Quack

 Griffin Theatre Company celebrates its shiny new foyer and bar renovation with a blood-and-guts soaked romp through the zombie-infested countryside of 19th Century Australia. 

Griffin Theatre CompanySBW Stables Theatre
Wednesday, 1 September, 2010
Griffin Theatre Company celebrates its shiny new foyer and bar renovation with a blood-and-guts soaked romp through the zombie-infested countryside of 19th Century Australia. Part melodrama, part Shaun of the Dead, Quack is an entertaining, if sometimes confusing, look at the darker side of human nature.
Theatre can be a bit limited in its ability to depict the gorier side of life. Happily, writer Ian Wilding has a facility for language when it comes to graphic descriptions of bodily emissions, miasmas and effluvium – as you will discover about 5 seconds into the play. The colourful descriptions of diseased bodies are at once gross and hilarious.
Two doctors struggle with a mysterious malady that is gripping a small country town. Dr Littlewood (Chris Haywood) is an old school medico who doses epidemic sufferers with something called Syrup, and has a nice little side business transplanting kangaroo balls into, say, any local media mogul who might fear he is losing his virility. Dr Waterman (an amusingly fastidious Charlie Garber) is new in town and is pretty big on modern scientific methods. He prefers to use a special water to cure illness, and obsesses as to whether the moral deterioration of his patients is the cause or symptom of the illness. The question becomes irrelevant when the afflicted develop a shambling gate and a taste for brains.
For those who like their political allegories easy to decipher, Dr Littlewood talks a lot about making people “relaxed and comfortable”. The younger pale-haired rival who threatens to supplant him sets up shop in a chapel and is given to making long speeches. The subjects of their examinations include the spirited young writer Fanny (Aimee Horne) and her schoolmarmish guardian Nancy (Jeanette Cronin, who is also hilarious as Gunner, the aforementioned mogul).
Wilding takes well-worn storylines – Fanny wants to shake off the dust of her hometown and see the world, while Nancy wants to see her married off to an eligible bachelor – and peps them up with a bit of zombie action. It’s a mix that seems to be all the rage at the moment, as evidenced by the popularity of the various Jane Austen/Zombie novels that have been flying off bookshelves in the last year or so.
The design by William Bobbie Stewart is terrific, the off-kilter stage bringing to mind the kind of sideshows that would have featured charlatans peddling Syrup, miracle waters and other fripperies. Being shaped like the prow of a ship, it gives the impression of being a little pod of civilisation barely keeping afloat on a sea of chaos. And zombies.
My only real qualm with Quack is some confusion as the story progressed – as unholy minions of the night surround the chapel, and the men of science lose their certainties and their lunch, things descend into a melee of dismemberment and it’s less than clear who’s trying to do what. The writing at times could have just been a little tighter.
Despite the small confusions, Quack is a fun romp. Chris Mead’s direction is spot-on, and Wilding gives the audience a few good laughs with a shot of commentary on Australian politics. It’s just a shame it was written before events of the last couple of months – imagine the fun he could have had with that.

Until 2 October 2010
Bookings at http://www.griffintheatre.com.au/tickets/