A sure bet: Apocalypse Theatre Company & Griffin Independent’s The Dapto Chaser

First produced in 2011 by Merrigong Theatre Company, Mary Rachel Brown’s The Dapto Chaser is a wart-and-all love-letter to greyhound racing, and sinks its teeth into the dog-racing culture with gusto. Produced by Apocalypse Theatre Company and Griffin Independent, The Dapto Chaser is ninety minutes of acutely-observed writing and performances, wrapped up in the story of a family stuck in the vicious cycle of gambling as everything goes to, well, the dogs.

Many years ago, I read Markus Zusak’s series of books about two brothers who live near Central and spend a chunk of their time around the Wentworth Park dog track. Like Brown’s family – the Sinclair’s – the Wolfe brothers are fighting against their circumstances, each other, and end up winning in a way that only they and people like them can. The Dapto Chaser centres around a dog called ‘Boy Named Sue’, his owner Cess, Cess’ brother Jimmy who works at the Dapto race track, their father Errol, and the dog club manager Arnold Denny, and the dog-eat-dog struggle they find themselves locked into seemingly forever. Where The Dapto Chaser succeeds with flying colours, is in its language, its depiction of this family on the lower edge of society; in its evocation of the colourful and larger than life characters you find trackside.

Into the woods: Siren Theatre Company & Griffin Independent’s The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You

One thing that never ceases to intrigue me about the tiny little Griffin stage is how malleable it is. No two productions ever feel quite the same – it seems bigger or smaller, grander or more intimate, a different shape, as though we’re in a different (larger) theatre entirely; it all depends on any one production’s stagecraft, direction and energy, the way the tiny diamond space is used.

In The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You, presented by Siren Theatre Company with Griffin Independent, the space is filled by Jasmine Christies’ circular curtain set which is drawn and opened as needed, becoming a shadow-screen and a clever framing device, allowing for a playful sense of theatricality and youthful exuberance. Old wooden school chairs, simple items of costume and Hartley T A Kemp’s story-book lighting complete the illusion and the show, an uninterrupted seventy minutes, feels rather like a pop-up book, albeit not quite one for younger children.