We’ve seen it
before – actors playing children and/or characters much younger than themselves –
in plays like David Holman’s The Small Poppies, and
more recently in Matthew
Whittet’s School
Dance and Girl, Asleep. In
fact, a lot of Whittet’s work draws on this conceit, something he readily
acknowledges in his writer’s note in this show’s program. But in Seventeen, it feels
like it has gone one step too far, that the joke has been over-extended and
stretched out to fill ninety-minutes’ worth of theatre.
Playing in
Belvoir’s Upstairs theatre, the corner stage is covered in soft-fall rubber,
and littered with metal playground equipment – swings, a slide, a climbing
frame, a roundabout – and for perhaps the first time in the five years I’ve
been seeing shows at Belvoir, the set (designed by Robert Cousins) actually
feels too small for space. But I don’t think a bigger space would necessarily
make the production better. Whittet’s conceit is simple: a bunch of Australia
Directed by Anne-Louise
Sarks, the production floats along on the spirit of its own joke, the
conceit propelling it safely onto the space from the play’s opening moment, but
it flounders, left to its own devices in the middle of a park in the middle of
a summer’s night, much like the teenagers in the play. Whittet’s language –
peppered with mild swearing like you would expect to hear bandied around the
school-yard – finds loops and patterns, stock responses and beats which it
dwells in a little too much, and the characters don’t really grow until rather
late in the piece. Mel Page’s costumes are a curious concoction in themselves –
they seem at once ill-fitting and out-of-place, because they are not being worn
by seventeen-year-olds; yet they also feel too old, in that the seventeen-year-old
characters perhaps wouldn’t wear these clothes, or maybe not entirely like
this. Paul Jackson’s lighting is subtle yet effective in creating mood and
conveying time, and the final moments are beautiful. Alan John’s compositions
and Nate Edmondson’s sound design create a naturalistic world for the
production, from the popular tunes played on the speakers, to the sounds of
suburbia at night.
The actors, while as
strong as they always are, seem to be playing stereotypes rather than
characters; for some of Whittet’s other work, this might be part of the conceit
itself, but here I think it works against what he and Sarks et al are trying to
do. And while I don’t think it’s the actors who are responsible for this, the
development of these characters as characters – the catalyst in their journey
of growth – comes much too late to make us care terribly much about them. John
Gaden’s Mike is rude and arrogant, though we later learn (and much too late, I
feel) it is because he is scared of what will happen next; he is not ready for
school to finish. Peter Carroll’s Tom is the quiet one, the compassionate one,
with a heart of gold, even if he says and/or does the wrong things sometimes.
Maggie Dence’s Sue is the ‘cool’ girl, but there’s not much else to her than
this, even considering what passes between her, Tom, and Mike. Genevieve
Lemon’s Lizzy (Mike’s fourteen year old sister) is a bundle of energy, always
threatening to tell their parents about things that happen, but really she’s
there keeping an eye on Mike, making sure he doesn’t do anything truly stupid.
Barry Otto’s Ronny is the school loner, the boy no one wants to hang around
with, and even though his characterisation is erratic, there is a lovely moment
of change – or the potential for change – late in the play which makes him more
three-dimensional than most of the others. Anna Volska’s Edwina is the quiet
girl, the one who doesn’t share secrets lightly, who will slowly let them eat
her up; the girl who isn’t used to drinking all that much. But it is her scene
late in the play with Otto’s Ronny that I think is one of the most mature and
accomplished pieces of writing in this play, perhaps even on this stage this
year; there’s a fierce compassion and sense of genuine care which is hard to
fake, which actually needs to come from a quite genuine place in the story
and/or characters’ journey for it to work.
There are
questions here in the fabric of the play which go unchecked or unexplored, such
as: what is the relationship between Mike and Tom; is it as innocent as it
seems? Is there something beneath their distaste for Ronny, or is it because
he’s the odd-one-out? What sort of relationship do Edwina and Sue have; why are
they friends? Why is Lizzie really present; what is the past between her and
Mike (her older brother) that necessitates her presence in the story; would a
fourteen-year-old really be hanging out with a group of seventeen-year-olds if
they’ve taken such care to misdirect their parents’ attention? What happens to
Edwina’s crush on Tom that is only briefly mentioned twice? I think if some of
these questions were answered, and less time spent on the seemingly-gratuitous
dancing, drinking, and swearing, then Whittet’s play would be much stronger and
more poignant.
I realise, being
not yet ten years from seventeen myself, that there are things you can’t even
think of putting into words – much less things you can dream of doing – when
you’re seventeen (or indeed at any age), so I recognise that some of these
questions may not be able to be answered adequately in the play’s scope. But it
feels like there are missed opportunities here, opportunities which would make Seventeen better, stronger, more
bittersweet. The play’s ending, when it comes, is a simple gesture: Maggie
Dence and Peter Carroll on the swings, swinging into the space at the lip of
the stage. It is a beautiful and pure moment, something you can’t fake, as you
see the pure enjoyment on their faces, the delight in doing something you might
not have done for years. The light of the new day grows around them, and they
grin – into the bigness of the day, into the bigness of the future.
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