Unconditional | Seán Dowling & Cameron Hurry

I emerged from the Powerhouse’s Underground Theatre to a message from a good friend who simply had to know what I thought of Playlab’s latest work, Unconditional. The promise of a new trans work was tantalising to him and to me, hence my excitement at the opportunity to review this work. Alas, when I pushed record on the first of several voice messages I sent him that night I opened with a sigh and said, “I want to love it so badly”. I see this play the way one might see a lacklustre romantic interest; you see that they have the potential to be an amazing partner, but they simply don’t live up to it or to your standards. I too see such potential in this work. Unfortunately, in the same way you date a person and not their potential, must report on the play I saw not the potential that I saw in this play.

My primary issue is structural one. Unconditional is 90 minutes long (no intermission) and our two characters only spend perhaps ten of those minutes speaking to each other. I was waiting the entire play for them to acknowledge each other, and I felt I was being taunted in a way by the script. ‘Why aren’t they talking to each other?’ is my most pressing dramaturgical question for this work. It does logistically make sense given the conceit of the work that the couple spends a lot of time in literal isolation from each other. And this separation does contribute to the sense of division the dramaturgy of the work is trying to create. However, it was becoming something of a metaphorical itch. I was actively waiting for these characters to acknowledge each other, and it took me out of the emotional world of the play.

I feel this work could have benefited from a structure like that of Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years; some play with non-linear narrative, having each member of this couple enter the play at opposite stages of this counselling experience, having the couple meet for their sole scene together at the centre of the work rather than at the end. It would have made for something more engaging than two people taking turns talking at the audience, who are positioned as the couple’s counsellor.

My secondary issue has to do with the way the script and the cast do a lot of strong work to make the husband a sympathetic character, but similar work is not done as it relates to the wife. It is almost as though the script believes the wife’s transgender identity alone will win the audience over and in my specific case it did not.

The husband is there to work. He speaks honestly about his responses to the situation these two find themselves in. He speaks honestly about how his partner kept her identity and the fact she had begun her transition a secret from him for months. He is admittedly a wildly oblivious character and approaches the situation from some highly problematic standpoints. I went as far as to deem the man we meet at the beginning of the work a ‘homonormative hell beast’ in the conversation I mentioned at the start of this review. However, by the end of the play he has gone on a massive journey of self-discovery. A journey that unfolds at both the script and performance level with a lovely sophistication that I meant I could not help but almost take his side. I cared more about him as a person (rather than an abstract concept) by the play’s end than I did the character I ought to identify with more as a transfeminine person, his wife.

I (with an awareness I’m translating this trope across marginalised contexts) would almost label this character as an “angry trans woman”. When she isn’t making fun of or outright insulting her husband she is rattling off a laundry list of every terrible thing there is about being a trans woman. I’ll admit that she is a very humorous character, and this lightens the load to a point. However, the wife’s monologues are highly expositional, and we get very little insight into her specific experience as opposed to the ‘universally representative’ overview of the transfeminine experience we do receive. I find this ironic in such a sad way given this character speaks for a time about how she despises being seen and spoken of as if she were an abstract concept rather than as a person.

I’m also of the opinion that Dowling’s performance was not strong enough to support the role’s marathonic nature and its status as (for the most part) a monologue. Dowling’s wife is angry and flippant and uncaring and then she suddenly is bawling her eyes out and is crying for the rest of her monologues, a pathos that I feel she did not earn and I as an audience member didn’t earn either. She moves and laughs and even squints in ways that read as calculated performative choices rather than authentic reactions to emotional stimuli. It was frankly distracting to see the potential for a nuanced performance in Dowling’s writing and not see that nuance reflected by what Dowling chose to do with her own words. The saving grace of this character’s arc for me is the monologue she gives about the wonders of girldick. It is the one moment of specific and untainted trans joy I identified in this work, and it is a moment that doesn’t sanitise itself for the sake of the cisgender viewer’s comfort. 

Unconditional seems burdened by a pressure to be ‘representative’ of as much of the transgender woman’s experience as possible. A burden that I sympathise with as a Queer and specifically a trans playwright. I understand that we get so little opportunities to tell our stories and on our own terms and so the craving to tell as much of it as we can in the limited time we have, is one I know well. However, quantity does come at the cost of quality here. This is not to say that I think this play is bad. I liked this play and as I stated at the beginning of this review, I see great promise in it. It is because I want this play to be brilliant that I might read as overly critical here.

Ultimately, Unconditional is an intellectually provoking night at theatre. A night that could also be emotionally provoking with some shifts to the script and aspects of the performance.