Two Cents: Gravy (Merak)
Deborah Jones and Meg Hyeronimus. Photo: Abraham de Souza
It's a sloshing, dark purgatory of mother/daughter dysfunction that we encounter for sixty minutes in Gemma Burwell’s striking debut. In its surreal watery antechamber, with dialogue tinged by Beckett, two tormented psyches can’t get clean.
A daughter, Trisha, washes her mother in a bathtub. They take turns. These ministrations are somewhere between tender and bitterly cruel. They squabble, jeer, are spiteful. The body is a fixation, perverse and reverent, for both. The mother mocks her child’s tiny breasts, grabbing them. The daughter sneers at ‘Mummy’s folds. They both tell each other they smell. There certainly is something decaying in there. Their actions and thoughts, Mummy tells Trish, are under surveillance by the ‘ever-watching man’. (God or patriarchy? There’s an overlap anyway.)
As the old tub fills and refills with no tap running – the rules of displacement rebelling, even when the daughter drags the plug chain from her mouth – they are each other’s flesh, each other’s everything, and each other's hell.
James Smithers’ set really makes this show exceptional. So the theatre itself doesn’t flood, the stage sides are levied. The diagetic water sounds – sploshing, spilling, slapping – are eerily immersive. Frankie Clarke’s lighting glares remorselessly at our two characters and surrounds them in shadow. At intervals we are plunged into darkness, then re-emerge as the daughter jerks as though electrocuted under strobes. (She are made to understand her suffering is in some way different.)
Under Saša Ljubović’s assured direction, Meg Hyeronimus (Trisha) Deborah Jones (Mummy) are fearless in their morbidly fascinating roles, which require unnatural language and unnatural movement. Hyeronimus walks on all fours, perches on the bathtub like someone possessed. In one memorable scene, we see Jones vengefully miming the boy Trisha says is coming to save her, pleasuring her – moaning as she narrates the boy getting his teeth stuck in her toe hairs as he worshipfully licks her feet. Gross, definitely, but big respect to Jones for going all in.
It’s galvanising to see bold new experimental theatre coming out of Sydney. I haven’t encountered a great deal of surreal/psychological horror done well on stage – playing in this genre, theatre-makers can risk sacrificing good storytelling for ‘shock/disturbing value’, succeeding in getting under your skin but leaving only foul residue there. Gravy is an exception.
Gravy
Merak
KXT on Broadway, Ultimo
Until 28 February 2026
