Sweaty, half-naked men, crotch groping and wildly inappropriate behaviour. But before you jump up from your computer to catch Ball Game because of its sporting content, read a little further because you will find a different kind of ball manipulation going on here.
With four directors, six actors and four one-act plays by Alan Ball – writer of screenplays Six Feet Under and American Beauty – Ball Game juggles the slippery subject of gender roles in the commercial and corporate chaos many of us call daily life.
Your Mother’s Butt, The M Word, Made for a Woman, and Power Lunch are the titles of the four skirmishes. This gives some indication of the comedic relief supplied here as Alan Ball’s hard-hitting blows crack our contemporary western delusions. Like a ping pong of words, each time the ball returns from a bigger bat for a harder hit to strike where it counts.
It is a classic example of art imitating life yet striking an absurd balance with the traumatic truths of our neurotic lives. Ball illuminates our tendency for getting caught up in the trivial – the over-critical self-image, petty relationship quibbling and our obsession with products. Instead he suggests we give over to the music and dance the many forms of love’s lambada.
Ball’s words sing with a highly-tuned rhythm and creates a music of its own – a music that binds his often brutal human characters. Anca Frankenhaeuser’s movement direction works silent wonders to strengthen the rhythm throughout all four pieces. She keeps the flow through the swings and roundabouts of the versatile set, designed by Alice Morgan.
Despite being a bigger-city “corporate” than Sydney’s and of the Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus era, the playing-field of Ball Game is still relevant. So put down your Mills & Boon and your Playboy magazine, because this is where the pace is pumping and the balls are flying.
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