatment of him seems purely cruel rather than retributive.

Director Corey McMahon's handling of the Kid's confession monologue is excellent. Spencer delivers it with bare simplicity as Tex and Sugar stand with backs turned to him. But as gutting as the monologue is, it is not supported structurally by the rest of the play. There's not much leading to and from that critical moment.

Keene uses banter between Tex and Sugar as a dramatic device to attenuate the horror, but because it's so obviously a device, it seems tacked on. It's perhaps unfair to compare a one-hour play to a two-hour film, but what Justin Kurzel's Snowtown manages to do with similar subject matter is to incorporate the characters' humanity into the terror, such that John Bunting's charm is integral to his psychopathy. Tex, on the other hand, in The Share, is one moment meek and mild, the next properly sadistic. It doesn’t make sense. This is a function of the writing, but Marcus playing Tex also struggles to carry a consistent character.

Conroy playing Sugar is the warm, beating heart of the production, and without him it would be all icy winds over the tundra of human destitution. Thank goodness he's there. McMahon's production is solid but falls short of weaving any magic over a script that is not in control of its subject. The play was presumably chosen for its 'gritty raw edginess', but it lacks gravity and is too compact to be affecting.

Photo by Lauren Smeaton.