AYE,
WILLIAM!
Kay
Poh Chee on I, CYCLOPS
29 September 2000
Weeks have
gone by since I caught the final performance of Ozzie actor William
Gluth's aggressively cerebral dramatization of I, CYCLOPS at the Actors
Studio Box. As far as KL theatregoers are concerned, the event has come
and gone - and thank goodness!
I'll bet
the sweaty hordes of artsy types in the Klang Valley who gave the show
a miss are feeling righteously smug about having saved themselves a
couple of hours of feigned absorption and 35 ringgit to boot.
I was tempted
to keep procrastinating till it became totally pointless to even try
and get my head around the idea of reviewing the… er, experience. But
a couple of raggedy stray thoughts - about touring actors in particular
and high-brow theatre in general - began rummaging through my garbage
bins of deep memory and fishing out and sniffing the putrid remains
of my own intellectual pretensions.
Don't
get me wrong. William Gluth was good. VERY good indeed. It
was a treat to watch the man in action. He knew his stuff, William did.
And you could tell he was relishing every moment of his own incredible
proficiency as an actor. Only a very dedicated and dynamic narcissist
would put so much effort into lounging and strutting about on stage
for over an hour in a seedy suit and a pair of silver-rimmed shades,
spouting a heady blend of literary erudition and rudeness from a moribund
Greco-Roman tradition.
I, CYCLOPS
is, by any measure, a very verbose play written by Robert McNamara (not
to be confused with the former U.S. secretary of defense). It's exactly
the sort of egghead fare that might have found a receptive audience
in Georgetown University's drama department or among final-year acting
students at NIDA.
The epic
monologue was originally entitled I, POLYPHEMUS or DEAD IN THE HEAD:
AN ANCIENT FABLE WITH A MODERN SENSE. Now, as everyone knows, Polyphemus
is the dull-witted cyclops blinded by Ulysses in Homer's "Odyssey."
Every
cultured person has at least heard of Homer, and not merely in the context
of The Simpsons. A cyclops named Polyphemus? The cyclops were a mythical
race of giants with a single prominent eye. Legendary dickheads, you
could say. "Polyphemus" probably means "multilingual" which suggests
to me that Homer might have been hallucinating monster TV sets.
If you
want to put an Orwellian twist on everything, Polyphemus could even
allude to a global espionage network. Was that why Gluth togged himself
up like some jaded spy in a Graham Greene novel? He last performed I,
CYCLOPS at La Mama in Melbourne. I wonder if there were lots of Greeks
in the audience.
"The Odyssey"
has thus far been read from a Grecocentric perspective. The great Greek
hero Ulysses outsmarts Polyphemus at every turn, getting him drunk and
blinding his all-seeing eye with a burning stake. Now, at last, Polyphemus
gets his turn on stage.
Listen
to his drunken lament, his Rabelaisian tale of woe. Commiserate, if
you can, with his cyclopean downfall. Poor Polyphemus, all he wants
is someone to pat him on the back while he rants and raves and scratches
his balls.
It was
indeed invigorating to be caught up in this crisply articulate and twisty
yarn spun by an intelligent and supremely confident actor, but I couldn't
help wondering why some people would go to such lengths to impress.
Why do
such in-grown academic exercises in theatrical esotericism continue
to get written and performed? Because it's sheer bloody hard work, I
expect. And because, being so goddam uncommercial, it simply has got
to be High Art.
Aye, William,
it was all worthwhile, I'm sure.
Kay Poh
Chee
29
September 2000
