After their recent triumph on the international circuit – winning the 2022 Ibsen award, theatre’s equivalent of the Nobel prize, and the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement in theatre at this year’s Venice Biennale – Geelong’s Back to Back could be forgiven for an aura of self-congratulation. You could expect something celebratory from them. Instead, they serve up Multiple Bad Things, a work of profound complexity and ambivalence, even a swirling morbidity.
Of course, anyone familiar with this company’s history will know they don’t go in for simplistic reassurance; they’ve never been glib or superficial. They’ve also never shied away from provocation, exploring topics from which other companies might run a mile. As an ensemble of actors who identify as having an intellectual disability or as neurodivergent, Back to Back continues to prod and confront audience expectations and prejudices. Multiple Bad Things wades further into treacherous waters, with thrilling results.
In some ways, this new work can be seen as a summation of the company’s concerns – there are echoes of past productions, and key themes return. We have discussions around work and physical ability, gender and sexuality, coercion and control. As always with Back to Back, issues of power and agency come into play. But there is also a renewed artistic vigour, a deliberate engagement with fresh perspectives. It’s a show that looks behind while moving forward.
Three warehouse workers, two women and a man, navigate different opinions and attitudes while trying to assemble a strangely twisted scaffold. Initially, the man (Scott Price) seems content to prop himself in an inflatable flamingo and let the women do the work. One of them (Sarah Mainwaring) is less forthright than the other (Bron Batten), more inclined to placate and excuse. She pleads for physical assistance, but is blithely ignored.
Batten’s character bonds with Mainwaring’s for a while, but takes on more sinister undertones as the play progresses. Dressed in pink (in reference, according to the program, to Arthur Boyd’s painting Australian Scapegoat) and draped suggestively around the metallic set, she becomes a figure of chaos and persecution. In one telling moment, she adopts the language of victimhood in order to better victimise. She uses the concept of diversity to justify one-upmanship and bullying. It’s a chilling reminder of the ways power disguises itself for its own ends, and a coded swipe at the disingenuous language of inclusion that ironically marginalises the most vulnerable.
Surrealism and symbolism play a larger part in Multiple Bad Things than in some of the company’s previous productions. A fourth person (Simon Laherty), who sits on the sidelines playing solitaire and watching a computer monitor, seems both detached and seminal: a disinterested god from the machine who also affects the lives of the warehouse workers in strange ways. That plastic flamingo is at one point deflated and worn like an animal skin, recalling the Hindu god from the company’s earlier masterpiece, Ganesh versus the Third Reich. Death comes calling.
All of which makes the piece sound ponderous and overblown, whereas it is frequently hilarious and playful. A brilliant sequence has Mainwaring calling a helpline and finding herself enduring a ludicrous recorded message that moves from bureaucratic inanity into riotous profanity and passive aggression. Laherty excuses himself every now and then to grab a bottle of Coke or a box of Cheezels. Even the trigger warning at the beginning feels slyly irreverent. This tonal instability and balance of modes, the flippant with the deadly serious, speaks to the production’s confidence and sophistication.
Technically, it’s flawless. Anna Cordingley’s set and costume design is shrewd and highly considered, bewildering and mechanistic in some ways but also capable of wonder and transformation. That scaffolding seems deliberately cruel and degrading, but it holds its secrets and eventually delivers a powerful coup de theatre. Richard Vabre’s lighting design is assured and responsive, and Zoë Barry’s score is darkly evocative.
Performances are rich and moving. Mainwaring is, as always, deeply compassionate and responsive, seemingly capable of bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders. Price is spiky and frustrated, while Laherty is droll and very funny. Batten makes a strong impact as the provocateur, puckish and disquieting.
Multiple Bad Things sees Back to Back at the height of their skill, simultaneously expansive and razor sharp. The show itself is unsettling, often tilting into ominous abstraction and menace. The usual refuges of community and friendship seem hollowed out, and the unnamed individuals on stage feel somehow adrift, floating directionless on a sea of doubt and confusion. Far from a victory lap, this new production is more like a cry of despair, vexatious and challenging. Walk in our shoes, they seem to be saying, and see the world as it really is.
Multiple Bad Things by Back to Back is on at Geelong Arts Centre until 13 April, then Belgium’s Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles 10 to 12 May and Melbourne’s Malthouse theatre 29 May to 9 June.
