Talk of a “cost-of-living crisis” has become so ubiquitous that it’s in danger of devolving into cliche and solipsism; the fact that everyone feels some kind of economic pressure doesn’t mean we’re all going through it together. Polish-American playwright Martyna Majok’s 2018 drama Cost of Living predates this crisis, but it weirdly embodies the kind of false equivalencies that allow rich people to feel poor and able-bodied people to feel disabled.
Perhaps it’s a question of timing – issues with our own NDIS have become so pressing they seem to cry out for a more immediate, localised response – but I suspect it’s also a failure of nerve. Majok adopts the choppy, awkward register of the meet-cute for most of the piece and, while she touches on some complex themes, she also indulges in some wispy sentimentality. The result is a play that seems to pull its punches, that comforts precisely where it should provoke and challenge.
Cost of Living deals with two sets of people navigating the world of care and physical disability, toggling between two unrelated case studies that only coalesce in the play’s final – and finally problematic – scene. The first pair are Ani (Rachel Edmonds) and Eddie (Aaron Pedersen). They’re recently divorced (although, crucially, they haven’t signed the papers) and dealing with the fallout of a devastating accident that’s left Ani a paraplegic. The second pair are John (Oli Pizzey Stratford) and Jess (Mabel Li). He is a PhD student with cerebral palsy and she is a bartender hoping for work on the side.
The key unifying theme is money: how having or not having it indentures people, binding them contractually and emotionally. Ani has funding for care, but the kind of care she can buy isn’t reliable. Eddie, a former addict, is galvanised by the problem, stepping in as the caregiver he failed to be in the marriage. But financial pressures can’t simply be willed away and soon the two are faced with some devastating choices.
John’s financial situation is clearly different from Ani’s – as Matilda Woodroofe’s excellent set and costumes pointedly reveal. He can afford to hire the cerebral palsy care he wants, which subsequently grants him a certain agency over Jess, who is applying for the job. He can be cavalier with her emotions and ignorant of her needs. Notions of power and vulnerability are upended.
It’s a fertile setup but it settles too quickly into a rhythm of quiet reflection and never really ignites its own dramatic fuses. John is a character almost designed to provoke, but Majok prunes him of invective and intent. Ani is dealing with the most consequential changes to her physical self, but the playwright doesn’t give her the verbal range that might articulate this. The result is a play about disability that subtly sidelines its disabled characters. The final scene wipes them altogether.
Director Anthea Williams makes a solid fist of the piece – and elicits some strong performances from the cast – without really solving the play’s underlying evasions. There is a reserved, soft-focus approach to scenes that helps the realism but does little for the poetry or the contrast. The best moments involve gentle caregiving, actions of washing and drying, of dressing and touching. Small kindnesses are deeply felt.
Pedersen opens the piece and plays the shuffling ex-husband with sensitivity and hulking despair; he constantly seems on the cusp of tears. Edmonds is wonderfully brittle and resigned; they capture the resolution and resolve of Ani, her frustration and appreciation of care given too late.
Stratford is a terrific presence as John, smart and slightly rakish, filling in gaps in the character’s conception with a lot of natural charisma. Li, meanwhile, is excellent as the compromised, open-hearted Jess – she gives shading and colour to a part otherwise hampered by the playwright’s deliberate concealment of key information. Again, a strong production is constantly lapping at the playwright’s dramatic limitations.
Majok sketches but then largely sidesteps the crushing economics of care in favour of easeful comparisons and false equivalences; that final scene suggests that we’re all vulnerable to loneliness and poverty without acknowledging the disability community’s particular and compacting vulnerabilities. And while representation of people with disability onstage is welcome, it doesn’t paper over the overarching inaccessibility of Australian theatre itself. Until that is fixed, we’re hardly all in it together.
Cost of Living runs at Melbourne Theatre Company’s The Sumner until 19 October
