One Shot at the Herald Theatre

By NIGEL GEARING

Imagine Eminem's Stan. Replace Stan with an obsessed Robert De Niro fan named Charlie Murray. Enter Aussie actor John Trutwin who plays that fan, revealing his obsession, jealousies and desire for revenge in a letter to his idol.

The result is One Shot, a one-hour, high-energy solo performance.

Ask Trutwin what One Shot is about and he replies, "It's a love story. I know that's not how the audience may see it, but it's how I see it. It's about love gone wrong."

Unrequited love is something anyone who is honest will relate to, while probably cringing inwardly. For that reason, Charlie Murray's character is one the audience can empathise with.

The play is set in Charlie's apartment where he dictates a letter to De Niro. The only thing that will get Charlie out of bed is the fact it's more than two months since he has seen Mean Streets.

As the story unfolds Charlie tells De Niro about his lost love, Marie, and her new lover, Ian, a television actor who, it seems, does a lousy De Niro impersonation.

Trutwin stresses he is not a De Niro impersonator but adds there is plenty for De Niro fans to note - an actor playing Charlie Murray doing Robert De Niro playing Jake La Motta doing a Marlon Brando impersonation. For those who remember Raging Bull, that has got to be a sight.

One Shot was written in 1993 by expat British writer, director and actor Mark Kilmurry. Kilmurry met Trutwin while working on a Sydney Theatre Company production of Cyrano De Bergerac in 1999. Trutwin said he wanted to perform in the Adelaide Festival Of One and Kilmurry showed him the script for One Shot.

"Mark wrote One Shot to extend himself," Trutwin says. "He had never let anyone else act in it."

They took it to the Adelaide Festival in 2000, then Trutwin performed Charlie in 2001 for a season in Sydney, with New Zealand actor Jeremy Brennan as producer.

Brennan and Trutwin had just finished a 9 1/2-month stint performing for the Australian National Shakespeare Company throughout Australia and in Singapore in 2001.

"We became good friends," Brennan says. "He wanted to reprise this show. I read the script. It was the perfect antidote to Shakespeare, so contemporary, but it deals with the same issues."

Kilmurry has performed One Shot in England, Scotland, New York, Australia and Wellington. Trutwin believes the play's success stems from universal themes and how to present them on stage.

"Film stars are always going to be objects of desire and envy," he says. "They live a life a lot of people want to live. Some people idealise that world.

"At one point in One Shot, Charlie says to De Niro he can imagine the place he lives in. It's a loft and he'd love to be invited over some time. While Charlie is an average guy, he is also obsessive.

"Mark and I believe that naturalistic theatre isn't particularly theatrical. Usually it is someone being truthful on stage over, say, a kitchen sink. More stylised physical theatre is a more exciting vehicle. Mark's theatre combines naturalistic delivery in stylised form."

Expect to see real guns on stage, slow motion fighting scenes, miming, music and montage as filmic devices are used to take theatre to a generation raised on De Niro, Tarantino and Eminem.

Since the success of One Shot, Kilmurry's career has gone from strength to strength. In July 1996 Will the Real James Dean Please Stand Up? opened in the United States, followed by A Film For You.

Mercy Thieves and Happy As Larry And Viv premiered in Sydney in 2002.

Trutwin sees the fact he will perform One Shot for three weeks in Auckland without his director as a healthy sign that indicates how far the relationship between the two has come.

"The day after I return to Sydney it is straight into rehearsals for Hamlet, with Kilmurry directing and playing the lead role," he says.

"He hasn't got time to be here. I am also assistant director in Hamlet. We work together closely. I go round to his place all the time and he to mine. We can shortcut so much language as we have such similar tastes and beliefs."

Any similarity between the two plays? "Perhaps we could ask the question - are the lead characters in each play mad?"


When: June 3-19, 8pm