Theatre: Flood

Black Swan State Theatre Company
Written by Chris Isaacs
Directed by Adam Mitchell
Set and costume design by India Mehta
Lighting designer Chris Donelly
Sound designer and composer Ben Collins
With Joshua Brennan, Adriane Daff, Samuel Delich, Will O’Mahony, Whitney Richards and Rose Riley
Heath Ledger Theatre
Until February 2

Chris Isaacs’ Flood is the story of six 20-something Perth friends who reunite for a camping trip into the North-West outback organised by Mike (Joshua Brennan).
Steve (Samuel Delich) and the reluctant Vanessa (Whitney Richards) are a couple; Sal (Will O’Mahony), though, has left his girlfriend behind in Melbourne, where he lives, to join his buddies on the adventure. Their mates, Frankie (Adriane Daff) and Elizabeth (Rose Riley), complete the expedition.
They’re city kids, packed into Mike’s mum and dad’s Tarago, and unprepared for the isolation and dangers of the remote place they’re visiting. When a stranger appears out of the bush while the friends are skinny-dipping in a waterhole, surprise turns to fear, confrontation to violence, and disaster to tragedy.
It’s impossible not to recall Raymond Carver’s short story, So Much Water So Close to Home, and especially its Australian film adaptation, Jindabyne, with its added layer of racism. Isaacs’ story is more, and a fair bit less, than those excruciating parables of guilt and its consequences.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Tender Napalm

Perth Theatre Company

Written by Philip Ridley

Directed by Melissa Cantwell

Featuring Joshua Brennan and Anna Houston

The prodigious British playwright, novelist and artist Philip Ridley divides his output fairly equally between works for children and adults. Ridley’s ability to explore the imaginary worlds of young people, their cruelties, courage and capacity for love is a vital strength of Perth Theatre Company’s Australian premiere production of Tender Napalm.

While this is most decidedly a play for adults (all the usual warnings apply), it has the bravery of youth. Its two, un-named, characters (Joshua Brennan and Ann Houston) inhabit a non-specific place and time and more often than not speak in parables and fantasies. Somehow, through stories of tsunamis and armies of monkeys, we get glimpses of something terrible that has happened to these people that has unhinged them and their relationship.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian