It’s a neat trick that blossoms into a fascinating night of theatre.
Seventeen by Matthew Whittet is a piece for mature actors but asks them to play teenagers. School has just finished – forever – and they’ve gather in the local park to celebrate. It’s an ensemble piece, and we watch these six young people drink, dance and greet the dawn.
The title implies we’ll be offered a representation of a particular demographic, and like all pieces with an aim this broad, it has to fail.
What it does achieve is sentimentality, in the most wonderfully humane way. (Sentimentality, not nostalgia; the play’s set here and now, not in the past of the actors’ youth.)
Sentimentality could be defined as being overly emotional and safely enjoying the feeling – which is often exactly what we want from a visit to the theatre, and this play delivers.
It’s a top cast, and under the direction of Mary-Anne Gifford, it’s a joy to see them do their magic. Peter Kowitz nails Mike, the annoyingly alpha male with some serious growing up to do. Di Adams as Sue, his girlfriend, offers a beautiful portrait of a gentle-hearted young woman who knows Life offers more. Noel Hodda’s Tom is a captivating mix of youthful suggestibility and soul-deep maturity. Katrina Foster’s Edwina is a delightfully funny presentation of a young woman already looking to the future, dismissing teenage foolishness but still naïve enough to be caught by its allures. Di Smith is Lizzie, Mike’s younger sister, and it’s a terrific portrayal of childish pester power, impish mischief and sibling affection. Colin Moody’s Ronnie is deeply affecting, powerfully capturing the awkward vulnerability of the outsider.
Apart from the sheer talent of this brilliant ensemble, the piece is also irresistible because it brings to the fore the paradox of performance. The usual way the game of theatre works is that the audience is invited to forget that the actors are actually acting. We’ll often judge a piece successful if this illusion is so persuasive that it’s only broken at the curtain call. Yet, in this production, the discrepancy between the age of the actors and that of the characters means we’re constantly being reminded they are, indeed, acting. If in these most unusual circumstances we still forget, it’s testament to the performers’ extraordinary skill. But I wonder whether the more likely impact is that we’re made more conscious of the actors’ active empathetic role-playing, more appreciative of their creative decisions.
And that brings me to the second paradox of performance highlighted by this play. In every production, each actor brings to each role their life experience, even though it’s not their life they’re being asked to portray. Their knowledge and wisdom will inform the character but not determine the character – the play itself does that. On one level, this particular play asks its actors to forget everything they might have learnt from a lifetime of adulthood. (For some of us, though not all, that’s a hell of a lot of forgetting.) Watching Seventeen, we know the actors are doing this forgetting, this erasing. We know they know more than the characters. (If dramatic irony is defined as those occasions when we know more than the character, then all actors present all characters with dramatic irony – only in this production, they do it explicitly.)
And irony is close cousin to pity. If only you knew…..
In witnessing actors in the deliberate process of forgetting, or erasing, the fundamental emotion aroused is pity. We pity the teenager characters their myopia, their naivety, their inexperience. Perhaps we even pity their innocence.
If only you knew…..
In the play, Tom reads a letter he wrote as a child to his future self. This play is a letter written to our past selves – a wistful, funny, forgiving, love letter.
Paul Gilchrist
Seventeen by Matthew Whittet
At Seymour Centre until 19 Oct
Image by Carlita Sari
Theatre Red 