Emma's Nose by Paul Livingston and directed by Mark Bomilow at La Boite Theatre Brisbane 21 February to 16 March 2002

Emma's Nose could be a triumph of Brechtian alienation and a great exercise in modern comedy. However, writer Paul Livingston compares the experience of watching his work produced to 'being bound in a straight-jacket, mouth gagged, then forced to observe the slow torture of years of toil', and my experience of Emma's Nose probably falls somewhere in between the first and second possibilities.

Emma's Nose is a play constructed around the actual correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Fleiss - a doctor so ignorant and blasé in seeking concrete evidence for his crackpot theories concerning neuroses and 'feminine ailments' - as to equal and perhaps surpass Freud himself. Genuine text from the correspondence is presented as both letter writing and conversation, and demonstrated on stage by the 'light of truth'. This device is extremely effective in illuminating the levels of purely ridiculous theory that these two 'scholars' had leapt to and the terrifyingly serious eyes through which they viewed themselves and their work.

The general gist of the play is that a young girl, Emma Eckstein (played by underused actor Kylie Morris) is treated by Freud and Fleiss (Jonathon Turner and Eugene Gilfedder respectively) for an illness, which Freud decides is the result of Emma's sexual impulse being transferred to her nose. The doctors undertake an operation on the nose, which is slow in healing. Acting in direct opposition to Fleiss, Freud reopens the wound only to discover that a large amount of surgical tape had been left in Emma's nose. Freud and Fleiss experience a mild hiccup in their relationship of mutual intellectual masturbation, but all is resolved when they discover that they are as capable of rationalising the event with the help of drugs and abstract theory.

Greg Clarke's set was imaginative, symbolic and inventive though possibly may have been more suitable for a larger venue with water. A patient's couch constructed along a train line provides a great atmosphere but ultimately hinders and detracts from the actors' performance. Combined with Kylie Morris' grating, grinding music and Mark Lloyd Hunt's strobe-like red lighting, Emma's Nose was a visual conspiracy creating a dreamlike experience of dialogue delivered at break-neck speed with vocal audibility reserved for gags.

Eugene Gilfedder once again delivered a comic performance, and Jonathon Turner was an excellent, sycophantic Freud; though I could not escape from the recurring thought that both actors sounded suspiciously like Flacco, with Colonel Klink-esque (yah, I know he is German) accents. As a performer, Kylie Morris was underused, though her presence did go some way toward conveying Freud and Fleiss' disregard for the patient through concern for the preservation of theory. The same effect may have been achieved through using a doll, which is absolutely no comment on Morris's acting, but on the need for her character to have a more physical presence.

Overall, while it did provide the occasional laugh, and not a small amount of disbelief at the pure ass-yness of these two men (and the people who believed them!), Emma's Nose was a messy production with just a little too much comedy of the stand-up variety. However, it was also imaginative and original theatre from an Australian writer and a great, unpretentious and very accessible Brisbane theatre. Director Mark Bromilow says of the play, 'Perhaps it will explore how we can so easily become complicit victims…and perhaps it won't. Perhaps it will just be a good laugh…' so it still scores points on the things-to-make-and-do board for early 2002.

Details

Emma's Nose at La Boite Theatre Brisbane 21 February to 16 March 2002