Above: Hayden Moon and Gemma Dart as Warren and Emily. Featured image: Gemma Dart as Emily. Photo credit: Matthew Miceli.
There’s a new immersive experience to be had in the Inner West, just in time for this year’s Mardi Gras Festival.
In a festival themed this year as ‘Our Future’, the production of emerging playwright Z Bui’s compelling school-years-plus reunion piece in the transformed basement of the iconic Imperial Hotel totally fits the bill as it kicks us deservingly in the guts.
Its wake-up call uses a wash of memory and more to also kick us in the heart across the head then hug our hope. We sit in the same bar as the protagonists-here with their communication staged on the loaded locale of a famous queer Sydney dance floor.
In confronting proximity within this blended performer and audience space the issues could easily be our own. We join the pair as they reflect on what friendship was, what a future with our queer friends should be as well as how to endure a larger community around us limping to keep up with the concepts of change, appearance, courage and identity.
Having seen this play grow up through Fruit Box Theatre’s RIPE Development Program to such evocative audience-participation reality-play mode and at Mardi Gras time is a secure thrill.
Bui’s play shakes the snow dome of a LTF – a longterm friendship spanning decades of experience, visceral emotion, whilst searching for true selves and survival of a multitude of revisted memories.
Above: Chloe Jayne as Past Emily and Angelica Lockyer as Past Warren. Photo credit : Matthew Miceli.
That dome is shaken by the pain and strength of each well-drawn character, at times in joint vice-like grip and often with bar-table/cabaret-tabled audience nods of recognition or thought-provoked theatre in the new-round realisation.
Warren and Emily meet in a bar. Years after they first met. As different people to their school years. With the butterflies-plus hues of the lives they now must lead. And despite a rich history of scenes growing up together, now are visibly struggling to maintain communication and connection in their adult world.
This text-rich script with social commentary asides troping the way has the engaging rhythm of expression dear and intrinsic to long term acquaintances.
This production places the main characters on a literal pedestal from which the actors playing Warren and Emily virtuosically deliver their variegated sparring, empathies, justifications and defences.
Warren (Hayden Moon) has transitioned. The growing old soul nature of this character, with a calm, sage comfort of operating on a place of challenge plus relief is ably sustained by Moon.
Emily (Gemma Dart) has taken her attachment style and reactive approach to life and the patriarchy from school to successive decades. Dart’s performance explodes off the barstool, showing great range, a finely drawn character and a perfect portrayal of extrovert vulnerabilities.
Above: Hayden Moon as Warren working through the past and present with Gemma Dart as Emily. Photo credit: Matthew Miceli.
Supporting these two ‘now’ characters are the Past Warren and Past Emily. This play’s inimitable, infectious energy owes a lot to the strength of re-enacted vignettes from school years and beyond for the review and adjustment of the main characters.
Such interruptions benefit from Sean Landis’ tight direction and blocking in the space. His was a dynamic and fine use of the available space, entrances, exits and the bar area. Sound effects such as for text message and for the Birdy club or school party ambience are apt, precise and well placed. Costuming choices are also notably excellent in such scenes.
The youthful and not-so-youthful struggles of Past Warren-Em in and out of pain, love, both good and bad choices and frustrations are captured with instant, contrasted energy and clear expression by Angelica Lockyer (Past Warren) and Chloe Jayne (Past Emily).
Shifts to play other acquaintances by the cast at times are also well handled and complete, no matter how short the necessary excursion.
The big take home from this Mardi Gras event and successful morphing of Bui’s worthwhile play is the need for discussion in our lives.
The roadblocks and also the small wins of giving clear, courageous chat a go are vividly presented here. Such effort in our diverse and often unspoken lives, earnest or firecracker in style, queer or otherwise-are succinctly shown during this event also. The discussion has an open, ongoing feel from this play’s honest script, here deftly performed.
Our future does not look easy, but seems a little brighter than before after following the characters interacting hopefully and assertively here. See this-not only for the play’s relevance to our current LGBTQIA+ communities but to celebrate the past, present and future you in a changing now.