I’m not a fan of Australian theatre’s obsession with teenagers. For me, it suggests a tiresome childishness in our intellectual outlook, a mawkish nostalgia that resists adulthood, a fear of responsibility being allowed to trump the embracing of opportunity.
But I also know that childhood leaves no survivors*, and if you want to explore vulnerability (whatever its cause), the teenage years are a very good place to start.
And that’s what Šime Knežević does in his beautifully written Various Characters, directed with skilful subtlety by Victor Kalka.
Set in Western Sydney in the early 2000’s, most of the characters are teenagers.
Nina (Georgia Da Silva) has lost her mother and is living unhappily with her aunt. She desperately wants to visit her sister in Melbourne, but she doesn’t have the cash. The solution? Sell the dog. But she can’t sell it to just anyone; it has to go to a good home. Both touching and funny, this initial scene operates as a perfect symbolic introduction to the wider problems the characters face: insecurities that threaten to degenerate into desperation.
Knežević captures the teenage voice brilliantly (though some of the actors go a little overboard in their embodiment of youthful apprehension and would benefit from greater vocal projection.)
Da Silva, Maliyan Blair, Nashy MZ and Tate Wilkinson-Alexander as the teenagers capture the age’s enthusiasms and doubts, and give performances that are both amusing and affecting.
The two adult characters seem only a small step away from children, a powerful suggestion that the challenges the teenagers experience are ubiquitous. After all, this is ethnically diverse Western Sydney under a conservative government (and, some would say, a perpetually conservative mono-culture.)
Dog-purchaser and police officer Raoul expresses the confusion of a man who has somewhat unwillingly conformed to the hegemony. Tony Goh’s portrait is simultaneously comic and pathos-inducing.
Greta has lost her job, but there’s a market at Bigge Park and she hopes to kickstart a business venture with a stall selling Croatian food. She was born in Australia, but is proud of her heritage and dreams of a community open-hearted enough to embrace and celebrate diversity. Kate Bookallil as Greta gives a splendid performance, evoking magnificently the character’s fierce determination and quiet despair.
Paul Gilchrist
Various Characters by Šime Knežević
Presented by Plus Minus Productions, in association with Virginia Plain and Flight Path Theatre
At Flight Path until 17 May
Image by Robert Miniter
*I haven’t been able to find the source of this quote.
Theatre Red 