“Peter Finlay plays the nameless protagonist who, for much of the time, wanders the streets of Melbourne, trying to connect with the city that he now inhabits. He is a stranger with a past to which he only occasionally alludes. That has been “catastrophic”, a word used only once, can be taken as a given, since he now has no place to call his own.

……..it is as though the play lacks the “ grammar” that he describes as a site of struggle in his attempts to learn a new language

Finally is to be commended for his fine performance of this challenging work.”

The Age- Thursday, September 19, 2002, Helen Thomson

“…..a play for our times…..I was completely engaged…. despite the complexity of the text, and the confronting, cavernous space beyond the seating area…..Mammad Adiani’s work is in some ways less a paly and more an eloquent, dream-like piece of Poetic prose….its intimacy enhanced by Peter Finlay’s sensitive portrayal…..caused me to feel that I was the sole observer present…”

From Mary Lou Jelbart’s ABC Radio 774 review
Performed at the North Melbourne ARTSPACE September 2002

“In the Mirror explores otherness through the stressful episode of a job interview.
Mammad Aidani employs mirrors in his play as a symbolic representation of his theme. Both Shaun (Andrew S. Gilbert) and Virginia (Funda Sirinkal) use a mirror to help prepare for their job interview, revealing as they do so the otherness that will count against them.

Shaun is a long- term unemployed man whose confidence, after 42 unsuccessful interviews, is at rock-bottom. Virginia, a migrant whose English is good, but still a struggle, her mourning for family left behind still raw, knows there are various roles she can play, but that they are likely to break down under pressure.

Meanwhile, Paul (Alan King and Paula (Helen Hopkins), with their derided assistant Hendro (Afshin Nokouseresht), prepare to do the interviewing. They are narcissistic, unsympathetic and enamoured of each others’ image. Clearly the only successful applicants will be those who mirror them.

This play represent a voice from newcomers to our society who write form its margins with powerful representations of both the other, and ourselves.” ...
The Age- August 5 2002, Helen Thomson

“We all know what it is like to live in a box,” says a man in a wheelchair acting as an inner voice. Audience left to ponder meaning. We are all meaning- makers by nature. Toss us a mad image, an irrational phrase or a fractured thought and we will make a story our of it. Watching this play is a struggle.” ... Herald Sun

“You might say An accidental Departure is resolutely non traditional; there is no linear narrative, no usual sense of character. And that’s fine but it depends how dramatically satisfying it is. It is deliberately elusive and fragmented, like much early modernist poetry, to make the audience work.”

“……..and central to the whole enterprise, I suppose, is the role of language. I say I suppose, because nothing is really clear and often it is difficult to tell what’s going on.” ... Sunday Age 19.9.1999

“However, the language is odd: it is either naturalistic or else a stilted stream of abstracts. The costumes give real verve to the characters. But words – what are they saying?” ... Sunday Herald-Sun 19/9/99

“An Idiot Amongst Us is a play which challenges the purpose, function and boundaries of communication, and how much someone’s actual identity is defined by their language.” ... The Age, May 1996

“Ever tried saying a word over and over until it completely loses its meaning? In An Idiot Amongst Us the said idiot, Ollie struggles in his creeping disengagement form reality to make sense of language.” ... The Melbourne Times, May 1996

“Olli’s (Ben Daddario) meandering into madness or sanity is embellished by a clutch of other characters, all shared by three performers (Cinzia Ccoassin Tim Wright and Alison Van Reeken) Aidani’s An Idiot Amongst Us, is a quirky contemplation of displacement and reinvention….” Belvoir St Theater, Sydney, Sun Herald 27-9-1998

“Not every one who goes to see this play will sing its praises. However, if you embrace the work of Samuel Beckett (notably, his play WAITIN FOR GODOT) you will probably be fascinated by the promises of AN IDIOT AMONGST US……..

There is one moment in Aidani’s masterpiece that is déjà vu GODOT…when Beckett’s character Lucky has been taunted by Pozzo to a point of no return….when his spirit breaks and he begins an exhausting tirade….

Ollie approaches his breaking point in a similar but quieter more introspective way…but he too is so obviously trapped and struggling to extricate himself.

This play is a ‘ journey of the mind’. Ideas ebb and flow (not without humor) …as we join Ollie ‘in’ and ‘out’ of his consciousness. In this my concentration was well rewarded. He confesses early on in the drama that ‘ I am’ I’m not’ indicating that even in isolation there are everyday contradictions.

“AN IDIOT AMONGST US” is a challenging play on all levels. A play not to be missed ….its promise is clear. Its problems eternal.”

This play is ‘a journey of the mind’

“Now and then there comes to our notice a very special play…and for me recently. An Idiot Amongst us, written by Mammad Aidani was such a play.” ... Al Irvine, My world of Music, May 1996

To the question always asked: ‘why do you write’? the poet’s answer will always be the briefest: ‘to live better.’- St John Peres (1955)

“the last poem, ‘All in Mind’, appropriately seals this collection. It is always a surprising for those amongst us who feel pull of other lands, to find oneself in a flash, walking foreign streets and speaking a foreign tongue.”

It was all in my mind
I realized I was living
In a different town with a different tongue. (p.74)

Challenging theatrical plots

Two short works

By Mammad Aidani, directed and designed by Lloyd Jones, La Mama Theatre

…these two short works, Waiting for Sunset and It was …then, are monologues that chart the alienating, experience of the outsider. The work obviously comes from personal experience. Waiting for Sunset is a work mimed by a male actor (Raymond Triggs), but also spoken by a female reader (Jo-Anne Armstrong) at the side of the stage. It is a piece that makes considerable demands on its director as well, for it records a series of small actions and observations that are only loosely in tandem with the words.

The work is a reading of a figure in a landscape, as though we were positioned as watchers who very largely had only the smallest of gestures- a had to the forehead, taking off boots, small steps and hesitations- to interpret for us this man's character and predicament. In a sense, he is that familiar but always unknown, single, lonely man killing time at a seaside park, whose life may be as much a blank to him as it is to us, his uncaring observers. Altogether it is a challenging theatrical exercise.

It was ….then is more culturally specific. A woman (Helen Doig) is stranded alone and unable to speak the language, in an Italian Town. We are not told precisely the reason for her pain, but it has much to do with her absolute aloneness, her unwillingness to look back and her inability to go forward.

Jones has created an ingenious set that is lit by fire and its bright reflection in a mirror opposite, black-clad figure of the woman. She sits in a number of chairs, signifying lonely café vigils, around the edge of the town piazza, a public, social place that only emphasises her painful position.

The Age. Wednesday, September 17, 2003