This is remarkably silly fun, with a truly timely message.
Monty (Rhiaan Marquez) is in Year 8.
This is the second KXT production in a row that’s set in a junior high school (fortunately, for me, that educational experience is still a very recent memory.)
But Monty’s school is different from most: the students and staff are mythological creatures, of the half-human half-beast variety (so maybe it’s not that different from your average high school.)
Monty’s problem is that she is all human. From her minotaur dad (Mason Phoumirath) she got the human half, and from her mermaid mum (Luisa Galloway) she got … we’ll you guessed it.
But if she remains her uncool self, and therefore an inevitable victim of bullying, how will she ever get to pash Harry the Sphinx (Lachie Pringle)?
Michael McStay’s script is delightfully funny, full of terrific one liners and outrageous puns. Director Sammy Jing elicits from his entire cast performances that are big, bold and gloriously audacious.
Except for the sexual innuendos, it’s the sort of script that could be made into a sassy TV show aimed at an audience of the same age (if not genetic makeup) as the characters.
Except for its deceptive depth.
You could read Too Human as a play about high school bullying and the need to be yourself… but that seems a little too easy.
In our age of cancel culture, the pressure to cohere to the group has a wider relevance than the horrors of high school.
And, in contrast to the mythological beasts who are intersectional exemplars (clearly half this, obviously half that), humans are described throughout the play as complex, complicated and contradictory. It’s an insight that gets less airplay than it might. In our age of incessant sociological labelling, we can forget that what’s on the label ain’t necessarily what’s in the jar. And what’s in the jar today may be very different tomorrow. Humans (all of us!) are defined by biology – but we’re also fired by possibility. We’re not so much things as happenings. (There’s something beautifully Renaissance humanist about it all.)
It’s an inspiring, joyful, restorative vision.
Paul Gilchrist
Too Human by Michael McStay
At KXT on Broadway until 20 July
Image by Phil Erbacher
Theatre Red 