By Jennifer Beasley
A little like a Fawlty Towers dinner but without the food. Or chairs.
The beginning for All The Things We’ve Done at Theatre Works is promising. The patrons are beguiled by the three ‘air hostesses’, actors bedecked in yellow wigs and bright blue and yellow costumes, supplied by Oliver Lacoon Willamson, who sing, joke, and hand out suitcases and bags to the waiting crowd as we are joyfully welcomed into not a theatre, but an airport.
Yes, an airport. With smiles on our faces we enter, lining up to go through customs. And like the real Melbourne airport, it’s dark, dingy, and our emotional ‘trauma’, our luggage, weighs heavy, as we stand, slightly bored, and go through the process of having our bags x-rayed. Clever set design by Rachel Nankin perfectly captures the roller conveyor and lit x-ray stand as we pass through the line. Jezza, the scary security guard, captures the intimidating presence of airport personnel perfectly. Then, alarms. A performer has set off the x-ray siren. ‘Security’ rush in, as the audience, milling around, are now the embarrassed witnesses to a person’s emotional baggage. Audio overlaps as we discover her shame and relationship issues. This is done in a playful and humorous way, but with underlying bite, as this show is about participation baby!
Designed to challenge your own beliefs, it certainly triggers my own with past airport difficulties with children as well as question what we hold onto (I told you Mark, it’s not funny to joke about a bomb at an airport. Now let’s pack that memory back down deep!)
Succinct lighting by Georgie Wolfe and strongly supporting sound of rolling thunder and associated noises by Sofia Jorgovic help move this along, however, as soon as we are ‘checked-in’, the interactive elements flounder. The waiting passengers (us) are herded to the rear of the stage, where other actors play out their own emotional issues before us, whether it be obsessions to romance novels covering for a lack of a love life, a book launch or praying to whatever deity they believe in currently. This might have been great if you could see or hear them. And why was that? I might have a tall spirit, but that doesn’t mean I have the vertical abilities of others in the audience, whose towering height and sound blocking bodies walled the performers from us.
I was also getting tired of carrying around the suitcase I was given, and, craving a chair, happened upon several left vacant. I started to check my watch, praying to my own deity to ‘please let this end soon’. Someone heard, as the lovely trio of air hostesses sang and danced, joined in by the rest of the nine cast members. Without these three characters propping up this performance, my companion and I would have left, but we were trapped by the strapping bodies of the audience, and I managed from my chair to peer between the knees of one huge lad to see part of the girls’ dance. Probably the highlight of my single life so far.
Written by Kate Speakman and Aleksandr Corke, and directed by Aleksandr Corke, this interactive experience holds a great deal of promise. However, there are too many lags and dead spots, confusion as to where performance elements are taking place and probably too many audience members to successfully pull this off.
We were both thankful when we were able to leave at the rear of the theatre and have high praise to the amazing actors (Gene Efron, Jackson Cross, Sophie Bengough, Kaia Reyes, Abbey Hanson, Ellen O’Connor, Mads Lou, Jo Jabalde and Ashleigh Gray) who did some great improv and whose talents tried to hold this airport disaster together.
All The Things We’ve Done plays until October 26th at Theatre Works.
