Mini review: Stars of track and field

Stars of track and field
La Mama
29 July 2015
La Mama Theatre
to 9 August
lamama.com.au

Stars of Track and Field. La Mama

Stars of track and field is about a family at breaking point.

Teenage son (Hayden Burke) is beginning to see the truth about his family. His sister (Stephania Poutney) is self harming, his mother (Kristina Benton) suffers from years of chronic pain and depression since a car accident ended her running career, and his father (Joe Peruzzi) is still trying to be the man who's in control of his family and can make everything better with ice cream.

The relationships are complex and real and writer Amanda Miha has captured the frustration of family being the only people you can hate because you love them. She looks at how past trauma is passed to children, how children don't really understand why the past can't be left in the past, and how it's possible to think and do the unthinkable for your family.

With Darren Vizer's direction, the performances are strong and honest but need to adjust to the intimacy of La Mama and trust that the audience can see the subtext. And there's a much stronger ending on the stage that happens before the ending; what we imagine is always worse than what we see.

FRINGE: Dacryphilia

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2013

Dacryphilia

3 October 2013

Broken Mirror

to 6 October

melbournefringe.com.au

Dacryphilia is arousal by the tears of others.*

Adora works in a mattress store and realises that she was meant to be there when Leo, who can't stop crying, caught a bus from the other side and walked into her shop.  It's a distorted but perfect match, until Leo can't cry any more.

Writer Amanda Miha has reworked an earlier short play to develop her first full-length work. With an ominous sense of place, an unknown other side of town where anything and anyone can be bought, her original voice is fuelled by a dark sense of humour and a fascination about what really fuels our emotions and passions. 

But there are issues in bringing the script to the stage. The stage tone supports laughing at and distancing from these lovers rather than encouraging the darkness and bringing us into their world. And for a work that's about obsession and tears and somehow finding impossible release and love, the actors don't give us those moments that make us care about the characters or their love.

Meanwhile, a mood of painful love is created by live music from Sophie Rose, which could be extended to give a score to the whole work, but the oddest mood breaker is created by a raw onion. The cut up onion gives a memorable actor-torture scene, but it leaves the theatre smelling like a raw onion and smell has a habit of overpowering all other senses.

If your trying to schedule your last weekend of mad Fringing, this one finishes on Sunday (not Saturday) and it runs about an hour, not the 75 minutes in the Fringe guide.

* And should so be the name of a critic's blog.