The Ugly Truth

Griffin Theatre Company ends 2011 with a scalpel-sharp social satire about identity and contemporary narcissism, writes Garrett Bithell. 

“People treat you differently when you’re attractive. We can’t deny it and we can’t hide from it. If you’re a good-looking person you’ll get the front-of-house job at KFC; if you’re not so attractive you’ll be on the deep fryer. It’s this foul, bitter truth about life.”

So says Sarah Giles, who is directing a new production of German writer Marius von Mayenburg’s seminal black comedy The Ugly One as part of Griffin Theatre Company’s independent season. The action is centred on Lette, an industrial inventor who is banned by his boss from attending a conference because of his ugly mug. When Lette’s wife confirms she loves him in spite of his hideous visage, he promptly makes an appointment with a plastic surgeon for a drastic operation. Transformed overnight from ugly duckling to swan, women suddenly want him, men want to be him, and the surgeon wants to clone him.

But in a world filled with Lette-lookalikes, will the hero lose his unique identity?

“Essentially the play is about our absolutely consuming obsession about how we look and how we define ourselves,” Giles tells SX. “There is something about this play that is really – and this is such a daggy expression – on the pulse. You see yourself in it, you see your friends in it. But the joy of it is that it’s satirical and takes the piss out of that. I think that’s why it’s gone down so well in Australia – it pokes fun at modern times.”

Indeed the play seems to have tapped into a pool of anxiety. Yet despite a number of critically-acclaimed productions around Australia, including a sold-out season at Melbourne Theatre Company last year, it has never made it to the brashest and vainest city of them all: Sydney, a place often drunk on its own beauty. Written in 2006, Mayenburg wrote the play “because all of his friends starting getting nose jobs, and they all went to the same plastic surgeon and got the same nose! So they started looking similar, which he said was kind of kooky”.

“I met Marius for a beer,” Giles says, “and he was wonderful. One thing he loves about the play is – what about a world where people just say the truth? There’s a great line when Lette’s wife, Fanny, informs him that he’s really ugly and he says, ‘but you’re very beautiful’, and she says ‘well yes darling I am’. It’s incredibly dry and incredibly funny – but don’t underestimate the power of a comedy to ram a point home.”

Moreover, the mastery of the play is that its themes of identity and contemporary narcissism are not only reflected in its content, but its form. “People just change character, but no one ever changes costume and the set never changes. The location just changes at the drop of a hat. That all says as much about the ideas in the play as any given line. I guess Marius’s point is that we judge so much by what we see, yet there’s so much more to it than meets the eye.”

Giles, who is graduate of NIDA’s directing course, was Resident Director at Griffin in 2009. She is currently Sydney Theatre Company’s Richard Wherrett Fellow. She has assembled a dynamic cast for this production, comprising Eden Falk, Gig Clarke, Jacinta Acevski and Jo Turner. “The word I use when I describe this play is ‘delicious’,” Giles says. “It’s not only very engaging; it’s incredibly funny and ridiculous.”

SBW Stables Theatre (10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross) until December 17. Bookings at www.griffintheatre.com.au or call 02 9361 3817.