Theatre: Coma Land (★★★★)

Black Swan State Theatre Company and Performing Lines WA
Written and directed by Will O’Mahony
Set designer Patrick James Howe
Sound designer Rachael Dease
Lighting designer Chris Donnelly
Performed by Humphrey Bower, Kirsty Marillier, Amy Mathews, Morgan Owen and Ben Sutton

In Will O’Mahony’s carefully delineated and finely performed drama, coma is a place.
By logical necessity, it can only be “about” one character – a startling young girl named Boon (Kirsty Marillier) – but O’Mahony’s achievement in Coma Land is to people the strange place she is in with figments of her imagination that have their own stories, memories and ambitions.
There’s a chirpy girl of Boon’s age, Penguin (Morgan Owen), who is trying to fly according to Malcolm Gladwell’s tendentious 10,000 Hour Rule (practice something for 10,000 hours and you will become expert in it). There’s Penguin’s dad (Humphrey Bower) who might be working towards their escape but keeps a dark secret. There’s the chummy party planner Jinny (Amy Mathews) and a panda named Cola (Ben Sutton) who pretends to be a man.
This place, and these people, are treacherous dramatic territory, but O’Mahony (who also directs) has shown that he’s up to the challenge before, most notably in his 2013 indie hit Great White and in last year’s The Mars Project.
His great talent is controlled incongruity, and much of the humour – and there is plenty in Coma Land – springs from it. There’s no earthly reason why Cola would suddenly ask what our favourite font is (his, he says, is the obnoxious Comic Sans), but, then, there’s no reason why a panda would be in Boon’s coma. And so on.
Coma Land isn’t about all this, or coma, at all. It’s about success and failure, dependence and independence, families and their fault lines, and these themes weave around, and progress through, the metaphor of coma to a powerful conclusion.
For this to be an entertainment, though, or to work on any of its levels, you mast have performance of high quality, energy and control, and all five actors rise to the challenge.
Humphrey Bower is a master of the unlovely, and he conveys a kind of careworn peril that gives the play a taut thread throughout, while Mathews and Sutton expertly deliver much of its absurdity and comedy.
Owen is chirrupy and magnetic as Penguin (you’re allowed to be reminded of Jane Horrocks’s Bubble in Absolutely Fabulous, but smarter), and Marillier makes the play her own in a wise and feisty leading performance that leaves plenty of room for those around her to shine.
The show looks and sounds great; Patrick James Howe’s set of dark distances around a square riser of brown shag pile gives it both mystery and focus, as does Chris Donnelly’s exposed, meticulous lighting design. The remarkable Rachael Dease brings music of great simplicity and beauty to the play.
Coma Land is another milestone in O’Mahony’s steadily developing career, and another success in Black Swan’s impressive 2017 season.

This review appeared in The West Australian 25.7.17 


 

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: The Improved

The Skeletal System

for Fringe World

Written and directed by Will O’Mahony

Designed by Alicia Clements

With Glenn Hall, Andreas Lohmeyer and Will O’Mahony

The Blue Room

Feb 12 - 16, 2013

One of the pleasures of fringe is getting a first look at local work that has the potential for longer runs and other stages. A good example was Rachel Dease’s sombre and exciting City of Shadows, which went on from last year’s Fringe to critical acclaim in the tough New York Fringe and, happily for me, had a short encore run here last week.

So far this time around, Jeffrey Jay Fowler’s Minnie and Mona showed the theatrical smarts and sharp performances to go to the next step, and it’s now joined by Will O’Mahony’s tense, twisting The Improved.

It’s infuriating to hear about shows after they’ve gone. Hopefully, they, and you, will get another chance to get Improved somewhere, and soon.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian.