Flushed with success

By Adrian Wintle

The Toilet Monologues

Here’s a likeable adult comedy, lit by luminous performances from Craig Higgs and Shelly Gaul, which draws its inspiration basically from the rich passing parade of human incident that typically invests pub life with its characteristic flavour. Yes there are references to toilets themselves, notable in Higgs’ Act 2 expose of the technicalities of toilet roll placement where we learn the preferred position of the roll is with the roll-down side nearest to the customer. This is claimed to promote evenness in the torn sheets of the paper. But The Toilet Monologues is either a misnomer or a deliberate come-hither to entice patrons, since toiletry tends to be incidental.
In its succession of spirited monologues, delivered with an operatic slickness so that scene follows scene in seamless fashion, the show focuses more on relationships than on matters porcelain. The stereotyped attitude of males to females receives particular attention in several funny and pointed sketches, including the one in which the pub pick-up is revealed (surprise, surprise) as an exercise in thinly veiled lasciviousness.
If Craig Higgs’ schoolmasterly catalogue of steps leading to sexual success owes something to Monty Python, he’s superb in Act 2 as your typical pub drunk using loopy logic to placate his girl. On Thursday, Act 1 needed time to establish its considerable credentials before both players struck gold in Act 2 with a series of funny sketches.
Here Shelly Gaul again displayed a chameleon facility with her roughneck pub frequenter. Audiences everywhere love a rebuke, and on Thursday this character’s acid insults scored roars of laughter, including a deep, sonorous bass cackle like a Florentine bell that lingered as a final coda, becoming an agent for more laughter. Was he perhaps a claqueur?
The Toilet Monologues may not be everyone’s schooner of Swan, but for those of us who’ve experienced something of pub ambience it rings true. It catches to perfection the ambulatory character of pub conversation, going round and round in lazy circles and reminding at least one patron of golden former days at the Vic on Saturday afternoons with Johnny the bouncer, Sinbad asleep at the bar and Puss and Bones squawking at each other.
Higgs and Gaul are excellent actors, easily inhabiting their cameo roles with a flair suggesting frequent pub visitation to develop their skills. Good actors are conscientious and besides, somebody’s got to do it.
While the show’s central observation of female irrationality and male chauvinism is milked engagingly, the catalogue of minor characters like the old dear doffing her finger in her middy and rubbing her false teeth, or the pair of menacing bouncers, or the extraordinary librarian with her bag of bondage goodies contribute to a rich social document.
Catch The Toilet Monologues at the Farrer on Thursday Oct 23 and Thurs Oct 30, or at Tumut on Friday Oct 24. It’s free, but the impecunious actors will appreciate a drink at show’s end. After all their thirsty work, it’s the least they deserve.

The Daily Advertiser Wednesday 28th April 2004
Focus on Arts, Adrian Wintle