By Gary Helmore
A world premiere always carries a charge of anticipation. With ‘Who I’m Doing This For’, audiences are rewarded with a taut, three-handed drama-thriller that delivers on its promise. Winner of the Amethyst Award, this debut full-length play from Peter Farrar (The Most Alive Part of Me, Worse Than Here) marks an auspicious arrival. Tense, precise and atmospherically controlled, the production feels sharply attuned to the current cultural zeitgeist, making for a gripping evening of theatre.
Who I’m Doing This For pulls the audience into the claustrophobic orbit of Claudia, Simon, and his father, enveloping the audience in their shared history and the fraught bond between father and son.
As he explores intergenerational trauma, director Steven T Boltz (Hey, Is Dee Dee Home?, Lenore) expertly harnesses the actors’ collective energy to craft a taut, relentless production that refuses to let the audience off the hook.
By tapping into the thwarted ambitions of unfulfilled men, the play creates a haunting portrait of the modern male psyche.
The script dares to go where most won’t, into the void of male loneliness, making it quietly political. It captures the exact moment when ‘lost’ becomes ‘radicalised,’ showing how the manosphere, with its grudges, offers a seductive, if poisoned, sense of belonging to those the modern world has left behind. The play interrogates a culture that externalises blame onto women, society and government, while sidestepping responsibility, exposing how this fuels cycles of harm.
At the centre is the expertly controlled Lochie Laffin-Vines (The Librar-IAN, A Streetcar Named Desire) as Simon, charting his descent with precision and unease. Playing opposite is the radiant and assured Emily Farrell (Alien Love, The Weight of Dreams) as his partner, Claudia, who brings warmth and clarity to the production with a steady, humane presence. Bringing gritty realism is Tony Adams (Another F***ing Press Conference) as Simon’s father. In portraying Simon’s father, a Vietnam vet drowning in alcoholism, Adams captures the hair-trigger volatility and instability of undiagnosed PTSD and the trail of wreckage it leaves in its wake. This culminates in the father’s gut-wrenching plea that tears you: “Every prayer I muttered, still unanswered”, a devastating cry of abandonment.
Simon is the heart of the play, a man disappearing in plain sight. Simon, overlooked at work, with a disintegrating relationship, sinks into a violent fantasy that becomes all-consuming.
Simon’s psyche has fallen into his late father’s shadow; the son becomes the worst version of the father, proving that some inheritances aren’t left in wills.
While the 60-minute runtime keeps the pace brisk, I was looking for the common ground between Simon and Claudia; where was the bond they were trying to save? A clearer sense of their shared history would have raised the stakes of their struggle and made the loss more keenly felt. Similarly, while the father’s unremitting hostility is effectively unsettling, that risks flattening the character; a few fleeting glimpses of paternal warmth would have made the eventual shattering dramatically interesting and the wrench more powerful. The production is already tightly controlled, and with a little more layering in its relationships, there is potential to elevate an already gripping drama.
Gemma Valastro’s stage management keeps the production running with unobtrusive efficiency, while John Jenkin’s lighting/sound design and Minty Hunter’s AV design shape the mood with precision. Again, a must-see night for intimate independent theatre. Strap yourself in for a great night with ‘Who I’m Doing This For’, preceded by 5 short monologues showcasing the richness of our local writing talent.
