Synopsis
Writer Mick Barnes describes Unit 46 as ‘a
comic home invasion’. The theme – warring neighbours
in an apartment block – has been done before, but never
in such a novel and intimate way. The script takes two of life’s
losers from identical units and projects them onto the same set
so that they live, rant, laugh, cry and fantasize together without
once becoming aware they are sharing the same space. It’s
a tightrope journey for the actors who must maintain the illusion
of difference, and a key-hole insight into the lonely hilarity
of apartment-living for the audience. Each of the characters
is haunted by the past and engulfed by the circumstances of the
present. Tim, sacked as a minor bureaucrat, is an urban hermit
with a victim mentality. Diane does a mental balancing act between
the poles of a convent upbringing and the challenge of finding
her own identity.
History Australian writer Mick Barnes describes Unit 46
as “a comic home invasion”. The theme of this two-hander – warring
neighbours in an apartment block – has been done before,
but never in such a novel and intimate way. Barnes has taken
two of life’s losers from their identical units and projected
them onto the same stage space so that they live, rant, laugh,
cry and fantasise together without once becoming aware of it. For the audience it results in a gut-wrenching key-hole insight
into the lonely hilarity of life in the metropolis. It was for
exactly these bitter-sweet qualities that Sydney company Actors
Anonymous took up the play and is launching it on an international
tour. Actor Leof Kingsford-Smith, who had read dozens of plays
in his search for an international vehicle, said: “The
moment I finished reading Unit 46 I knew we had struck pay dirt.
We were looking for a play which was both human and hilarious,
which has universal appeal and which is highly portable. Unit
46 fills the bill completely.”
The writer has enhanced
its portability through some “judicious pruning”,
so that there is now a one-act, 60-minute version suitable for
fringe festivals as well as the original two-act script, to be
performed at established theatres. Actors Kingsford-Smith and
Lucy Miller are equally at home in either version. Actors Anonymous
has assembled a company almost as portable as the play for its
world travels, with director Andrew Doyle, producer Pauline Kingsford-Smith
joining the actors and writer. (See attached CVs)
Unit 46 began
life at Sydney’s Sidetrack Theatre in a production starring
and directed by Mark Lee, one of Australia’s most accomplished
professionals. Lee says he was attracted to both the humour and
humanity of the play. Sydney critics were equally enthusiastic.
Sue Bennett of the Daily Telegraph hailed it as a “flat-out
pleasure”, writing: “It is sad, painful and on many
occasions extremely funny.” Suggesting an alternative title
might be “Asylum for One” (a line from the play),
Sydney Morning Herald critic Bryce Hallett said: “Barnes
extracts humour by exaggerating the mundane ... inflaming the
trivial.”
In Unit 46, the characters, Tim and Diane, play
out their lives of loneliness, rejection, unemployment and obsession,
moving around each other but never coming into contact, both
of them in their own “urban prison”. Remarkably,
their introverted monologues come across as gut-wrenching, side-splitting
dialogue. The pair exchange angry letters about the garbage,
fantasise about each other’s backgrounds and sexual desires.
They strip, shower and sleep together without knowing it. Tim,
further down the delusional, reclusive track than Diane, chooses
his meals and fantasy partners, by throwing darts at a board.
They culminate in orgiastic ecstasy, but is it real? The cast
will be well into the demands of both versions of the play by
the time the company heads for the United Kingdom.
They will
play a four-week season of the shorter version at Adelaide Fringe
Festival in February/March and the two-act versFactory Theatre in Sydney in June/July, before travelling to The Edinburgh Festival in August
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