There’s a whole lot of monkey business in TREVOR, Nick Jones’ furious flight of fancy that has a chimp make a chump of us all.
The titular Trevor is a clever primate, the apogee of anthropomorphism, touched with the tarnished tizz of Tinseltown celebrity.
Past his prime as a cute performing plaything, Trevor lives with his human mother, Sandra, a recently widowed woman who with her late husband hand raised the chimp from infancy.
Taught to juggle, roller skate and drink from a glass, Trevor attracted celebrity status to the point of starring with Morgan Fairchild, facilitating at the local lawman’s child’s baptism and become the town mascot.
But Trevor’s maturity has caused him to go from cute to culpable, a delinquent prone to unlicensed car driving and baby snatching.
An absurdist satire, TREVOR swings, grabs and bites at society’s insatiable and fatuous infatuation with celebrity and our failure to truly communicate.
There’s no failure in the communication of actor Jamie Oxenbould in conveying the frustration and fun of Trevor, his primate gait, his fret and strut, agile jaw and limbs a pitch perfect performance of cheekiness and menace.
Garth Holcombe similarly channels the simian as Oliver, Trevor’s role model and aspiration, a pongidae whose sophistication has made him more hominid, a startling presence in white suited spangle.
Of the humans, Sandra, Trevor’s foster mother, is the most sympathetic, and Di Adams imbues her with a quiet and patient compassion.
Eloise Snape presents an over the top caricature of Morgan Fairchild, Ainslie McGlynn elicits a simmering hysteria as Ashley, the nervous next door neighbour, Jemwell Danao is an animal welfare bureaucrat and David Lynch the dim witted sheriff.
Directed by Shaun Rennie, TREVOR is a nifty ninety minute rollick, a frolic fraught with frustrated ambition and opportunity thwarted by miscommunication.
When: 14th June – 6th July 2019
Times: Tuesdays – Saturdays at 7:30pm; 5pm on Sundays
Tickets: Adult $42 | Concession $35 | $20 for Under 30s (Thursday events)
Where: Kings Cross Theatre (KXT) – Level 2, Kings Cross Hotel, Kings Cross
Website: http://www.kingsxtheatre.com/trevor