GRAVITY
GRAVITY, Rogue Projects at the Loading Dock, Qtopia, 14-29 November 2025. Photography by Phil Erbacher
Director/dramaturg/talent-nurturer Anthony Skuse has done it again in shepherding Gravity, the first play by Bradford Elmore, to its first production, with the collaboration of its cast of three: Annabelle Kablean, Drew Wilson, and Wesley Senna Cortes. With dramaturgical support from Robbi James and Erica Lovell.
Between them,they explore the nature of gravity as it relates to the push, pull, and power of love and attraction between Christopher (Senna Cortes), his girlfriend-then-wife Heather (Kablean), and David (Wilson), the man who inadvertently knocks the trio out of their hitherto comfortable orbits.
In just under 90 minutes, the audience is drawn in to a deceptively serene choreography – almost a pavane – of a relationship from its conventional beginnings of man, woman, flirtation, and favourite books, into a mutual interest in science, science fiction, Carl Sagan, and the Lagrange Point (look it up, it’s fascinating!).
From there, with Kablean investing Heather with the wide-eyed, smiling, snap-backs that Jennifer Aniston used to fire off in Friends, and the two hunks baring and un-baring their pecs with similar and equally appealing rapidity, modern romance and all its insistence on ungainly labels is probed with surprising and intriguing results.
Heather and Christopher have been married ten years, they love and are in love with each other. This longevity itself is surely more unusual than trying to decide whether to be straight, gay, bi, pan, polyamorous, or whatever, all of which would arguably be easier than maintaining a decade with one other person.
As it is, in working in a job that means he’s forever somewhere else, Christopher does prove one of the least checked out truths of human relations: that absence does not make the heart grow fonder, it’s way more likely to make it find someone else.
Across a crowded bar one night, Christopher and David spot each other. For his part, David also proves another of the lesser acknowledged truths of human relations: that the one who says it’s not serious, and we’re just having fun, and I don’t want to get involved, is probably the one who will fall in love. Oops.
The progression of these unintended complications is quite literally played out on the floor of the otherwise unadorned set. At first, it’s an empty area, all highly polished and silvery metallic. The actors mark the passage of their lives and comings and goings by simply walking on it barefoot. The gleaming surface becomes a blur of scuffs, scrapes, rubs, and abrasions, with no clear patterns or obvious meanings – just like life.
If you’ve watched The Bachelor, you will apparently recognise Senna Cortese. Despite that, he’s solidly, sweetly good as Chris/Christopher, the man with the modern dilemma. In a less well-defined role, Wilson does wonders with David and credibly negotiates the somewhat ungainly flip in that character’s motivation, and be appealing.
As the unlikely emerging power within the trio, Kablean negotiates her journey from wisecracking, confident wife, to shocked and sorrowful, and bewildered, then out the other side. Never has hetero-normative monogamy looked less likely or inviting. It’s a pivotal and powerful performance, and let no one tell you the final twist.
Gravity is funny, touching, and deliciously surprising. It’s likely to make you think and reconsider any number of your ideas and life choices, and if it doesn’t, it’s possible you’re dead but just haven’t fallen over yet. Do yourself a favour and experience another way of defying gravity. Recommended.
