THEATRE
At Union Theatre, Melbourne University June 1994
Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 22 May 1994
This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 22 May 1994
Love and other sharp objects such as sex, lust, sexual preference, pregnancy, abandonment, all feature in the Woolly Jumpers latest show, Love and Other Sharp Objects. It is directed by Noel Jordan and devised by the company with writer Julie Anne O'Brien.
This show has a vigour which it borrows from pop culture. It uses sampled drumming and guitar music, pop lyrics, club dancing, video clip style footage and movement and fast episodic scenes which grab the attention of a teenage audience weaned on ad breaks.
Four actors play a range of teenagers with a spectrum of problems. One story line deals with Anna an Italian 15-year-old who has sex for the first time, to get it over with really, then finds she is pregnant. Another deals with Melissa, the "slut" who wants to be loved and her friendship with Cameron who realises he is gay.
The dialogue is witty, well observed with the naivete of teenagers who want to be grown-ups. "If I’m gay, everybody'll think I'm a poof," says Cameron.
The music is great, lyrics are good and all four actors can sing. Songs are injected to add energy and appropriately do not simply echo the content of the scenes. Jordan's intermittent solo club dancing is effective at times in emphasising the sexual energy on stage but is gratuitous and distracting at others.
The style shifts from abstraction and a dream like filmic quality to naturalism, to pop song. The eclectic quality of the production has many advantages but there is no core style. This, in conjunction with the multi-story lines, eventually leaves it fragmented, cluttered and superficial.
A play for teenagers cannot cover all bases, all types, all problems. But the teenage audience seemed to like it heaps and be embarrassed by its reflection of their lives. Cool!
KATE HERBERT
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