Vernon God Little

Overview

It's no mean feat getting DBC Pierre's epic black comedy, Vernon God Little onto the stage. The novel won the Booker prize for fiction and the Whitbread first novel award and also has something of a cult following. UK playwright Tanya Ronder has wrestled the story into a two-hour play that requires a large ensemble with a whole lot of energy. I haven't seen an independent show with such a large cast for a while, and it's certainly an ambitious undertaking. Director Louise Fischer has managed in turn to wrangle the tale into a solid night in the theatre.

We're invited into the small Texan town of Martirio, where Vernon's best friend, Jesus Navarro, has just killed 16 of his classmates. When Vernon finds himself a suspect, he embarks on a thrills-and-spills adventure.

The farce is a difficult form. Everybody likes a black comedy — if it's funny. This play asks a lot of the performers and most of them don't have the comic chops to quite deliver. Exceptions are Emma Harris playing Vernon's hysterical and useless mother, Julia Rorke playing the vicious young Ella, and actor and musician Cassady Maddox.

No dialect coach is listed in the program notes, and it shows. Harris's grasp of the southern accent is spotless, but the rest have varying degrees of success. Luke Willing playing Vernon has a wonderful physical presence, but his accent needs work.

Technical difficulties aside, the production offers an unsettling insight into the (very American) treatment of violence as spectacle. I was reminded of that excellent scene in Natural Born Killers where Oliver Stone goes a bit meta and suggests that we're all culpable when it comes to our appetite for violence as entertainment.

The humanity beneath the spectacle is best evident in an intimate scene flashing back to Jesus Navarro's memory of his classroom bullying. He dresses alone in a spotlight, as disembodied voices taunt him from upstage. Stefan Gimenez's performance here is still and poised.

There are certainly some excellent laughs in this show, and some standout moments of gravity. No doubt with a few more performances under their belt the ensemble will tighten up and find its feet.