Theatre: The Mars Project (★★★★)

Written and directed by Will O’Mahony

Lighting designed by Chris Donnelly
Performed by Luke Fewster, Andrea Gibbs, Felicity McKay, Will O’Mahony and Steve Turner
The Blue Room
Until May 7

Andrea Gibbs (pic Cameron Etchells)

It’s only eight months since Will O’Mahony’s The Mars Project was staged by WAAPA’s 3rd year Acting students.
I questioned whether it could be successfully produced except under the auspices of an institution like WAAPA. O’Mahony has achieved it triumphantly.
The project of the title is a scheme to send four “colonists” on a one-way (and inevitably fatal) mission to the red planet.
Wren (Felicity McKay) joins 200,000 applicants for the project, and as her application survives cull after cull, down to the last 50, her ambition for fame and ruthlessness grows to a tragic intensity.
None of this matters to her autistic twin brother Sam (Luke Fewster), in his closed, compulsive world. Wren, like Earth to the silent Mars, was born with him but has chosen her own path.
It’s powerful, painful material, performed by an outstanding cast. Once again Andrea Gibbs shows that she’s as fine a dramatic actor as she is a comedian and improviser, in a performance that sits squarely in the human heart of this remarkable play. 

Read the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Venus in Fur

By David Ives
Black Swan State Theatre Company
Director and costume designer Lawrie Cullen-Tait
Set designer Patrick Howe
Lighting designer Joe Lui
Sound designer and composer Brett Smith
With Adam Booth and Felicity McKay
STC Studio
Until February 8

(★★★★½)

Felicity McKay (pic: Gary Marsh)

It’s the end of a long, dismal day for the director Thomas Novachek. He’s auditioning actresses for his adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novella Venus in Furs, and no-one’s come close to nailing the part.

He’s packing up to leave when a girl called Vanda Jordan bursts in, overcoat and duffle bag, blonde hair dishevelled: “Am I too late? I’m too late, right? Fuck. Fuck!” (that last expletive somehow extended to three syllables).

It’s a fabulous entrance and a taste of what’s to come in David Ives’ delicious layer cake of a play-within-a-play-within-a-book, Venus in Fur.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian