Adelaide Festival. Windmill Theatre. Space Theatre. 4 Mar 2014
Girl Asleep is the final take in Matthew Whittet's trilogy of teenage angst plays produced by Windmill Theatre and directed by Rosemary Myers. While stuffed full with relevant tweenie themes of bullying, nascent dating, cruelty, friendship, self-loathing, not understanding anything, etc, etc, the three plays are rather synoptic in their construction and production values. Each script is an entanglement of traditional fairy tales and classic stories with pop culture signatures. The characters are mainly stereotyped and overwrought. The high octane pace includes an obligatory running-on-the-spot scene. The design is always lurid and cartoonish, and the lighting and sound operators are busy with the full gamut of effects.
I loved my first viewing of the trilogy in the Festival of 2012 - School Dance. I enjoyed all these elements because of their innovative combination, yet I find the other two plays on offer this year, Fugitive and Girl Asleep, simply reprises of the technique.
Girl Asleep owes much to The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland as our heroine falls asleep during her 15th birthday party and has to get back from a fantasy world inhabited by a troll, a wicked witch-type and those composite characters we dream of combining real and imaginary persons. Of course, she is on a quest to get back but needs to find a key, and yes, it's transformational and she learns a lesson.
The beneficiary of that lesson is nice guy friend Elliot, played with sensitivity and depth by Eamon Farren. In Fugitive, this place is reserved for an angry, self-absorbed bully, and for a shy, nerdy type in School Dance. Farren does a wonderful scene dressed smartly and doubling up in the voice and manner of a suave Serge Gainsbourg. While I found the journey through our heroine's subconscious rather tedious, the trick that got to me was near the end where Greta meets her younger self. I've frequently fantasised about meeting my younger self, yet when I asked my partner if she ever thought of this, she said no. So I have something very deep in common with Matthew Whittet.
I do feel somewhat responsible for how you spend your hard-earned dough at the Festival and I advise you to see School Dance to get a grip on the Whittet ouevre and the Myers treatment, unless you are studying teenagers, or Whittet, for that matter. Or maybe if you see any one of the three for the first time, you will have the School Dance experience I had. I have to admit I am not Windmill's target audience and the house-full of high school students loved the show.
David Grybowski
When: 28 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
