Up With Youth by Henry Lewis, Oct 2, 1999

By Great Escape Theatre Company 

at North Melbourne Town Hall until October 17, 1999

Melbourne Fringe Festival

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Up With Youth is part of the Fringe Festival but it is certainly not fringe-style theatre. Its content is not focussed on youthful angst, drugs or the millenium, it employs no "experimental" theatre conventions and features no young, hungry performers.

Written by Henry Lewis and directed by Simon Bell, it is an inversion of every unwritten fringe theatre rule. The UK-based company, Great Escape, celebrates Baby-Boomers. Three late 40-somethings reform their 1960's, silver record-winning band, The Delusions. We know they are deluded but it takes 75 minutes for them to realise it.

The new Delusions revive all the awfulness of the 60's, including flared jeans, cheesy songs and literal gestures to accompany lyrics. Strangely, 90's Boy Bands are still doing this. Will we ever escape the 60's? Have we not done enough penance?

The characters have left their groovy 60's days behind until Adrian's 49th birthday (Clive Marlowe). He has been "down-sized". and faces job interviews with smug young managers.

Pat (Laura Sheppard) is sick of her recalcitrant teenager, Derek (Tom Murphy) is sick of his gay clubs. Their mate, Marshall, (Tim Clyde) a moneybags marketing executive, sabotages their comeback in order to promote a Boy Band called Ozone.

The premise is funny and appeals to the older audience. The best moments satirise youth. The teenage daughter (Zoe Ellerton-Ashley) suggests mum's band should perform at fetes or on Red Faces. Mum weeps tears of joy when daughter threatens to leave home.

.The style does not, however, capture the 60's Carnaby Street feeling. It is like watching  70's dinner theatre , about the 60's, set in the 90's. It resembles an Amateur Dramatics Christmas panto without the Dame: the jokes are not very funny and the musical numbers are mediocre. And why is their major number a country music hoedown.

Original songs by Lewis include Do the Shoobaloo, Up With Youth and I'm Having My Life Now, which has some uncomfortably daggy lyrics such as, "It's time to be myself."

This is not to say that the cast do not work very hard to entertain us. The major problems reside in the writing and in the laborious direction.

by Kate Herbert