Early when I moved to Victoria, I was struck by how many community theatre companies were willing to take significant risks with big scripts. I believe Inconnu is so willing to try these big risks. Getting this script right requires two actors who never let their attention slip for a moment while hitting highly choreographed movements from scene to scene. Bacon is not an easy script, but it is a brilliant one
It may not have been easy, but this team got this show right. Without resorting to cliches, or overburdening the space with clutter, we move from time and place with two teen boys to their lives as two young men. The slow motion tragedy unfurls, but giving us time to understand who these boys were and where they ended up.
It doesn’t take long to figure out the dynamic between Mark and Darren, or so we think. Described as “a complex and manipulative friendship”, this festering relationship is one we cannot look away from, and reflects, without being didactic, so many of the social issues facing young men today. They are both played with nuance and reality, and give us an insight into their lives with such vulnerability, it is heartbreaking.
This show would have been a significant feat for any actor, but Johnson and Rutledge handle this script with apparent ease, at the pace at which it demanded to move. Sometimes jumping in over top on another, sharing words in different spaces, this is as I said before, an incredibly challenging script. This script, I think more than any I have ever come across, relies on a knife-like precision of pacing which the actors nailed every single time.
Keith’s direction has Mark and Darren denoting the shifts in time and place with subtle shifts of physicality. In one transition, the direction has the boys moving across the stage in a way that calls to mind a pair of dogs circling one another. This sounds contrived but it’s an example of extremely effective staging from time and place. The fight sequences, choreographed by John Varszegi, were some of the most effective and convincing I have ever seen on stage. They looked absolutely brutal, and you believed the escalation that the boys displayed.
An area that was played with somewhat less effect was the use of mime. While the actors had utmost precision in their language and work with the script, there were a few small but noticeable moments where objects changed size, or people walked through doors. Mime is such a mainstay of small space black box community theatre, and it is incredibly hard to get perfect. In these small spaces, when the illusion drops even for a second, it is noticeable. The pair did so much of the mime work incredibly well, so I don’t think it affects the show significantly, but I think this is more of a general commentary that I would like to see more innovation away from mime in black box.
I would, even more so than other productions, advise you to carefully check the content warnings in the inside of the programme, and ask questions if there is something you are concerned about. Contrasted by the well-earned levity in the first act, the second act is roiling, intense, and extremely difficult to watch (content wise). I think the group sitting in front of us were taken aback and may not have expected what they saw.
Overall, this is a show that will make you think, and will take you through the heartbreak of two lives at the pace of a thriller. It is heartbreaking and it is beautifully brought to life by the Inconnu team.
Bacon plays until May 17th, 2025.
Disclaimer: I received free tickets to the show as a result of other volunteer work I do. No review was expected or requested.
