OVERLY LONG ADAPTATION SAVED BY YOUNG ACTOR |
 |
) by DBC Pierre adapted by Tanya Ronder Directors: Willem Wassenaar and Sophie Roberts LONG CLOUD YOUTH THEATRE at Downstage Theatre, Wellington From 4 Feb 2010 to 13 Feb 2010 [2hrs 45 mins, incl. interval] Reviewed by Laurie Atkinson, 9 Feb 2010 originally published in The Dominion Post |
“If it were half as short, it would be twice as good,” said a friend after seeing Tanya Ronder’s adaptation of DBC Pierre’s Man Booker Prize-winning satirical novel about Vernon, an innocent young, white trash Texan, whose only friend has massacred sixteen of their schoolmates.
Played in a broad cartoon style that is becoming tedious from repetition (The 39 Steps and Sud are two recent examples), Vernon God Little takes nearly three hours to show us that from a teenager’s perspective the adult world sucks and is full of hypocrites, sexual perverts, corrupt and grotesque officials, and a manipulated media-obsessed public that ends up voting a la Big Brother which unpopular condemned prisoner is to be lethally injected.
The hick characters inhabiting the small town of Martirio and the Mexicans Vernon meets when he escapes to Acapulco are all highly predictable, though often funny, caricatures. The frantic picaresque narrative is convoluted with the odd plot reversal and unnecessarily long sequences, which may have been important, brilliantly written and funny in the novel (I haven’t read it) but become on stage excess weight such as the tiresome prison scene that made me long for the death penalty to be carried out.
The satire attacks pretty obvious and easy targets: the media, small-town America, the judicial system (particularly the death penalty for which Texas is notorious) as well as the desire for vengeance. Vernon has been described as Holden Caulfield on amphetamines, and he needs them in this dystopia.
The saving grace of the long evening is the exuberance and commitment of the 21 young actors from the Long Cloud Youth Theatre who play 56 roles. And in the lead and on stage throughout is Anthony Young, who plays Vernon, with a maturity, control and subtlety that is astonishing in one so young. In a way his air of perplexed innocence and his growing anger for his situation as well as his desire for revenge on his mother’s slimy boyfriend, are far too real and make the cartoonish, chaotic world he lives in belong to another planet. But that is not his fault, but the play’s. An outstanding performance.
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.
See also reviews by:
John Smythe
Uther Dean (Salient);
Lynn Freeman (Capital Times);