Lies, Lies and Propaganda’s Roadkill Confidential

Having previously tackled Greek myths and self-devised theatre, Lies, Lies and Propaganda (LLP) have decided to tackle a completely scripted piece for their latest production, but I’m not sure it is the right vehicle to showcase their strengths, as individuals and as theatre-making collective. Sheila Callaghan’s Roadkill Confidential is the story of Trevor, a successful artist with a penchant for roadkill victims, whose latest work becomes a matter of national importance and the subject of a top-secret investigation when citizens start dying. While Callaghan’s play purports to ask the question ‘can art truly be dangerous, or is it only true when it is,’ it ultimately doesn’t quite reach the searing heights it sets out to investigate, and leaves us feeling left on the shoulder of the road one too many times.

All we have to go on: Apocalypse Theatre Company’s Construction of the Human Heart

I first discovered Ross Mueller’s Construction of the Human Heart in 2008 or 2009, in the university library, and became fascinated by its conceit, its design and its delicious ambiguity, but until now have not had a chance to see it performed. Enter then, Apocalypse Theatre Company with their current production currently playing at the intimate Tap Gallery theatre in Darlinghurst. Written in one act, Mueller’s play unfolds with a directness and a beguiling fragility, and exposes the very constructedness of theatre.

Perhaps better called ‘Deconstructing theatre’, the story revolves around a Couple, two unnamed characters, simply referred to as ‘Him’ and ‘Her’. They are both playwrights, we discover, and as the play unfolds over its lean sixty-five minutes, they build around themselves as much as us a fortress of words. But, like the best defences, it begins to crack, until their words crack open, meaning bleeding onto the stage, and they desperately cling to their disappearing words, to themselves, to each other, trying to remember how to go on, how to Be.