Ruben Guthrie

Review: Ruben Guthrie will be the funniest serious investigation of alcohol you'll ever experience - unless you happen to be a supremely witty dipsomaniac wunderkind like Ruben. Brendan Cowell's 2008 hit, tightened and sharpened for its upgrade to Belvoir's main stage, wins the trifecta: it's great entertainment, cutting social criticism, and quality literature.

Ruben's monologue on his lost and putrid weekend is, for example, as funny as anything in David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and all the better because Guthrie is not bragging about frontier adventurism, but rather confessing with embarrassment his sense of helplessness in the face of Sydney's abundant hedonistic opportunities. We are simultaneously thrilled, struck with self-recognition, and chilled by the dangers.

Success on stage depends on the skill of director Wayne Blair and Toby Schmitz, whose dynamic voice and agile face transparently convey the wide emotional compass of an alcoholic genius, swinging from easy charm to cruel rebuff to desperate neediness. It wouldn't be wrong to say that Guthrie is the perfect vehicle for Schmitz, or that Schmitz is perfectly cast as Guthrie, though either would under-rate them both.

The plot proceeds largely as a sequence of booze-toting interventions by Ruben's friends, family and his results-focused, reformed alcoholic boss (Roy Billing). The ad executive ruthlessly extracts the work product he needs, despite Ruben's protest "I can't sell beer Roy. In the headspace I'm in."

Ruben's creativity is used to foist on an entire nation the chemical that is sending him to rock bottom - though nobody pounds the point. Cowell wisely cut the only preachy speech, given in the 2008 version by Ruben's swimsuit model girlfriend Zoya (now Adrienne Pickering): why do Australians drink themselves into oblivion when there is so much beauty around them? Fair question, but now she has been made a more interesting character with problems of her own: an eating disorder. Her confrontation with Ruben's AA sponsor turned fiancée Virginia (Megan Drury) surpasses the cringing depths of Fawlty Towers, and makes a point beyond farce: the cure for alcoholism can be worse than the disease. The supporting cast of unsupportive characters bearing liquid temptation is strong: Torquil Neilson as the gay mate, Geoff Morrell as the unrepentant heavy drinking dad, Toni Scanlan as the imperfect but loving mother.

Everyone appreciates the non-stop comedy and shimmering dialogue, but those who have known a talented alcoholic or the spell of addiction will feel the tragedy more personally: the drama of Ruben Guthrie is, first, last, and always: to drink or not to drink? In the final scene, just as in Hamlet, that is the question: is he going to take the poison? After the applause finally stops, your peer group picks up the segue: how about swinging by the bar to discuss the play's big social issues and best lines, over a dose of our national drug? Cheers! Jason Catlett

Preview: Ruben Guthrie is on fire. He’s 29, he’s the Creative Director of a cutting-edge advertising agency, he’s engaged to a Czech supermodel and Sydney is his oyster. He pours himself a drink to celebrate, a drink to work, a drink to sleep and one spectacular night he drinks so much he thinks he can fly.

Ruben Guthrie is Brendan Cowell’s brutally honest comedy about work, family and excess. This is a special play which taps a deep vein of Australian life and asks, is it unAustralian to refuse a drink?

Company B Associate Artist Wayne Blair directed Toby Schmitz as Ruben in the Downstairs Theatre in 2008. The show sold out before it even opened. Now, Brendan, Toby and Wayne – three of Australia’s finest young theatre artists – are joining forces once again to create a new production for Company B.

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