Brisbane Festival review: The Platypus takes a marriage breakdown through the multiverse

THE PLATYPUS ★★★★
Cremorne Theatre, QPAC, until September 13

Francis Greenslade is the hangdog-faced comedic actor familiar from Winners and Losers, as well as every TV show Shaun Micallef has ever made. His dour-yet-sparkling play The Platypus, which he has also directed, exhibits several Micallefian traits: surreally funny, unashamedly erudite, and underneath it all quite cutting and acerbic.

Like the titular egg-laying mammal, it’s something of a paradox – a laugh riot about the slow death of a marriage. Jess (Rebecca Bower) and Richard (John Leary) are a 40-ish Brisbane couple dealing with things most couples deal with: health issues, money worries and an unseen child who’s way too fond of his phone.

They irritate the hell out of each other, and can’t get things together in the bedroom. Both have their eyes on other people. Bower and Leary play all the additional characters, with deft character work and costume touches to make it clear who’s who.

It all seems like a perfectly straightforward dark domestic comedy until the actors start talking to each other in limericks. Shortly afterwards the dialogue turns Shakespearean, Wildean (hello, Lady Bracknell) or in the style of David Mamet. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell drop in from the set of His Girl Friday. There’s also a ventriloquist act.

It’s as if the experience of channel surfing has been superimposed onto everyday life; a Netflix-indecision nightmare. In a highly meta moment, two theatre-going characters even helpfully explain the rules of the play we’re watching. But Greenslade still has surprises to spring before the final curtain.

The Platypus is a play full of moments of recognition: not just of familiar playwrights and genres, but of those intimate moments of married life that make domesticity a daily drama. Tom Stoppard would be suitably impressed.

The play debuted at Melbourne’s Theatreworks, played the Adelaide Fringe in March, and has a tiny run at QPAC this week for Brisbane Festival. Other state companies should pay attention: it clearly deserves a full mainstage season.

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