Frantic morality tale not enough to trigger a positive reaction
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday January 26, 2011
THEATREINVISIBLE ATOMSeymour Centre, January 24Until SundayTHIS tightly woven monologue by the Canadian writer and performer Anthony Black expands a nanosecond of weightlessness into a portrait of a 21st-century Everyman in absolute crisis.Caught in a freeze frame at the apex of a leap into oblivion, Atom ("from Atomos", he tells us, "meaning indivisible") is a successful thirty-something stockbroker, a new dad and up to his neck in debt. He's also an orphan, he tells us, the most recent in a long line of "bastards" that includes physicist Isaac Newton, pioneering economist Adam Smith and the shady British multimillionaire who Atom believes to be his father.As Atom's doubts about the system he works in begin to surface (is the pursuit of growth for growth's sake sustainable? "Nothing can expand for ever," he says, "Not even the universe."), he devises a morality index for his stockbroking firm. His boss, who believes that the free market is an expression of God's will, gives Atom a few days off and a copy of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations to reinvigorate his competitive nature. It proves to have quite the opposite effect as Atom looks back to see his office building demolished by a terrorist bomb.Directed by Ann-Marie Kerr, Black performs his 60-minute piece on a small platform framed by black curtains, which lends it a claustrophobic quality. Sound effects (Christian Barry) and Leigh Ann Vardy's simple yet exemplary lighting help to ramp up tension and sustain mood.Black is a clever writer and a very capable performer, and he animates this increasingly paranoid-sounding stream of consciousness with lightning-fast character changes and snatches of humour. Even so, the work feels too tightly organised and internally cross-referenced to elicit much more than mild sympathy for this unstable Atom's plight.
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald