The Cyber Dreaded One

Holy crappola. Check out The Dreaded One's new dreads. She has cyber-dreads. The cyber ones are like little tiny Slinkies, and some are highly UV reactive. We were in the theatre the other night and in one scene the lights went all UV to reveal some writing on the wall, and The Dreaded One's hair just kinda went whoomph and lit up in the dark like it had been plugged in. Pretty damn funny.

Unlike the play. Here's my Drum Media review:

The Future Planners

Weird one. Wanted to like it, concept was kinda cool, but for me it just didn’t work. Guess I’ve just blown any reason you might have for wanting to read on. But just in case you’re interested, here’s this...

Plot: Bonnie has had apocalyptic visions and has chosen Greg to cohabit her post-apocalyptic bunker. They eat tinned peaches and play games and remember the past. Greg isn’t all that happy about the situation and eventually leaves.

Sounds straightforward enough and there’s a universe of possibilities to explore, but it just didn’t have that secret ingredient that pulled it all together. Granted, in the end we’re not entirely sure if the whole thing is real or imagined, but along the way it all seemed a little contrived and it’s difficult to pinpoint just why this is.

The acting was not overly engaging. It rarely escaped me that I was watching actors performing on stage. Clearly they have trained but seem yet to relax and really flesh out their characters and really be in the moment, to use a dicky phrase. They are not awful, they just didn’t seem to fit as snugly into their characters as they should have. Part of the problem here could be that writer/director/ star Stephanie Ward should perhaps think about relinquishing some control. It’s a bloody ambitious project to write, direct and star in your own work, and you’ve got to be some kind of genius or split personality to pull it off.

But the acting wasn’t the only problem. The writing itself didn’t feel quite there. Again there was a sense of This Is Theatre. It felt a little self-conscious and had far too many attempts at humour that just fell flat. The characters play games to pass the time away and I wasn’t the only one who cringed when Bonnie lost the vowel game and had to do The Thing. Just. Not. Funny.

It’s a story about obsessive love, it’s two people in a room; those two ingredients are all that is required for great theatre, and although this is not great, it’s not so bad that I wouldn’t happily choose it over a night in front of the telly.

Q