The Mars Project (★★★★)

Written and directed by Will O’Mahoney
with WAAPA 3rd Year acting students 
State Theatre Centre rehearsal room
Until 29 August

In 2013, at the suggestion of WAAPA’s programme director Andrew Lewis, the playwright and director Will O’Mahoney embarked on a project to devise and mount an original production with the academy’s then first-year acting class.
The result, The Mars Project, ranks among the most ambitious and impressive new works to arrive on the Perth stage this year.
It must have been a daunting exercise for O’Mahoney; seventeen young actors, a big chunk of two years of their finely honed talent – and a blank piece of paper.
It’s a cast full of enormous potential, and all of them shine very brightly in a work that, perhaps, could only ever have emerged under WAAPA’s auspices, and that we are very fortunate to see.
 Read the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Great White and Sea Inside

Great White

Written and directed by Will O’Mahoney

Performed by Adriane Daff, Mikala Westall, Will O’Mahoney

Sea Inside

Russya Connor

Text by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Blue Room

Until June 29

Will O'Mahoney and Adriane Daff

There are opening lines, and there are great white opening lines. “Hi – I’m going to eat you!” is undeniably among the latter. When, in Will O’Mahoney’s ambitious Great White, it’s jauntily delivered by a slight girl in retro racing togs, it seems as incongruous as it is attention-grabbing.

But don’t be fooled. The girl (Adriane Daff) is indeed a shark, and her intended victim, Ben (O’Mahoney, who also directs), has plenty to fear from her.

The great white shark haunts the Australian consciousness like nothing else. Even snakes, plane crashes and the other elemental stuff of our nightmares haven’t its grip on our imagination. Perhaps because of its sheer monstrosity, certainly because of its superiority, it make us less at home in an environment that we claim as our birthright.

It’s a potent motif, and a super theatrical device, that O’Mahoney, Daff and Mikala Westall, who plays Ben’s conflicted girlfriend, take full advantage of.