SILENT DISCO
SILENT DISCO, Griffin Theatre Company with atyp and HotHouse Theatre at the SBW Stables Theatre, 22 April-4 June, 2011. Photos by Alex Vaughan.
LACHLAN PHILPOTT’S new play is absolutely it’s own thing but nevertheless, lurking in the shadows are the ’60s coming-of-age novel The Outsiders and the ’80s Australian play Blackrock. The former because it’s the set book for Tamara and Jasyn’s class and the latter simply because Nick Enright’s (based on a true story) teen tragedy is inevitable in the Australian context. Then there’s the eternal tragedy of Romeo and Juliet in the grim inevitability of the fate awaiting young Tamara and Jasyn.
Tamara (Sophie Hensser) is a spunky, lippy kid whose “wo’evva” bravado ill conceals her inner hurt and desolation. These open wounds are the result of a lifetime of abandonment and the absence of love or hope. She shimmers with potential but fiercely resists all her class teacher’s attempts to honour and encourage it. For her part, Mrs Petchell (Camilla Ah Kin), is virtually catatonic with the exhaustion and despair that go with “teaching” her unruly, disinterested, inner-city charges. Another of these is Jasyn – Squid – (Meyne Wyatt) a boy whose life is as emotionally fractured as Tamara’s but who is additionally burdened. He is a Koori who sort of lives with his Aunty and with society’s negative assumptions because his elder brother, Dane (Kirk Page) is an imprisoned drug dealer.
Philpott, a former teacher, has a keen ear for the language and rhythms of the 21st century high school yard and the ear-budded iPod generations makes these totally unlike those of the past. The aural isolation and insolence enabled by being oblivious to one’s surroundings is freely available to troubled kids and troublemakers like never before and in Silent Disco the difference is seen to be profound. These are kids who crave respect, love and optimism yet are so brutalized they fail to recognize these gifts when they’re offered. Or perhaps they do, but the trust needed to accept such offerings isn’t there – and how can it be, given what they have endured in their short lives?
Nevertheless,director Lee Lewis beautifully orchestrates the rhythms, language and action through her actors. Despite a few too many sequences of “telling” rather than “doing” – when Tamara in particular is tasked with rapid-fire delivery of large and possibly unnecessary chunks of detailed exposition – the play is powerful. And it’s powerfully delivered: by the two newcomers, Hensser and Wyatt, who are clearly destined for the heights; and by the (relative) veterans Ah Kin and Page, who take on the multiple and varied roles of the people that surround the kids.
The setting, by Justin Nardella, a newcomer to the Stables space, is an abstract inner-cityscape. A sweep of railing and a concrete ramp is backed by unkind cyclone wire fencing in which is cutely constructed (out of plastic drinking cups) the stylized skyline of Sydney’s CBD. It’s interesting, works for the actors and the play and with Ross Graham’s lighting plots and a sound design by composer Stefan Gregory, it clearly conveys Tamara’s alienated world and Jasyn’s alienation.
Silent Disco won the 2009 Griffin Award for a new Australian play and it’s obvious why. It’s been given a deserved and fine production by Griffin and it’s a scorcher. Although it may shock some, it’s absorbing and provocative entertainment.
