Short and Sweet 2008 Week 3 Wildcards
20 December 2008
The Arts Centre, Fairfax Theatre
The final ten Short and Sweet Wildcards concluded the annual three-week 10 minute theatre fest. As with week three’s Top 20, they were undercooked and left a slightly bitter aftertaste.
Unready scripts aside, relationship is my issue de jour. To some extent, every piece suffered from this fundamental problem. In his must-read book 'Audition' Michael Shurtleff says, “Creating relationship is the heart of acting. It is basic. It is essential.” Relationship is also the heart of great writing. If there is no emotional, meaningful relationship with the people on the stage, the scene will always feel false and fall flat. Too many times, I had no idea what the relationships were between the characters. Without a sense of relationship, there’s no reason for characters to talk to each other, let alone a reason for us to care what happens to them. It doesn’t need to be explicit on the stage, but it needs to be in the writing and in the performances.
The Bullfrog was one of the better pieces, with a terrific ending, but needed to develop the characters further and develop a relationship between them. Did she fancy him? Did he fancy her? Did they even know the others names?
Little Star, Ticking Clock, Thankyou My Pongpat, Facing Away and even To Let all suffered from the same problem. These were all plays about couples, so there was plenty of material to work with.
The Russian Bride told an exposition story well, but I think it would have been more powerful if the guard had his own journey and character arc within the piece. As it was, it may have worked better as a monologue.
Genre Bender must have started life as an impro exercise and didn’t develop much further. Funny costumes do not create purpose or character.
The Mercy Kitchen was written well, but let down with the direction. We all know that if a gun appears on a stage, it’s going to be shot. Well, this is a play about swallowing poison and there were many props and a lot of action about cups of tea... We knew what was going to happen far too early, and it was too easy to predict the cup swapping.
The Cellar Children started life at the 48 Hour Play Generator and is still delightfully creepy.
Maybe Short and Sweet needs a year off to re-invigorate. The independent companies were fabulous, but the competition didn’t do justice to the theatrical talent of this town.
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.
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