By arts editor Helen Musa

There’s something in the air around Canberra at the moment as our theatre turns its eyes toward the Theatre of the Absurd.

First it was Joe Woodward’s extraordinary production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, then there was Céline Oudin’s production of Sartre’s No Exit. Over at Mill Theatre, Lexi Sekuless is planning on Exit the King by Ionesco in September.

And now a new theatre company directed by Isaiah Prichard, Performative Theatre Company, is mounting a production of Albert Camus’s rarely performed Caligula, his first full-length play, at the old Causeway Hall in Kingston, supported by ACT Hub.

The authorship of the play is significant because it was Camus who effectively defined the concept of the absurd using the image of the ancient Greek sinner Sisyphus rolling a stone up a hill for eternity. No matter how hard he tries, it always rolls back down on him, and that’s life.

I caught up with Prichard and his lively cast during rehearsal in one of the ANU science buildings recently and found a company engaged in a lively debate about the desire for meaning within an uncaring universe.

Of course, we all know Caligula. Notorious for supposedly appointing his horse as a Roman consul, he has had very bad press, but Camus looks at him rather as a ruler trying to explore that indifferent universe by taking it to extremes.

As Caligula realises the sheer meaninglessness and absurdity of life, he decides to pursue “the impossible” by wielding supreme power, adopting cruel, tyrannical means to prove that in an irrational world, human life lacks value.

The play is performed in a contemporary translation by Ryan Bloom, praised for being the first to compile Camus’s final, definitive versions of his plays in English.

Prichard explains that the basis for the new company is to do “cool stuff” and bridge the gap between mainstream and independent theatre.

It’s not an ancient classic in the conventional sense, he explains. Much of the play grapples with the concept of the absurd, yet its classical setting gives it a distinctive flavour.

Camus was only 25 when he wrote Caligula, nearly the same age as the emperor himself when he was assassinated. He presents him as a tyrant with a twist.

Indeed, a quick look at the third Roman emperor’s life shows that when he first came to power, for probably less than a year, it was something of a golden age. But in this play, he’s definitely no more Mr Nice Guy.

“It will shock a few people. I love it when theatre slaps you in the face,” Prichard tells me.

Mischa Rippon, in the title role, plays a charming but frightening tyrant, and the challenge is to capture both those elements without turning the audience off.

One shocking aspect of the play is its clear implication that Caligula was the lover of his late sister, Drusilla, whose death is regarded as the beginning of his descent into sadism.

Small matter that contemporary historians have generally exonerated him from the charge of incest, the play takes it on directly and many of the characters have an opinion about it.

Prichard has assembled a loquacious cast, many of them old ANU friends whom he has inveigled into taking part.

Robert Wearden, who plays Cassius, tells me: “I’ve worked with Isaiah and he’s directed me before, so when he texted me about Caligula it was a no-brainer.” Wierenga says some of the cast are coming from as far away as Melbourne.

The cast is pretty well balanced between men and women, with a tiny bit of strategic gender-bending, as in the pivotal role of patrician-author Cherea, played by Amy Gottschalk. Cherea is the writer and philosopher who sees through Caligula’s destructive logic, agreeing that life is absurd but believing that preserving social order and human happiness is essential.

One of the most significant roles is Caesonia, Caligula’s long-suffering mistress, played by Tash Lya, who tells me that jealousy of the late Drusilla is not part of her character. Caesonia’s focus is simply trying to make Caligula better. He doesn’t appreciate it, and she comes to a sticky end.

Despite the darkness of the subject matter, there are comedic elements. The patricians, upper-class Romans portrayed as semi-caricatures, represent standard social conventions, logical order and bourgeois comfort, all of which Caligula actively attempts to destroy in order to expose what he sees as the meaninglessness of the human condition.

Pritchard intends to stage the play with the audience on two sides in a kind of a corner-centre stage dominated by a very large bust of Caligula. They won’t be wearing togas but rather eclectic costumes drawn from Rome, World War II and from now – “a new-world mix he,” he says.

Caligula, ACT Hub, Kingston, July 1-4.

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