A Hymn to the Hateful

“It is easier to hate than to help,” says a teenage girl, eagerly explaining the lack of satisfaction in doing good over being bad; one of the fourteen performing this new play by Finegan Kruckemeyer.

It’s a tremendous and tumbling washing machine of emotion, angst and anger, each of the many scenes presenting a different piece of dirty laundry. There’s a real estate viewing that describes each room in terms of the domestic violence that has happened there; the horror of the bullied realising they too are a bully; the girl who says she loves you forever yet hates herself. There’s comfort and noise in the crowd; fragility when the haters show the fear of being alone; and a chilling, contemporary monologue of masked intolerance and victim-blaming.

The young performers are all part of Running with Scissors, the out of hours theatre company at Adelaide High School, and they act, dance and speak with huge energy and passion. The experiences they relate are personal, achingly believable and they engage the audience well, inhabiting their characters with confidence, giving us both the ferocity and timidity of being young and uncertain. Performed in the round and never far from the action, it means the audience is not just an observer but part of this seething outpouring and exploration.

Kruckemeyer has written over eighty works, mostly for children – including the AWGIE-winning The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy, commissioned by South Australia’s Slingsby theatre company, but for this production, he has workshopped the stories from discussions with the ensemble. As a result, the stories of hate are cutting, raw and real.

David Tyler directs his young ensemble with precision but not rigidity-Michaela Moors’ movement whooshes the cast around and into each other, stimulating the audience with action, not just words, offering a true sense of group – and of being alone.

The production is bold and brash – Francine Legaspi’s art direction and design is rich in imagery – you could spend the entire performance examining the detail in the mash-up of multicultural and sometimes militaristic costumes by Lisa Kriaris and Catherine Aldous.

Matthew Ralph uses the intelligent lighting well, with colourful washes and bright spots. The sound design from Catherine Aldous is strong, with music and sound effects pummelling the audience, though the volume was occasionally too loud for the performers without microphones. The enduring theme of order – of being told what to do, what to think, who to hate – is exemplified in the stomp of a march, the rhythmic shuddering thud of wooden poles on the stage.

Premiered here as part of the DreamBIG Children’s Festival, this will provoke discussion and difficult conversations between teenagers and their parents – these stories may have come from the young, but they are no strangers to the old: “There is no them,” says the ensemble, “there is no them versus us – there is only us.”  

Mark Wickett