MAKEbeLIVE
Productions in association with Tamarama Rock Surfers presents BOXING
DAY by Tin Shed. (written by Phil Spence) at the Old Fitzroy Theatre.
"It's the day after Christmas in the seaside town of Rainwood. Nana can
smell burnt chicken. Dad is glued to the TV and Freya , as always, has a
mystery to solve. Like any normal 10-year-old girl Freya Stanley loves
Pictionary. Pig Latin and and 80's slasher movies. BOXING DAY is her
story: a darkly comic tale where imagination reigns, and a little girl
will do whatever it takes to keep her family together."
Freya's mother has recently died. Cancer, I think. Her father works
off-shore, an oil rig, I think, and is absent a lot and not a very good
father, really - he gives Freya an air rifle for Christmas! She is
being brought up by Nana. Nana is a little vacant and child care a
little beyond her range these days- she does her best. Freya has a
girlfriend/neighbour. She plays and invents a life as best she can. The
local families are worried for little Freya's welfare. Freya decides she
needs more care, more attention and does what child psychologists might
diagnose as: "acts out" and causes an event of national news worthy
focus, after a disastrous Christmas family lunch. It is all,
unfortunately, based on fib, a lie. Freya is in trouble.
This story is book ended with a mock funeral, serviced by the two
little girls. The funeral is set up and then we are taken back in time
to be told in chronological naturalism a very conventional and over
familiar story, lacking in any real insight or mode of originality.
Neatly, after nearly 90 minutes, we end back where we began, at the mock
funeral, and the play ends. The direction is ploddingly naturalistic.
Neither content or mode of presenting are of any real arresting
interest.
"BOXING DAY by Tin Shed. Three years. Five creative residences. Eleven
drafts. One trip to Scotland. One hundred crap Christmas cracker jokes.
One dead laptop."
Writer, Phil Spence; Director-Co Dramaturg, Scarlett McGlynn;
Co-Dramaturg, Polly Rowe have toiled over this play, it seems, and, for
me, it is in the experience, a very dispiriting disappointment. I am not
sure whether it is a children's play or not.
As a children's adventure
in the theatre it is very boring for a 2011 audience. Check out THE BOOK OF EVERYTHING for content and story telling skills. Check out THE ADVENTURES OF ALVIN SPUTNIK: DEEP SEA EXPLORER, for content and story
telling skills. If BOXING DAY is meant as adult fare, it is very
ordinary and tedious, indeed. I'd rather watch re-runs of POLLYANNA from
the Walt Disney team of yester-yore on TV.
The 'gimmick' and some raison d'ĂȘtre for doing this play at all, maybe,
is the playing of Freya, the ten-year-old heroine, by an adult, Holly
Austin, as a showcase for this artist's playful clown persona, but, it
is not enough to justify or satisfy why this play found its way onto the
Old Fitz curated season as it stands at present. Oddly, the usual
spontaneity of play that Ms Austin has in her own devised work seems
more than slightly hemmed in by the conventionality of the naturalistic
tale and the lack of directing bravura by Ms McGlynn. In fact, Annie
Byron, who impersonates a number of characters, including the little
girl playmate, gives Ms Austin a run for endearment with her deft
creations. Alan Flower has the underdeveloped and thankless function of
feckless parent to create and is dignified in his creativity.
The design by Rita Carmody is comely and functional, the lighting by
Christopher Page, with all of those hanging bulbs, lacks sophistication
of atmosphere, with the sound design by Jeremy Silver being the better
part of the belief system in the events of the play.
Others have found the work charming.
I found it unbelievable that it was been presented at all. Australian
content or not, this play is not a very sophisticated addition to the
repertoire in any way.
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