Revolutions per minute: Stories Like These & Griffin Independent’s Music

Music, produced by Stories Like These and playing at Griffin Theatre, is a “sharp critique of the way mental illness is perceived today,” and digs deeper to fathom the “consequences of raiding people’s personal lives in the name of art.” Written by Jane Bodie, it is the story of two actors (Sarah and Gavin) who befriend a seemingly innocuous young man (Adam) in the name of research for an upcoming play, unaware of the minefield and eggshells they are walking on with every step. Like Stories Like These’s last production seen at Griffin – 2013’s Rust and Bone, also directed by Corey McMahon – there is a robust sense of craft to both the writing and the production, and it is an intense and riveting uninterrupted one-hundred mintues.

Eggshells: Old 505's Hilt

Jane Bodie’s Hilt is a play about connections made and lost, about home – defining what it is, and finding our way back there; it’s about doing the ‘right’ thing insofar as we are able to, and trying not to regret the decisions and actions we make. It asks just how much are we willing to sacrifice to live ‘the dream’?

Playing at the Old 505 Theatre, Hilt was (we are told) written out of a disassociation with urban living and apartments in particular, the disconnection and compartmentalisation of life – like living in milk crates stacked on top of each other – is very much apparent in Bodie’s play, from the frequent muffled interruptions by the neighbours through eggshell-thin walls, to the conversations Kate and Adam share over breakfast in the middle of the play.