Review- The Open Couple- The Italian Cultural Institute and Aurora Theatre
20-5-22
By Tom K.E. Chan
The Italian Cultural Institute, in collaboration with Aurora Theatre, opened with The Open Couple on May 11 at Sheung Wan’s HKRep Black Box after the fifth wave of the pandemic. An apt choice, as the comedy with its humorous take on the serious subjects of marital ethics and human relationships, enhanced by Nicole Garbellini and Jan Brink’s playful acting, brings fun to the evening—and the weighty topic still finds its relevance in contemporary Hong Kong.
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Written in 1983 by Italian Nobel Prize-winning playwright Dario Fo and his spouse Franca Rame, who was also a playwright, The Open Couple, tells the story of a man persuading his suicidal wife that an open marriage is politically correct despite how his extramarital affairs have led to her grief and frustration. The one-act farce, set in a regular apartment, starts with the wife futilely attempting to commit suicide for the third time. As the play develops, the husband justifies the rationality of an open marriage while the wife, succumbing unwillingly to his one-sided decision, seeks to regain her dignity through dating younger men and finally securing a better and healthier relationship with a guitar-playing atomic professor who is nominated for a Nobel Prize. This has turned the table on the husband, whose jealousy makes him realise suddenly that an open marriage is acceptable only when it benefits himself, but not both.
There are a few differences between the original script and this production: the layout of the entire apartment is marked clearly with white spike tape into different sections, including a bathroom, a living room and a bar area; instead of a wooden door that indicates an imaginary bathroom in the original script, the bathroom in this version gives us full transparency of the detailed interior. In the original script, the play starts with a spotlight on the husband first, as he knocks on the wooden door while the wife, another spotlight shining on her after, stands at the other side of the stage and tells the audience about their relationship, without them knowing for sure that she is in the flat; in this production, the spotlight shines on the husband who knocks on the door first, before the stage lights up and shows the wife in the bathroom, talking about her cocktail pills to the audience.
While the original script, where the wife distances herself from what is happening at the bathroom at first, does seem to connect the wife more with the audience when she breaks the fourth wall, the detailed setup of this version no doubt makes it easier for the audience to follow the plot and layout of the space. What would offer a greater impact on the audience if there had been more room for imagination in terms of the setup, however, is the ending. In the original script, the husband disappears behind the bathroom door, leaving the audience hanging; in this version, we watch him step into the bathtub—an end so obvious that it could serve a greater impact if left unpresented than to have it spelled out for the audience.
Garbellini, who plays the distressed wife, is most notable for her passionate delivery that highlights the wife’s vehemence and feistiness despite her vulnerability. Brink is also equally successful in presenting the husband’s character development effectively: from the controlled husband who strives to contain his frustration through drinking vodka, to his intemperate outbursts of jealousy and insecurity over losing his wife, then to forcing her on to the table for sex to prove their love.
Garbellini and Brink make a great dynamic, dysfunctional couple and have captivated the audience with timely sneers and mockery. This makes for a fun rendition of The Open Couple that stays faithful to the original script. Garbellini’s interpretation of the wife’s final line of “oh no!”—delivered cheekily with a wily smile across her face and wink—also adds to the mystery of whether the wife intended for her husband to kill himself at the end. While this will be open for the audience to decide, there is no question that the production, all in all, is thought through and fun to watch.
The Open Couple is performed in the Hong Kong Repertory Black Box Theatre, Sheung Wan Civic Centre, Sheung Wan, on 11-14 May 2022.
Photo by Aaronography and Natalie Hui