bontom: original Australian entertainment
20 March 2019
The Butterfly Club
to 23 March
facebook.com/theothersideof25/
 |
| Becca Hurd |
It's too easy to miss exciting new writing in Melbourne, especially when shows have short runs and there isn't much time for word to get around. The Other Side of 25 has just been at Adelaide Fringe and Sydney. It's at the Butterfly Club until Saturday.
Written and performed by Becca Hurd – who has studied acting in the USA and writing at NIDA – it's the story of 27-year-old Amory. She used to write songs to get what she wanted, wanted to go to sex education class rather than Disneyland, knows what she's good at, and became a surrogate for her sister.
With off-stage characters as vivid as Amory herself, it reflects on so much more than pregnancy, choice, motherhood and loss. Hurd's writing captures a voice that might be very close to her own, but she lets Amory be her own self. Her story telling is far more complex than straight-forward monologue and she only tells as much as the audience need to know.
Directed by Ellen Wiltshire and with a deceptively simple design of silver balloons by Emma White, it's a moving story that lets its humour feel natural, doesn't resort to sentimentality and releases its revelation and twist so gently that, even as the narrative jumps around in time, we discover it exactly as Amory does.
And it begins with a song about wearing condoms. Srsly men – wear them!
Maybe, that can come back for Melbourne Fringe.
