Melbourne-based writer Ellen Grimshaw is over living in a society that’s still toxic for women, their successes and identities. When there’s little logic in the way our culture treats women, her experimental reflection of an unfair and absurd world is honest and personal. And with, at the time of writing, Australia’s news being dominated by allegations of women being sexually assaulted, the title’s dark fear that things might get worse cuts close to reality.
The first impression of the work is costume and set designer Bethany J Fellows’ striking design of mis-matched carpet squares. It looks like a complicated board game and walking to your Covid-safe seats feels like you’re already a player in a game where you don’t know the rules.
The seven performers are a bit like a contemporary commedia dell’arte ensemble in that they play recognisable personalities rather than complex characters. They range from a boss in a ridiculously-huge tie to a woman called Sugar Tits. They interact in a series of vignettes about day-to-day interactions between family, friends and strangers. There isn’t a story per se, but they are connected through themes of miscommunication.
The commedia ensemble idea is supported by the costumes that are part-clown and part-Insta ready. In quilted puffy jumpsuits, exaggerated make up and bad wigs, they deconstruct the whims of fashion while looking a bit like a 1970s futuristic sci-fi tv show where everyone wears the same thing.
Supporting the idea of a game, the ensemble remain in the performance space as they wait for their next turn to interact. One plays with dinosaurs (like the ones who just won’t die), while another writes a long mathematical formula on the screens that the audience are watching through; it could be the impossible formula for love or equality, or another algorithm to control what we see and hear on our phone.
Director Sarah Vickery, the creative team and performers are also inspired by performance art, absurdism and alienation, and the influence of creators like Abramović, Wilson, Ionesco, Albee and Brecht are clear. But by trying to be so many things, there isn’t a cohesive voice or vision on the stage. This inconsistency leaves it struggling to find an emotional connection to the audience and it isn’t clear who the work is talking to.
Emotionally powerful non-naturalistic theatre succeeds when it reveals our personal complicity in the issues it exposes. An audience who are at a feminist theatre show don’t need the fucked-ness of the patriarchy explained to them. The stronger parts of this work are those that confront the audience, like men in offices acting differently when women are in the room, a middle-aged mum getting aroused by lampshades at IKEA, and a man calling a woman “quirky” to impress her.
Grimshaw, who has worked with The Wooster Group in New York, understands how theatre is amazing at reflecting how and why we need to resist and comprehend what’s wrong in our world.Her bold writing takes pleasure in playing with language and actively breaking playwriting expectations. It brings attention to itself with poetry and alliteration as she experiments with finding the style that is going to make her a strong Australian writing voice. This is mostly clear because the text is projected onto screens. I don’t know if this is for access or effect, but, either way, it brings a clarity to the writing that is missing in the performance.
We’re Probably Really Really Happy Right Now will leave some people cold or confused. It experiments in being unpredictable and in rejecting everything it doesn’t want to be. But in being so focussed on what it’s not, it doesn’t present a clear vision about what it is or about why the absurd and unfair situations it explores might be someone’s happy place.