The collective title for these two seasons of three short pieces comes from Albert Camus: “Nobody realises that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” The first season’s trio do not immediately present themselves as linked to that quest but I guess some concept of ‘normal’ human behaviour is always an implicit benchmark for stories about humanity’s achievements and failures.

Legendary (9^th century) Japanese poet Ono no Komachi has been immortalised in five Noh plays which, according to Wiki, “tend to focus on her talent for waka [a verse form] and her love affairs and the vanity of a life spent indulging in romantic liaisons.” Legend has it she ended her life as a destitute wandering hag but of course many mythmakers have remoulded her story over the centuries to illustrate either eternal truths or value systems others may find questionable.  

Recently deceased American playwright Romulus Linney (father of the better-known Laura) included his take on Komachi in his play Three Poets and director Raicheal Doohan has mounted an exquisite rendition in the Noh tradition.

Doohan has also co-designed, with Belle Fraser, a splendid stylised set using paper, wire and silk to depict a tree in blossom, a river and rocks. And with Fern Wallingford she has created a haunting sound design. Rosie Aldridge’s costume and make-up designs and Tania Ngata’s lighting design complete the strikingly realised visual aspects.

“Only the poet who writes about love when young can write about love when old,” Komachi tells the besotted yet aggressively big-noting Prince Shosho. “It takes one to understand the other.” She puts him to the test with a poetry duel and a challenge to cross the river – and being a tale of indulgent pride and passion, of course it all ends badly, but in a good way theatrically.

Maggie White voices the poetic lines beautifully while objectifying her Komachi self in a masked persona danced by Lydia Buckley. Jack Blomfield is a majestic Shosho. Despite being just 15 minutes long, memories of this work haunt me still.

As you’d expect from Edward Bond, Existence is dark, self-destructive and despairing, with darkness being the over-riding principle of Andrew Clarke’s directing and Tony Black’s lighting design. It should ramp up the tension and fear factor but somehow it becomes more frustrating than anything else.

First produced as a radio play in 2002 then later that year on stage, it pits a drunk who has lost his way, in every sense, against a passive victim who has no voice and seems to expect his destiny. I assume it’s allegorical but can’t quite decode it from this production. For a while I thought its purpose could be to affirm the power passive resistance to either appease and aggressor or make them self-destruct. But no, the outcome precludes that.

Written for two males, it is played here by Phillipa Drakeford and Michael Hebenton who, the programme tells us, will alternate the roles each night. The selection on this opening night, however, seems to be decided by a bout of ‘paper-scissors-rock’. Thus Drakeford gets to be the incumbent and Hebenton the intruder.

Stage violence is a strange beast when used in a serious drama. In the very act of being convincing it makes us worry about actor safety which detracts from our willing suspension of disbelief. I sincerely hope these two are well trained to ensure the ‘victim’ is always in control of the ‘violence’, especially where the head and neck are involved. My doubts are raised by the fact that he really does shout into her ear at point blank range, twice, which to my mind is an assault on a real human faculty that could cause lasting damage. At the very least it distracts me from engaging in the ‘make believe’.

While Hebenton gives a good account of the agitated menace who has no direction, dissipates his energy and is self-defeating, his articulation is such that if there is anything of value to be gleaned from his verbal blatherings, beyond the language of abuse and self-loathing, it passes me by.  

Drakeford’s disempowerment, silence and stillness are finally more dramatic, especially when ‘the power’ is suddenly in her hands (I won’t reveal how or why).

Existence is a play I want to get more from, in terms of what it is really about, but I don’t. It just makes me feel grumpy.

Our ability to distinguish fantasy from reality is, of course, fundamental to the way we engage with all entertainment forms. But Japanese playwright Takeshi Kawamura plays with exactly that with The Lost Babylon (which premiered in 1999). He satirises both popular culture and contemporary society’s value systems – although in this case, what I take to be Act I of a longer play focuses more on the former.

As one who is heartily sick of the obscene killing fests that festoon so many feature films and TV series in the name of entertainment, not least because technology now allows the illusions to look more and more real, I readily warm to the critique embedded in Kawamura’s play.

A Boss (Tom Kereama), seen only on screen in silhouette, has brought in a Screenwriter (Emma Rose Luxton), and now a Soldier (Kereama) leads in a blindfolded Director (Michael Pocock), to work on a new amusement park: The Lost Babylon.  

Director Fern Wallingford – who also delivers an effective sound and projection design – locates it in our world too by having her actors use their natural voices. This is, after all, a universal issue; we too are both vulnerable and culpable.

Luxton is especially impressive in capturing the Screenwriter’s dilemma as she seeks a way (or does she?) of rising above the moral vacuum she has been sucked into. Her subtle segues between scripted dialogue and her real voice, role-playing and authentic behaviour, maintain our interest and keep us alert as we try to decode the action we witness.

Pocock’s Director has no such qualms, bringing boyish delight to the ‘game’, until events make him confront and question his ‘reality’ too. And Kereama brings a truth to his roles that ensures we believe in the situation.

Emma Robinson’s set design, lit by Nick Zwart, has a nice ambiguity. The premise tells us these walls are under construction yet they evoke disintegration … of what? That’s for us to work out.

Constrained as they are by having to mount three very different works in the same space with just a 10-minute turnaround, these director-designer teams have risen to the challenge with alacrity, and they are very well served by the actors and technical crews.  

Coming back to the question of where the collective title fits in, I guess each play presents a view of humanity and society in a way that challenges our ability to lead ‘normal’ lives. Camus may have thought that expending great energy “merely to be normal” was a fool’s errand, but these plays suggest our survival may depend upon it.

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