Statistics reveal that more and more people in Sydney town are bunking down alone. Is this a societal trend and is this figure to increase even further?  Is it a good or bad thing? Can we do anything about it…? It is a weighty subject and one deserving of the attention of talented young theatremakers such as Augusta Supple who has curated her new show, SINGLED OUT, around it.

The show starts with a satirical bang. The audience is crowded around the foyer when a young man announces that he is an accountant who is about to do a presentation re the show and could everyone please come over to his flip chart stand. We all huddled together and heard him begin his spiel. The presentation started very somberly- as he ripped pages off his flip chart and delivered countless statistics about the growing social trend of young people living alone and the dire consequences of this…..

Then all of a sudden he left the verbiage behind and started some spontaneous, frenetic break-dancing around the crowd. It was pretty impressive, vibrant stuff, and then just as quickly he announced that he was done now and could everyone please now go down to the Reginald theatre where the show proper was about to begin.

How can one top an opening that features a Dancing Accountant?!

SINGLED OUT ‘proper’ features vignettes/playlettes written by a group  of eight talented Australian writers- Vanessa Bates, Wayne Blair, Susan Carradine, Luke Carlson, Emma Magenta, Grace De Morgan, Tim Spencer, Alli Sebastian Wolf- who were briefed to write on the theme and to ‘imagine the unwatched moment’…Which is the point essentially..When one is living alone, there is no-one watching…no-one that one has to share with…It gives the writers a rich world to explore not the least being the many examples of eccentric behaviour that result. The writing was of a good standard though, at times I wished for it to flow more from the heart than the head.

My favourite pieces,- Alli Sebastian- Wolf’s ‘Lighthouse Keeper’ about a suicidal lighthouse keeper and his beloved cat- featuring some neat puppetry work with a cat puppet made by the writer, Grace De Morgan’s ‘The Intruder’ about an intruding moth that sees two neighbours, an elderly man and a young woman, meet and befriend each other, and Emma Magenta’s playful and insightful  ‘Our Two Sounds Therefore, Which are One’- where the scenario is a little different, as two young, demonstrative neighbours, who resent each other greatly, make a kind of musical peace.

Lisa Mimmocchi’s set is neat, and catches the eye from the start with the entire cast walking/drifting out onto the set and taking their various vantage points, in what is set out as different parts of a house,  from which they perform from…bathroom…bedroom, lounge room sofa, study, et al….

I haven’t singled out any of the cast- the players in the Singled Out ensemble deserve mention,- comprising Amanda Stephens Lee, Bali Pada, Rosie Lourde, Josipa Draisma, Leofric Kingsford-Smith, Amber McMahon, Eloise Snape, Richard Cox, Alex Bryant-Smith, Alli Sebastian- Wolf, Roland Baker, Kate Fitzpatrick and Appelonia.

Recommended, SINGLED OUT opened at the Reginald Theatre, the Seymour Centre on Thursday October 3 and is playing until Saturday October 12, 2013.