Brisbane review – Octopolis: Bold and Intriguing

By Lilian Harrington

Production:  Octopolis 

Writer:          Marek Horn

Company:     Observatory Theatre 

Director:        Bronwyn Nayler

Location:       Pip Theatre, Savoir Faire, 20 Park Rd. Milton.

Season:          14 -24 May 7 pm. Matinee 2 pm. Saturday 24th May.

Bookings:      https://piptheatre.sales.ticketscard.com/salesevent/142319

How encouraging it is to see more emerging theatre companies opening up opportunities for both professional and community actors in Brisbane. New companies like Observatory Theatre offer a range of diverse and challenging programs. The aim is to bring inventive and inspiring work to local theatre. Under the direction of the company’s producers: Lachlan Driscoll, Lucy Rayner-Toy, and director Bronwyn Nayler, Observatory have staged Octopolis, written by the talented, British writer, Marek Horn. The production is a collaboration between Observatory and PIP Theatre, located at PIP’s zany new venue in Milton.

Octopolis is a contemporary romantic comedy. It is a funny exploration by Horn of love, grief, death and what it is to be human with discussions on science versus religion, and whether an Octopus could believe in God!  It involves two scientists, with dissenting views, and Frances the Octopus, who they are observing closely.

To quote George “there were three in this marriage”.

George (Caroline Sparrow) is a professor and a world renowned marine biologist, who is studying the intelligence of an octopus. However, she is still grieving over her late husband and as a consequence she has become very attached to Frances the Octopus, who lives in a tank in her university digs, where she is monitoring its behaviour and movements.

An ambitious French anthropologist, Harry (Dudley Powell), arrives to study the Octopus; he’s been given a spare room at George’s house where he can stay to conduct his work. George has been quite content living on her own, with a daily routine of yoga, observing Frances, and avoiding emails. Harry’s arrival with his theories and ambitious ideas about Frances upsets George’s established routines.

The dialogue between the two scientists becomes quite heated, they use strong language, sexual references and tension, along with wit and humour and talk about death, depression and grief, as bubbles are heard from the tank, where there’s life and expectation. The two scientists become involved as one, drawn in by the unseen influence of Frances the Octopus. All three become encompassed in one woven movement imaged in clever choreography by Sherri Smith.

Director Nayler has designed the scene so the audience can experience the feeling of being in a water tank. It’s a simple but effective setting with bright orange/mauve colours used to reflect the Octopus; she has incorporated movement and dance into a script which had no written directions; this movement served to give a deeper visual impression; the overheads lit up on the back screen, and centre stage, indicated time changes, with special visuals and sounds created to symbolise the tank by Tech. (Teddy Waddingham).

This in-the-round minimalist theatre sees the audience seated in an intimate atmosphere. There’s minimal costume changes with imagined or mimed props, and two actors tasked with a complex and challenging script given Horn’s in-depth dive into “a complex rabbit hole” where the final act brings greater clarity and resolution.

The intimate theatre setting means the actors needed to have a greater awareness of the vocal levels used, and temper accordingly. Horn explores ideas, on science and religion and parallels the contrasts between ambitious Harry’s ideologies and wilful George’s beliefs and passions. The actions of the presumptive, impetuous, George and the rather constrained Harry, are entwined with the eight-legged Octopus, which the audience can only imagine. Observatory Theatre presents a bold, inventive, take on Octopolis in this production.