Features of Blown Youth by Raimondo Cortese, Oct 18, 1997

Features of Blown Youth by Raimondo Cortese

By Ranters Theatre

 Economiser until Nov 1, 1997

Reviewed by KH around Oct 17, 1997

Being cool is a painful dead-end. Raimondo Cortese's play, Features of Blown Youth, highlights the tragedy of a group of young people leading pointless lives.

We sit voyeuristically peering at the shattered existences of these characters most of whom live in a huge, inner-city grubby dive. They are all aimless, they all abuse themselves and each other in turn and each is helplessly infatuated with another.

Dove (Tess Masters) is an insecure junkie stripper with romantic ideals and a new bimbo, Rot (Torquil Neilson). Isabel, a jaded student, is hooked on Dove. Guido (Arthur Angel) is like Vivian from The Young Ones. He is violent, offensive and wildly jealous of about his peppy dope-head girlfriend, Syv (Beth Buchanan). Harriet, the pseudo-artist, is smitten with Oron (Patrick Moffatt) who is by far the most interesting character.

Moffatt is consistently exceptional as the directionless intellectual who hovers, patronises and sharpens his wits on others' ignorance.  Oron's inability to harness the power of his mind is his downfall. He remains in low gear.

Cortese has a great facility for swift dialogue and well-observed characters. He satirises the silliness of half-baked philosophy and floods with harsh light the self- indulgence of those who think being decadent and screwed up is interesting. One wonders though, late in the second half, whether an audience can be shocked any more.

Director, Adriano Cortese keeps the pace up and scenes move smoothly between rooms that have a grungy, hyper-real design by Dan Potra. The whole is accompanied by unobtrusively effective music by Kim Salmon.

The plot pivots in an excellent scene at the end of the first half when Strawberry, the new spivvy landlord and pimp arrives and tips the delicate balance of their lives. The outcomes of this intrusion are myriad and to some degree unexpected.

The young people may have thought their lives were interestingly decadent but Strawberry is the real thing: dangerous, dissolute and exploitative. These confused, deceived people are fair game for one so unscrupulous.

The question is whether every piece of theatre about youth must be centred on the dank, bleak existential dilemmas of an inner-urban crisis ridden youth. Grunge theatre is all we are getting - even if this is a good version of it.

KATE HERBERT