‘MUD’ // Salad Days Collective

‘MUD’ was dirty.

Salad Days Collective’s staging of María Irene Fornés’ 1983 text challenges audiences with an exploration of class, disabilities, and how co-dependence can restrict one’s freedom.  

Directed by Callum Johnson, this is the collective’s first work after winning a Matilda Award for Best Emerging Artists. With thought-provoking, stark, and uncomfortable theatre that can be overlooked or underappreciated in Brisbane’s current theatre scene, the production sees Salad Days return to PIP Theatre ready to tackle more work with nitty-gritty precision.

Mae (Jasmine Prasser) lives on a farm in feverish poverty with her not-brother Lloyd (George Oates). She aspires to pull herself out of her poverty-stricken circumstances through reading, writing and arithmetic. Feelings of desire, hate, and future ambitions boil across the runtime as Lloyd falls sick and Mae enlists their neighbour Henry (Alex O’Connell) to help, creating a complicated love triangle sure to challenge the audience’s perspectives.

For those unaware, Fornés is your favourite American playwright’s favourite playwright. She’s inspired the giants of Tony Kushner, Edward Albee, and Paula Vogel, was a pioneer of twentieth-century feminist and avant-garde work, and is a nine-time Obie winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist. While varied, her plays predominantly centre around characters (predominantly femme-presenting ones) with aspirations contradicting their circumstances.

‘MUD’s’ mise-en-scène is domestically filthy. Each choice here evokes the nuclear family ideal and the existential horror it entails.  The Pip stage has been moved into a cluttered thrust stage where Noah Milne’s lighting washes gently hum. Laurent Milton’s brilliant set dangles stained-white sheets staged high above a wooden table and drawer, and a patch of dirt purposefully littered in the corner. While some choices are mixed in accomplishing this living hell, such as the constant ticking of a clock over dialogue throughout every scene, the production is overall focused on symbolising the farm’s constricting power.

The ensemble does a solid job capturing the unnerving qualities that stunt each character possesses in their group dynamic and individually. All three performers do fine work tailoring their different acting styles into their chemistry and the text.

Prasser’s Mae is a purposeful clenched fist. Their naturalistic approach compared to their scene partners evidently shows how despite their dreams, they feel closed off emotionally from the burden caused by housekeeping and caretaking they’ve been bound to. It’s a subtle gamble that pays off in Prasser’s movement, their projection, and an anchor for the production, making for a truly tragic protagonist.

Oates’ stage presence and physicality make Lloyd a delight to watch. Much of ‘MUD’s’ initial experimentation relies on how audiences react to how believable Lloyd’s learning disability is portrayed, and they, for the most part, succeed in crafting a three-dimensional character that is less a caricature than a pure animalistic ID. They are funny, pitiful, and listening as the internal gears of their mind shift within a scene.

O’Connell’s Henry is a weasel. Despite having a veil of sophistication, you believe their stuntedness comes through their social skills. Each gesture, smile, and delivery dressed in a civil tie and dress pants drive this character as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and O’Connell does a solid job selling the character’s malice to the audience while charming Mae.  

However, if there’s any aspect of ‘MUD’ that does feel faulty in achieving its ambitions, it would have to be the direction. While Johnson does an admirable job with blocking and finding the darker comedic moments, I would argue their approach neuters the experimentation at the heart of ‘MUD’ with a conventional idea of the avant-gardé. For example, while the text mandates freeze-frames after each scene, the abrasiveness on the page is replaced with conventionality you would find slightly above high school level in how to use more than one element of drama. A little less polish on the technical elements and a lot more creative ambition with ‘MUD’s’ choices could have elevated this into a production that is a tour-de-force. However, audiences should be satisfied through how this conventual approach sells such a play with subject matter as empathetically complex as this.

Salad Days Collective’s take on ‘MUD’ justifies their growing reputation as ones to watch for challenging yet authentic stories on stage. With strong performances, a disgustingly lovely set, and a brilliant text that remains timely and confrontational, audiences should be satisfied watching this interrogation into how society handles those outside the frame of the able-bodied nuclear family. Watch if you want to see theatrical swings like this one.

‘MUD’ performs until Saturday, 22 March 2025 at Milton’s PIP Theatre]. For more information
visit PIP Theatre’s website.

Photos Abbasi Film