State Theatre Company with Come Out Festival. The Space Theatre. 27 May 2013
Playwright and screenwriter Debbie Tucker Green is hot property in Britain thanks to her own film adaptation of Random winning the MVSA for best film in 2011 and a BAFTA for best single drama. This one hour nugget begins with the two kids of an urban family of four emerging from slumber for their weekday routine. They and we are blissfully unaware how badly this day is going to end - unless you read the synopsis in the program that gives it all away.
NIDA graduate Zindzi Okenyo beautifully masters the hip beat poetry of Green's monologues in a marvelous Brit-African-Caribbean accent. I say monologues because Okenyo hops between all four of them - the broad shouldered father, a dignified mum, a sleep-in brother with a smelly room and the narration and role of the mature sister. The cohesion and love in this family is demonstrated by their everydayness - they are the ideal family of nostalgia yet subsumed in the 21st century. But something terrible enters their lives, a random event, a blight that inflicts pain and grief upon each family member in such individualised and vivid ways you well forget it is all created by one Zindzi Okenyo.
Her incredible performance was well complemented by Ben Flett's rippling reflection, shadows and silhouettes - constantly active, menacing and mesmerising. Geoff Cobham's smelly boy's room was held in darkness and only revealed at the end for some very moving scenes. Andrew Howard's sound was a complement.
Recent Flinders graduate director Nescha Jelk's tight direction matched the thrifty writing and no doubt Jelk and Okenyo were a great team in making the characters crisp and lifelike. Bravo! You can hardly believe this day's events are but an hour of theatre time - a day you would give anything to wish away and start over.
Why Jelk spent three-quarters of her program notes talking about racism and meritocracy is beyond me.
David Grybowski
When: 27 May to 1 Jun
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
