Mexican waves: Belvoir & STCSA’s Mortido

Angela Betzien’s reputation as a writer of darkly furious plays which are as much social commentaries as they are impassioned calls to action makes her new play, Mortido, a welcome jolt of adrenaline in the tail-end of a year of theatre. Exploding upon Belvoir’s corner-stage after a critically successful season in Adelaide, Mortido is equal parts crime drama, revenge tragedy, morality play, and familial drama all in one thrilling evening.

Co-commissioned by Belvoir and Playwriting Australia, and presented here in a coproduction between Belvoir and State Theatre Company of South Australia, Mortido begins with a Mexican fable about death, life, and rebirth, and ricochets between past and the present, dreams and reality, across multiple countries and continents, while hunting down its elusive target. Amongst it all, its beating heart is the story of Jimmy, a small-time dealer in Sydney’s west, his medium-big-time distributor brother-in-law Monte, and their various run-ins with police detective Grubbe. Connecting all of them is cocaine, and an article from the Sydney Morning Herald in 2011 that inspired Betzien to ultimately write this play.

Fighting the American Dream: Belvoir’s Death of a Salesman

                   Will you take that phoney dream and burn it before something happens?

                    – Biff

Alone on a bare stage, stands a white car, headlights carving into the dark like twin knives, the tail lights a fiery glow on the back wall, the dream already on fire. As the houselights darken, a figure is revealed in the car – Willy Loman, the titular travelling salesman. Considered one of the staples of the American dramatic canon, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is about “a man refusing to let go of the false dreams we were all once promised.” It’s not a pretty play, either; rather, it’s grueling and harsh and unforgiving and brutal, ferocious even, in its depiction of this crumbling dream.