KEY POINTS:
The year ends where it began for Michael Hurst and Oliver Driver: at the Silo Theatre. Unlike the beginning of the year, when they put 12 young actors through their paces to create two new plays for the Ensemble Project, Hurst and Driver are not directing bold new theatrical ventures.
Instead they are in the spotlight for a theatrical venture which may be 23 years old but remains one of the most innovative works written and produced for the stage.
The Mystery of Irma Vep, by American avant-garde writer Charles Ludlam, sends up everything from Victorian melodrama to B-grade Hollywood movies. Incredibly popular in the United States, it enjoyed an eight-year run in Brazil.
Ludlam stipulated that two actors of the same sex must portray the play's eight characters. They include the mysterious Lord Edgar and his second wife, Lady Enid, a maid named Jane Twisden and the swineherd, Nicodemus Underwood.
Technically that equates to making around 60 costume changes, taking no more than 20 seconds each, in the 80-minute show. So energetic are the performances that Driver and Hurst doubt the point of wearing stage make-up. "It will just get rubbed off with all the costume changes or melt," says Hurst.
Given the plot, it is easy to see how The Mystery of Irma Vep could be played as high farce. Lord Edgar, recently widowed and still mourning his first wife, returns to Mandacrest Mansion with his buxom new bride, Lady Enid. The portrait of Edgar's first wife appears to watch her every move as does the amorous peg-legged stable boy and the high-and-mighty maid Twisden.
With her nerves on edge and the fog descending over the lonely moors surrounding Mandacrest Mansion, Lady Enid is haunted by one question: who or what is Irma Vep?
"When you first read the script, you think it's slapstick comedy with lots of funny stuff but the way to do this show is to work it through like it's a powerful drama and the more realistically you play it and the more serious you are, the funnier it becomes," says Driver.
Director Jennifer Ward-Lealand agrees, saying done otherwise, The Mystery of Irma Vep is simply stuffed full of empty cheap gags. "It is a play where everything is imbued with meaning," she says.
That does not surprise, given its writer's background. Regarded as an underground artist and championed by the likes of Andy Warhol, Ludlam liked to challenge convention and cultural elitism.
He married this with a keen eye for theatrical traditions.
Ludlam likened himself to an archaeologist unearthing defunct and forgotten theatrical techniques, calling it cultural recycling.
The team behind the Silo's re-telling are determined to stay true to Ludlam's vision. It helps, says Driver, that they have all often worked together and trust each other implicitly.
"We are all after the same result which is to make this piece the best it can be for the audience."
As Hurst so aptly sums up, having opened the year instructing young actors, it's their turn to show they can still walk the talk.
"All the people we gave a hard time to at the beginning of the year will be watching; it's time for us to strut our stuff."
