The Perfect Image – Lot 23, 20 February 2024: Review

The Perfect Image is a queer rom com, but it dissolves boundaries of race and gender to get to the core, Love is Strange.

Once you get it/ You never wanna quit/ After you’ve had it/ You’re in an awful fix.

That was first recorded by Mickey and Sylvia in the late Fifties. Written by Ethel Smith which was a pseudonym for Bo Diddley who was avoiding legal constraints. Ambiguous in its sexuality from the start. It encapsulates this story perfectly, but you will only understand once you have experienced the play.

Written by Sam Brooks, who also directs under the banner of his own Smoke Labours Production company. He is currently a writer in residence at the Ockham Collective.

The stage is a large white space, in the boutique commercial garage theatre space. It is meant to portray overwhelmingly white.

Perfect Image is a company which creates stock photos to sell commercially. Their images are predominantly white populated. That is, European or Caucasian (not brown though).

One of their best assets is Brit (Sean Dioneda Rivera), a mixed-race male model. All we need to appreciate is that he’s not white and his race is indeterminate. We can appreciate that his height is 161 cm.

We also meet new model prospect Ryan (Michael Hockney) who towers over him. Their initial encounter is adversarial. Ryan tries to be friendly in a new workplace. Brit is cool and haughty.

So that’s a familiar romantic comedy premise.

The sole female character Vita (Amelia Rose Reynolds) sets up the premise. The middle manager/ human resources person.

She is the most audaciously comic in this play. If the enclosing white space represents Room 101 from Orwell’s 1984, she is O’Brien’s right hand (wo)man.

The ground rules are laid. The images they create are perfect because they are acted. Happy, sad, amused, surprised, shocked, infatuated, intoxicated, in love.

The setting is white because that is added later by photoshop, digital effects, CGI, and likely AI. The repercussions of this are mentioned briefly and then forgotten.

Vita has the manner of a cold-hearted Operations specialist. The way she describes her Subway lunch is absurdist humour worthy of Monty Python.

Completing the three’s a crowd set-up is Ryan’s current partner Des (Mark Chayanant Whittet). He plays it straight (pun intended) as a faithful partner who wants to be closer to Ryan and has a sense of the underlying dissatisfaction and frustration of his lover.

They keep reaffirming their commitment. Meaning that the python’s encircling crush is loosening.

Love is a type of madness which can tip into obsession and an all-consuming possession.

Their relationship tension is played out in a manner that is familiar to us all. It is a great credit that the writer does this in such a spare economical fashion.

Of course, this is a comedy, and the tension is released in a seemingly light-hearted fashion.

Which adds to its resonance and emotional impact.

The two employees form a bond inside a sterile environment where emotion is manufactured. It is real and it is not.

Let me borrow from Honore de Balzac and a Harlot High and Low (1839). The world of prostitutes and Intelligence agents. Both must act out a designated role convincingly, but in the real world and not on a stage.

In the most intimate moments, they are most at risk. Identity becomes fluid and it has the same equivalency as energy and matter.

The most well-known Intel double agent in current memory-time is Lee Harvey Oswald.

Des can spot when Ryan is not being honest. He also skirts around it, as he knows Ryan is attracted to beautiful white men.

Ryan becomes a double agent to his own soul. A fascinating conflict from the outside. He never looks happy, and he does have tears in his eyes at times.

The only time he let’s out his emotions are those fractions of a second when the shot is taken of the two models.

Where does identity lie? The play hints at this when Vita refers to people of non-colour. We can take this to mean white. Or we should take it to mean people of unclear identity and allegiances.

Identity, gender, sexuality, colour are being turned into a landscape littered with mines. It is easy to tread on one and trigger.

The Perfect Image navigates through that. It is also very funny, and therefore perfectly useless. A comedy of manners.

Rev. Orange Peel

The Perfect Image has its final performance tonight. Tickets are available HERE

All photos by Jinki Cambronero.