The cast of "Utopiate" |
Co-Directed
by Sammy Moynihan & Ben Drysdale – Assistant Director: Melissa Gryglewski
Sound
Designer: Marlene Claudine Radice –
Costume Designers: Leah Ridley & Fi
Hopkins
Belconnen
Arts Centre Theatre - November 4, 5 & 12.
Reviewed by
Bill Stephens.
Sam Floyd as Thorax Mansion in "Utopiate"
Rebus is a
Canberra-based award-winning mixed-ability theatre company focussed on creating
social change through inclusive theatre experience for people with disability
and lived experience of mental ill-health. The company offers a range of
programs including one entitled “Flair” which offers disability leaders of the
future the opportunity to discuss, devise, write and perform their own original
work.
“Utopiate”
is the second production presented under this banner and offered for a season
of three performances in the Belconnen Arts Centre Theatre.
Leanne Shutt as Crystal Hart in "Utopiate". |
Subtitled “
Would You Choose a World of Pain ? ”, the play transports the audience into an
intergalactic world where a cast of eight disabled actors, and actors with
lived experience of mental ill health, portray a group of humans suffering from
various forms of unbearable pain.
When a
smart-talking alien called Thorax Mansion, played by Sam Floyd, offers the humans
the opportunity to follow him to planet Utopiate with the promise that there they
will live a life free of pain, the humans enthusiastically accept his offer. .
On Utopiate
they meet a group of Aliens, and while Thorax’s promise of a life a pain is
fulfilled, the humans discover there is a price.
Stephen Perkins (Silver Star) - Zoe Trevorrow (Purple Raindrop) - Megumi Kawada (Mars Bar) in "Utopiate" |
Sam Floyd,
Megumi Kawada, Zoe Trevorrow and Stephen Perkins play the Aliens, while Edward
“Woody” Menzies, Carol Jayne “CJ” McManus, Leanne Shutt and Josh Rose are the
bewildered humans.
The
direction is inventive, the costumes are colourful, the lighting effects are excellent
and the witty script is peppered with enough tongue-in-cheek lines to keep the
audience chuckling through-out. Together with the underlying theme of “careful
what you wish for” which bring the proceedings to an optimistic and satisfying
conclusion, “Utopiate” offers a revealing insight into the valuable work being
undertaken by Rebus Theatre.
Images by Andrew Sikorski