You Do It Your Way
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Sara Ruhl's Late: A Cowboy Song
Sydney Fringe Festival | Sydney
directed by Sarah Dunn
The simpler the story, the deeper we can delve into the nature of being human. We have a tendency, in life and in art, for complication. Believing in the more the merrier, we cloud up our transient existences with illusory fixations that distract from the truth. Sarah Ruhl’s Late: A Cowboy Song takes the shortest distance between two points, and in the process, deconstructs some of the biggest myths that govern our every day. It questions the meaning of things like marriage, reproduction, money and work, central tenets that dictate how we live from minute to minute. We see Mary fall pregnant and marry Crick, who goes to get a job to provide for the family. It all happens without thought and passion, completely automatic. Their lives take shape as though controlled by an external entity, until they chance upon something else that truly moves them.
It is a funny play, though not always overt with its humour. Delightfully sarcastic, with a distinctly queer sensibility that informs its representations of gender, sexuality and relationships, Sarah Dunn’s work as director is very charming indeed. Mary is played by Eliza Oliver who brings nuance and poignancy to the piece, through an understated style that encourages understanding of her character’s peculiarities. Less quiet with his presentations is Andreas Lohmeyer whose eccentric approach provides great amusement, along with an intriguing but bizarre aura appropriate to the subversive material being explored. The eponymous cowboy is a mysterious figure, with Annabel Mathieson cast against type to bring focus to the text’s interest in exploring issues of identity and conformity.
Who we think we are, may not always be an accurate estimation of the person who walks the earth, but that self-perception must always be allowed to change. To know oneself can be a difficult process, however, what is infinitely harder, is to pretend to be someone else. Mary and Crick try to come to terms with their own desires, yet arriving at that state of honesty proves to be an elusive privilege. The cowboy is completely out of place, but what they experience, is a serenity and fulfilment that many others fail to attain. It is human to want to fit in, nevertheless it takes courage to stake one’s claim for a share of the world, without playing by all the stupid rules.
