Bash at The Gate
Perched on the edge of a double bed in a stark hotel room Jason Patric has the twitches and mannerisms of a low ambition, middle management, middle-of-the-road American guy down to a T. He drinks water as he offers more alcohol to his silent, invisible "listener" who sits on an invisible chair - someone he picked up in the bar below. His slightly geeky suit (grey, sleeves too short, stripy tie), his short brown hair and moustache, and his stop-start way of talking - constantly apologising for jumping ahead of himself, asking if the listener is bored, or wants another drink - disarms the audience. He's just a guy trying to make a living with the minimum acceptable level of effort, and yet it becomes clear that he has a story to tell and he must get it out or he will not be able to carry on. And so unfolds a tale of base animal instinct in the face of fear, a dead baby, a damaged marriage and a life that can never be the same again. He makes his confession to a complete stranger, the atmosphere broken infrequently by the streaming of passing car headlights through the wooden window blinds.
'Man' is the sole player in the first play (Iphigenia in Orem) in the Gate Theatre production of Neil LaBute's 'bash'. LaBute (writer/director of the films 'In the Company of Men' and 'Your Friends and Neighbors') is clearly intrigued by the darker side of human nature. He likes to reveal just how petty, cruel and base the human animal can be. Patric's character tells the audience "I hate to waste an opportunity", and this is how he justifies his selfish move to change the downward spiral of his life. Throughout the three plays that make up 'bash', the characters try to change their fate and the fate of others, to impose on destiny, to take control of at least one thing in what seems to be an uncontrollable world. What is interesting is their refusal to take on responsibility for their actions when confronted with the enormity of what they have done. Man ends his story by surmising that his baby's death was fate: "it probably would have happened anyway."
'Woman' in the second play (Medea Redux) also has a dark secret to reveal and an even clearer obsession with fate. Hers is a tale of (initially) unwanted advances from her junior high teacher, the ensuing love affair, pregnancy and rejection. She details how she reached a point where she knew what she had to do to get him back for not loving her as much as she would always idolise him. Woman, played by Flora Montgomery, makes her decision in the moment when she looks in her former teacher's eyes and sees his smug satisfaction, "he'd beaten fate and he'd gotten away with it." She glories in the fact that she planned her revenge but just like Man in the first play, when forced to live with the enormity of her actions she allows herself to evade responsibility, "maybe it isn't our fault after all, I mean we're only human, right?"
The final play (A Gaggle of Saints) marks a welcome change of tone after the raw confessions of Man and Woman. A two-hander in which a pair of college kids, John (Jason O'Mara) and Sue (Justine Mitchell), tell their own versions of their 4-year anniversary trip to a New York party with "a bunch of guys and gals". LaBute uses this light-hearted reminiscence to reveal another dark secret. O'Mara is excellent as the good-guy college jock, a little goofy (just for fun), a little dumb (just your average Joe), but a loyal defender of his girlfriend's honour and all that is right in his eyes. Mitchell plays the ditsy, cheerleading, Catholic girl with exactitude and both get their share of belly laughs.
The two sit side by side in chairs on an empty ballroom dance floor, golden chairs piled high in a corner, as (ignorant of each other) they speak in turn directly to the audience. She tells the story of how they met and how their perfect anniversary weekend panned out. He does too, but he has something extra to add: the story of what happened while the girls were asleep and three of the guys went walking in Central Park. From both points of view, theirs is the actual "bash" of the production's title.
Montgomery (currently enjoying on screen success as Trudy in Roddy Doyle's film 'When Brendan met Trudy') is the weakest link in the production, never quite managing to convince. It may well be that she is the victim of a poorer script however; the female characters in 'bash' are not as well drawn as those of the men (while convincingly portrayed by Mitchell, the character of Sue could conceivably be left out of the third play altogether). Montgomery also has the problem of addressing her monologue not to another person or directly to the audience, but to a tape recorder - it never becomes clear who the tape is intended for. She has no one to play to or respond to and resorts to looking around over her shoulder at the empty, institutional room, twitching, lighting a cigarette, drinking a sip of water - distracting actions that are intended to add to her the nervousness of her character, but instead cause her lose the audience's attention.
'bash' takes an unflinching look at that split-second when temptation calls, when the absurdity of a situation makes it seem unreal, when humans become monsters. But it also points out that humans who play with fate must consider the fact that every move to change their destiny can easily be argued as another move for fate - were they meant to do what they did? The characters in 'bash' are scarred by their actions for life but just like us they can never be sure if they are simply pawns in a larger game that they will never understand.
Cristín Leach
'bash' is at The Gate Theatre until 14 April, 2001.
