Become The One
Lab Kelpie and Gasworks Arts Park
1 February 2019
Gasworks Arts Park
to 9 February 2019
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| Chris Asimos, Henry Strand. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson |
Lab Kelpie produce new Australian writing. It's a challenge to get a funded company to risk new Australian work, so thank the theatre gods for independent companies like this who continue to create the kind of great writing that funded companies will produce in the future – after the risks have been taken.
Their new work for Midsumma is Become The One. It's the first full-length script from Lab Kelpie co-founder Adam Fawcett, which was developed after it won the 2018 Midsumma Playtime Staged Readings Event. There are many issues this play explores, but Fawcett says that so much of it is being the play he wishes he'd seen as a teenager.
Noah (Henry Strand) cleans houses. His agency has sent him to the swanky apartment of a well-known AFL player, Tom (Chris Asimos), who's up for up for the Brownlow. Noah isn't impressed by fame and celebrity, is younger than Tom, and wears the pink and sparklie clothes that Tom wouldn't dare even look at. The urst is quickly broken and, against the odds, their relationship looks like it might last beyond the first weeks.
But Tom is a public figure and even when he tries to shut it out, footy is his life. His apartment is private but the design (by the team) is all lush green turf; he can't not be a part of this game that gives him so much and that he loves.
In a perfect world, we wouldn't need works about coming out because it's not an issue. In a perfect world, professional sportsmen* wouldn't need to deny and hide any hint of sexuality that isn't manly hetero with a huge cock and muscles from eating nothing but protein.
But in our world, AFL players aren't gay. Yeah. Sure. Noah understands why Tom keeps their relationship a secret. He doesn't like it – it's pretty shitty being a secret –, but he knows that he and Tom live in different worlds and that Tom's would collapse if Noah were part of it.
Or maybe it wouldn't. It only takes one man to break the silence.
Director Lyall Brooks, the other co-founder of the company, and the cast let the relationship and love feel genuine and natural while always acknowledging that it will never be what either wants it to be. What price are they willing to pay for this level of happiness?
The AFL player story is immediately familiar to Melbourne – even if you don't follow AFL, it's hard not to know a bit about it and the passion of the fandom – but its themes and ideas reach way beyond the specifics of our city. Being the first – the one – isn't a choice that anyone makes easily.
Become The One only runs for a week and finishes on the weekend. It's a work that I look forward to seeing again because we need more writing like this from companies like this. And as it is the play Fawcett wishes he saw when he was a teenager, there will be someone who sees it and remembers it when they deal with the complexities of being yourself in a world doesn't seem to want you.
*The women in sport are more ok with this.
