Saturday, 1 August 2009

Review: 'Melbourne Boys' - CEL Productions




JC La Fontaine’s new stage production Melbourne Boys infuses common clichés and previous experience to form a modern Melbourne coming-of-age story.

Written as a series of vignettes, Melbourne Boys reveals the story of Sebastian and his friends’ final year at secondary school, portraying the stress and experiences of VCE as well as the challenges of an everyday teen life.

The play is fairly successful in its attempt to transform regular high-school stereotypes into three-dimensional characters. Common school ground personalities such as the ‘rich bad-boy’ are well developed whereas other more comic clichés such as the ‘choir nerd’ or ‘giggling school girl’ appropriately remain untouched.

While a collection of vignettes may be a strange choice for presenting a dramatic plot, Christine Husband’s direction ensures the small episodes move quickly and fluently so that tension and timing are not lost within the non-naturalistic scene transitions.

The language and scenarios contained within Melbourne Boys reflect and portray a life-like atmosphere, which provides an engaging reality to the play. However, with the sudden inclusion of quite dramatic conflicts toward the end of the play’s action, a slightly ‘soap opera-esque’ tone is adopted, disappointingly interrupting the more realistic nature of the performance. This could perhaps be solved by allocating more time to the introduction and resolution of the eventual climax of the play.

The cast worked well with their given material, in most cases forming credible characterisations. Liam Tapper performed strongly in the role of David, Sebastian’s economically disadvantaged friend, especially in times of greater tension. This was a contrast from Benjamin Stokes who provided much needed comic relief as the class ‘geek’. JC La Fontaine and Sam Young convincingly developed the characters of Sebastian and Billy respectively, although tended to appear melodramatic in the concluding scenes. This may have been caused by opening night nerves or by an uncertainty with the script’s reasonably sincere themes.

The chemistry between Chloe Gavin and Tom Clifas, portraying the roles of Jo and Anthony, was highly believable, an aspect that was very important to bring their short scenes to life. Patti Rocca brought a sense of truth to the role as Sebastian’s mother, causing the audience to cringe as they recognised their own embarrassing mother within her character.
The actors brought a professional touch to their work, evident in their ability to continue performing with absolute focus despite a rather interruptive audience distraction occurring mid-performance.

André Stefan White in collaboration with Fontaine’s original designs devised an economic but effective greyscale stage. The simple set pieces represented a range of differing locations without the need to move or change in appearance enhancing the non-naturalistic flow of the play. The costumes also blended with the greyscale theme allowing Christina Montgomery’s lighting designs to be used to the greatest possible benefit.

While some flaws may be evident in this, the first of JC La Fontaine’s pair of Melbourne Boys plays; it is an enthusiastic contribution to the ever-growing collection of Melbourne-based theatrical works.

This review can also be viewed at theatrepeople.com.au

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