There’s palpable excitement and definite anticipation present in the audience as it prepares itself for a play about, well… uh, something they’re still not entirely sure of. But then, surely that’s the thrill of attending a production ambiguously billed only as “a postmodernist bedroom farce”?
Fourplay is the latest offering from director Scott Gooding’s theatre company Vicious Fish, and the most recent part in a series of adaptations of Catalan playwright Sergi Belbel’s work. Belbel, a prominent figure in European theatre, has remained relatively obscure in Australia, and thus Vicious Fish have the privilege of premiering his work to relatively fresh and eager audiences.
The brief provided for Fourplay vaguely entails it as the account of a couple who, in an attempt to ‘spice up’ their failing marriage, each invite respective co-workers to “inaugurate” their newly constructed two-by-two metre bed. However, Belbel’s narrative is far more complex than simply the implied marital drama, and as Gooding’s direction quickly illuminates, in this blackest of comedies nothing is as it seems.
Constructed in only 38 scenes, each of which are performed twice and in non-sequential order, Fourplay is a theatrical exploration into contextual meaning.
Skit-like, rapid-fire scenes create a comedic drama born out of the problematic nature of insinuation, Gooding’s direction adeptly creating a tense environment of confusion and misunderstanding not only between characters, but also actors and audience.
The stage, set in the small and intimate venue of Fourtyfivedownstairs, is bare and minimalist, literally consisting of a solitary prop mattress and the four actors themselves, all flanked on each side by a curious crowd. There is therefore, an undeniable voyeuristic quality to Fourplay, the title itself a pun regarding the observable sexual suggestiveness throughout. And therein lies the central concern of Belbel’s work: the confusing traps we lay for ourselves in creating meaning through suggestion alone.
What becomes of a society wherein honesty regarding sex, love and intimacy is shunned in preference to only polite referential?
