Foxfinder @ Red Stitch Theatre

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Fri 19 Jul 2013 - Sat 17 Aug 2013

Opening nights are always great fun. What's not to love about a free licensed event? The small but cosy bar at Red Stitch allows first nighters to get up close and personal and they are always an engaged bunch of hipsters, young and old.

The problem with opening nights in an intimate setting such as Red Stitch is the level of engagement between audience and actors. Foxfinder is bleak – there's no getting away from it – but to hear the snorts of amusement coming from the audience as each actor made his or her first appearance on stage or did something slightly out of the ordinary, your average reviewer could be forgiven for thinking she was missing something.

This average reviewer managed to overcome the irritation and give her attention to the events unfolding on the stage. British playwright Dawn King has written a thought-provoking play heavy on allegory and light on humour. It is set in an unspecified time in an isolated and soggy English countryside, where all the world's ills seem to be attributed to the presence of foxes.

Judith and Samuel Covey are doing it hard in a tough environment: apart from the failure of their crops they must contend with the recent death of their young son and the inevitable ructions this has on their personal relationship. Enter the creepy William Bloor – 19 year-old foxfinder sent by a patriarchal government to hunt down and destroy the vermin that is the root of all evil.

Fox contamination is like a Black Plague in this parallel world. Should foxes indeed be found, the farm must be destroyed and the Coveys sent away. Paradoxically, Samuel Covey begins to see some kind of redemption in the finding of a fox: an assuaging of his feelings of guilt at the death of his son and the failure of his farm.

The triangular relationship between the Coveys and their young boarder is further complicated by Bloor's emotional and sexual repression, the result of 14 years of 'incarceration' in a government department specifically designed to train and indoctrinate young men into becoming expert foxfinders. In turn threatening and tragic, he is given to bouts of self-flagellation that provide the playwright's clearest allegorical pointer towards the struggle between good and evil that is at the heart of the play.

The set of Foxfinder is outstanding. Think NGV water window without the glass and you get some idea of the utter wetness of the setting. The small but capable ensemble of four actors do a fine job, and Matthew Whitty - in looks a combination of Daniel Radcliffe and Justin Timberlake - as William Bloor manages to invest him with the religious fervour and unspeakable sadness of an institutionalised boy whose only father was the State and whose mother was Mother England.

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!date 19/07/2013 -- 17/08/2013
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