The McNeil Project
The Chocolate Frog and The Old Familiar Juice by Jim McNeil. Wattle We Do Next Productions, in association with Stable Productions &Auspicious Arts Projects. Director: Malcolm Robertson. Actors: Will Ewing, Luke McKenzie, Cain Thompson and Richard Bligh. fortyfivedownstairs (Vic) 6-29 July, 2012.
The McNeil Project offers the chance to revisit a significant era of Australian Theatre History, in presenting two enlightening short plays that are set in prison cells of the 1970s. These works are written by Jim McNeil who himself was a convicted prisoner.
Production values are crisp and clean and the acting sincere and focused. Both plays are well written, intriguing depictions of destabilized and volatile power relationships.
In The Chocolate Frog two inmates deal with the introduction to their cell of a ‘new chum’ Kevin (Will Ewing) a young University Student. As Kevin becomes progressively more threatened by