F.

F.
By Morgan Rose, with the collaboration of director Katrina Cornwell and the performers. Riot Stage. Poppy Seed Theatre Festival. Trades Hall, New Ballroom. 30 November – 11 December 2016.

A show purportedly about teenagers and sex – or how they learn about sex from random sources – that (according to the program notes) ‘springboards from Frank Wedekind’s 1891 classic Spring Awakening’. 

Spring Awakening, dated as it might be, is still a coherent text – with characters of burgeoning sexuality caught in developing pressures and dilemmas.  The connection between it and F is glancing: both, yes, are about teenagers and sex.  There are characters and there are dilemmas in F, but, despite having an advisor – Cecelia Devlin – on gender sexuality and diversity, both are put before us too briefly and superficially.  Characters appear, say their piece or do their thing – and then… next!

F, as an implied critique of the unsatisfactory nature of those contemporary random sources of sexual education, is itself is also a random-seeming sequence of moments and sketches of teen life.  Or in other words, ‘one damn thing after another’.  Parent-child conflict; parental pressure to succeed; frank discussions of masturbation; uncertainty about what is ‘real’ – or rejection of it; a frenetic vlogger, asking for love and claiming indifference to it; text messaging (no sexting?); regression to infant television shows, contrasted with hard-core porn; the aftermath of a dud f**k; and so on. 

There is a vague kind of development to the show, but it seems almost accidental.  I’m assuming the director, Katrina Cornwell, and the nominal writer, Morgan Rose, gave priority to the young cast’s ‘ideas’ over developing those ideas and communication with an audience.  As Mike Leigh has said, speaking of his method of turning actors’ improvisations into performance texts, ‘Writing is about the organisation of experience – that’s what I do.’  Unfortunately, there is scant evidence of organisation in F.  Yvette Turnbull’s set design is similarly haphazard: a dumpster, a couch, a stack of car tyres, some industrial scaffolding…  Bits and bobs, some used, some not, spread like the segments right across the wide playing area – so that following the action is a bit like watching tennis.

The large cast of eleven teens, mostly Year 12s, and one adult is periodically overwhelmed by all this: they drop to their knees and collapse on their faces, as if exhausted – one of the show’s more expressive gestures.  Curiously, it is when the whole cast is on stage together that F communicates its few ideas more successfully.  When it runs out of what ideas it has, the entire cast dances for a while and a net containing soft toys is released.  Finally, all but one collapse and we get very brief, very solipsistic monologues from each.

With some exceptions – for instance, the vlogger’s near hysterical rants – the text is sadly banal – ‘real’ but banal.  Things are not helped by the fact that there are only a few signs of acting talent among the cast: that motor-mouth vlogger again, the boy half of that regretted sex, a girl in a striped dress – but most mistake sincerity and naturalistic mumbling for performance.  (The program notes simply list the performers’ names without ascribing anyone to a particular role.)

Yes, I know: they’re just kids.  Well, the performers are.  I am sorry to be harsh, but if you wish to put your show before the public and charge admission, there is some obligation to do more than provide ‘sexual references’ and ‘self-expression’ for the cast.  F no doubt had a great pitch; the realisation is something else.  A worthy subject guarantees nothing and democracy is fatal to art.  As a colleague remarked as we filed out (somewhat exhausted ourselves): ‘That wasn’t even a good drama class’. 

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Sarah Walker.

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