The subject of Matthew Whittet’s new play SCHOOL DANCE is the highs and lows of turbulent adolescence. Where better to place all this angst than in the context of the annual school dance!
Whittet comes up with an intriguing mix of characters, all pumped up with hormones and insecurities.
The focus is on three nerdy guys waiting outside the school dance hall. In an inspired blending of cast and creative team, the playwright himself, designer Jonathon Oxlade, and sound designer Luke Smiles, revel in playing the three nerdy characters, Matthew, Luke and Jonathon. Yes the play is based, very loosely, on their own adolescent experiences and perspectives.
Jack Wetere has great fun playing the three nerds nemesis,the school bully, the Neanderthal like Derek Sturgess.
Amber McMahon, who local audiences will know from her great work when she was part of the Sydney Theatre Company’s Resident Actor’s Company, is a delight playing a variety of female characters,- Joanne, the troubled Danika, Random Girl, and frigid, uppity Hannah Ellis.
SCHOOL DANCE turns on two of the school kids going into anxiety overload and having total freak-outs. All of a sudden Matt, and then a little later down the track, Danika, can’t feel themselves, or more to the point, feel invisible. Even freakier than this Danika travels into another dimension/reality where Matt joins her.
You have probably got the picture. Whittet’s play starts conventionally enough but soon goes off in all sorts of bright and comic tangents.
The play features an abundance of verbal and sight gags…A few favourite exchanges between Danika and Matt are,- ‘it’s time for the odd to get even’, and ‘don’t get a hero complex…Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean that I need to be rescued’.
A hilarious scene sees Amber McMahon dressed as a unicorn. Oxlade’s costume designs are exotic…some of them felt like they had come straight out of an early Woody Allen comedy.
There’s a great comic scene with the three unlikely lads breaking out from the stage on pushbikes with a blaring eighties soundtrack accompanying them.
SCHOOL DANCE is recommended as great family entertainment for the summer season.
SCHOOL DANCE, A Windmill Theatre production in association with the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Festival, opened at Wharf 1 Sydney Theatre Company on Friday 11th January and runs until Sunday 3rd February, 2013. SCHOOL DANCE will then goes on to tour to the Brisbane Powerhouse, the Melbourne Comedy Festival and Wollongong’s Illawarra Performing Arts Centre.
© David Kary
14th January, 2012
Tags: Sydney Stage Reviews- SCHOOL DANCE, Matthew Whittet, Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney Festival, The Windmill Theatre Company, Jonathon Oxlade, Luke Smiles, Amber McMahon, Rosemary Myers, Sydney Arts Guide, David Kary
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