"So, third act - disaster, right?"
"Third act? The whole play. Great concept; written like it was Neighbours."
At which point he discovered I had a cold and fled.
I still don't agree with my friend's summation. Having been subjected to an episode of Neighbours earlier that evening, I can say he gives their writers entirely too much credit. He was broadly correct, though. A Hoax does make a mess of a brilliant premise.
Written by promising Australian playwright Rick Viede, it concerns itself with misery memoirs - specifically, fraudulent misery memoirs. I'd been intrigued by the work from the moment I heard of it. Having been one of the many suckered into James Frey's A Million Little Pieces (a particularly harrowing autobiography later proven to be almost entirely fabricated), I was interested to see how Viede would tackle such ideas with the liberty afforded a work of fiction.
Quite simply, it would appear. The word for A Hoax would be crude. Not in regards to humour or thematic concerns (though crudity is touched upon - being honest, Viede actually excels at it); but in the sense of refinement. Ironically, A Hoax is quite a simplistic piece of work. The plot is a ham-fisted interpretation of unpredictability and, for the most part, its characters are broadly painted figures of limited dimension. I have a tendency to prefer excessively complication in all things but, even with that bias taken into account, A Hoax seems thuggish.
As my friend suggested, there's a strong foundation. The play begins with social worker and aspiring author Ant hiring indigenous youth Mirri to act as Currah - author of his fabricated autobiography of sexual abuse and struggle. In the beginning, it works quite well (in a Blake Edwards sort of way). Ant leaves Mirri unattended, publisher Ronnie swoops in and surprises Mirri/Currah, complications ensue, drama unfolds, et cetera. Viede's humour is broad (publisher Ronnie is a textbook older female professional - sharp, sassy, ruthless) but it's also funny. The fact that he's using such broad humour against such spiky issues actually initially makes for a refreshing approach. He resists the urge to proselytise.
Unfortunately, proceedings swiftly segue from 'surprisingly accessible' to 'stupidly unbelievable'. Viede's talent is dialogue. He excels at one-liners and epithets; exchanges and arguments. Plot and character seem to be almost afterthoughts - mere mechanical obligations to allow for more witticisms and observations. Far too often, audiences are expected to accept simply unrealistic scenarios and increasingly irrational character arcs. There's a certain level of implausibility expected in fiction but Viede seems to have constructed a narrative with no regards to reality or internal logic whatsoever. Social media, for example, is conveniently ill-considered. It appears when it's needed and otherwise doesn't exist.
The text is punctuated by such conveniences. Alliances shift, events transpire, characters change; not out of any logical evolution of dynamics - but simply because their architect demands it. Kurt Vonnegut once complained that guns were popular because lazy authors used them to manufacture drama and conclusions. Viede appears to be such an author. The appearance of a gun in A Hoax's final third is actually the point where the entire piece falls apart completely. If characters were better drawn, it wouldn't matter as much - but, then, if the piece were more sensibly plotted, its characters wouldn't be in need of as much refinement. It's really a mess.
Funnily enough, it isn't quite as disastrous as a production. I typically tend to love script and despise execution within Brisbane's main house productions (see, for example, Queensland Theatre Company's recent Romeo & Juliet shitstorm). Yet, A Hoax is quite sensibly rendered. Director Lee Lewis has shaped a well-rounded production - admirably constructed and competently paced. Renee Mulder's set design is simple but effective and Steve Toulmin's efforts in both sound and multimedia design are to be commended. Each actor struggles to make sense of Viede's character arcs at some point but, some inconsistencies aside, all ultimately rise to the occasion.
Charles Allen, making his Australian stage debut as Ronnie's gay assistant, delivers an absolute triumph of a performance from an absolute cliche of a character. Sally McKenzie similarly works wonders with limited material - losing her footing only in the production's disastrous conclusion. Shari Sebbens and Glenn Hazeldine - as Mirri/Currah and Ant, respectively - tend towards the soapy throughout but still manage to deliver when necessary. Hazeldine, in particular, does some especially great work with Ant's gradual descent into despair.
Still, as a show, A Hoax really lives and dies with its script - and Rick Viede's script simply wasn't there.
(As an aside; I'd love to see him re-write it in a couple of years. I actually think there's a genuinely unbelievable play buried somewhere in there. He just doesn't have the chops to pull it out of the wreckage just yet. I hope he doesn't just leave it lie, in any regard.)
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