THE HYPOCHONDRIAC - ADVERTISER REVIEW

by Samela Harris

The jokes may be 350 years old, but far from stale. This Molière treat has been treated to a new adaptation by Paul Galloway.

And it absolutely rocks with humour. White faces, period costumes, antiquated medical references and yet the satire on quackery remains relevant.

The way in which Galloway and director Chris Drummond have injected contemporary references is both apposite and in the spirit of Molière. At its peak, this Brink production is so desperately, devilishly and absurdly funny that one could almost beg for mercy.

Paul Blackwell's portrayal of the hypochondriac, Argan, is disturbingly vivid. Before play's end one is beginning to see the actor as a container of quivering entrails, ghastly, flatus-ridden and organic.  Blackwell turns on a fart scene that must break records and when Carmel Johnson, as his wife, reels back from his wake, one can almost see the wall of foul scent. Johnson, as ever, is superb, this time with arguably the most dangerous decolletage ever seen on an Adelaide stage.

In his quest to have a doctor in the family, Argan arranges a marriage for his daughter. Enter Rory Walker embodying the character of Thomas Diafoirus. It's a comic tour de force. The daughter, very wittily played by Emily Branford is in love with another. Nathan O'Keefe charms and amuses as the faux music teacher and then, again bewigged and balletic as the capricious little sister.

Master actor Edwin Hodgeman thrives in the playground of nonsensical ham and Jacqy Phillips, as the maid, is nothing less than a power of good timing and comic presence. Terence Crawford gets some good-liners but has the straightest role in the show, including paying tubercular homage to Moliere who, in fact, died after performing in this play.

Musicician Stuart Day is onstage throughout in an exquisite multi-instrumental world of his own, adding another comic layer.

The costumes are good, the set with its vast cloudy expanse of gauzy curtain and the surrounding rim of glowing medicinal jars, is excellent. Somehow director Chris Drummond has counterpointed the absolutely and utterly disgusting against the gloriously silly and enabled it all to convey a serious message about the nature of life and death.

And here comes another Brink hit.