If you've wanted to outrage people, "what's going on in our university campuses" has been a go-to target for centuries - the places where young people start to experiment with new ideas and each other, where theories start to become horrendously practical, where teenagers become adults and where those in charge find themselves questioned by those supposedly there to learn. And for elite universities where young mem and women go from being hothoused in single-sex private schools to suddenly engaging each other and alcohol away from family and control, things get heated very quickly.
Kendall Feaver takes these circumstances and brings them into a world where instant social media commentary serves to inflame things and get outrage to speed ahead of any attempts to deal with the real-world issues, where brutal things happen in the names of real justice and when people can find themselves in over their head before they're ready. It's a play full of ideas, without easy answers, heated and thoughtful and about the penalties everybody suffers when they let their actions get ahead of care and intention.
Leading as two key combatants are Emily Halvea and Fiona Press - Halvea the young activist full of passion and unsure what should happen, just that someone should do something, Press as the older member of the system who finds herself trapped between an institutional role and her own human integrity. Both give passionate engaging performances that force the audience to understand them even as they both make choices that cause more trouble for them. Julia Robertson as the centre of their arguments, the victim who's being further victimised as her life becomes a cause of contention, keeps focus as a character whose marginalisation is almost the point. Jane Phegan plays two different mothers with emotional truth and Mark Parugio and Tony Cogan play two different men from different eras both caught up in the course of events.
Director Tessa Long uses the small Stables stage well in moving the story forward with speed and clarity, using some creative stylisation for a few moments to bring the wider world into a simple room with two chairs, and gives the play suitable scope. It's an engrossing thought provoking ride into the frontlines of feminist debate that manages to deal with hot topics in a way that never lets rage take over from thought. Kendall Feaver's debut play "the Almighty Sometimes" a few years ago was an accomplished debut - this is a development of skill that's surprising but very much appreciated.
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