The God That Comes

Hawksley Workman is an audacious performer of immeasurable talent. A gifted multi-instrumentalist, he possesses a versatile voice that can hit a sugar-sweet falsetto one minute, before breaking down to a Tom Waits howl the next. He's the sole performer in this "wine-soaked rock & roll cabaret", not that you'd necessarily notice as he alternates between instruments and expels an intense energy at every given opportunity. So pained and bombastic are his histrionics, in fact, that the stage actually starts to seem cluttered with personality. It can be a privilege for audiences to watch performers give them their all in this manner, but we start to wish that Workman would hold back a little. He exercises no restraint when showcasing his skills and consequently puts his name to a work that, while gloriously unfocussed, ends up ultimately unsatisfying.

An invokation of Bacchus, God of wine, The God that Comes is mostly let down by its central conceit. From the moment the performer appears before us, engaging in a slurred beat poetry recital, it's clear that 2B Theatre's intention is to offer up an evening of affected debauchery. The character Workman plays as he relates a story of conflict between the idol and a mythical king is too poorly defined to pass the piece off as straight theatre, while the general level of artifice on display makes the man's emoting seem like insincere bluster. The musician may well be the real deal, but this particular show is far from it.