Nineteen

Shane Pike’s Nineteen is the second in a trilogy of plays exploring masculinity in young Australian men. This world premiere performance was brutally honest and frequently confronting.

Constructed from real-life stories gathered over several years, the play specifically focuses on four young men who are all living together in a share house. They swore on oath at 11 to be best friends forever but at 17 cracks are starting to show in the friendship.

Spokesman for the group is George (Leonard Donahue), who’s in a committed relationship and studying to be a writer, Josh (Jackson McGovern) is a gym-jock who uses his good looks to bed girls, Noah (Silvan Rus) works construction and fathers a child at 19, while his young brother Adam (Daniel Hurst) is a dope fiend and struggles academically. All of them drink beer from sunup to sundown.

Their friendship is fractured when George, lonely and at a low-point in his life, intimately declares his love for Josh and hugs him. There’s nothing sexual about it, he just voices a feeling that has always been unspoken. The repercussions that follow have George kicked out of the house, and although he tries, the bond of friendship is never recovered. It doesn’t help when George finds out Josh has slept with his girlfriend behind his back.

It’s a dark, frequently depressing scenario which at times is leavened by humour, mostly of the inappropriate kind.

All four performers created believable, if unlikeable, characters. Leonard Donahue’s anguished portrayal of George, a boy on the cusp of manhood, was the one who had the most empathy. Frustrated with himself for committing the most unforgivable sin of declaring his love for another man, his pain was palpable. Jackson McGovern imbued Josh with all the standard pretty-boy traits; selfishness, disregard for others, and a macho-male attitude to women. Even stripped naked he never lost his bravado. It was another strong performance. Silvan Rus and Daniel Hurst gave layers of depth to Noah and Adam, the products of an emotionally absent father. Rus hinted at possibly breaking the parental cycle until he knocked up his girlfriend, while Hurst sank deeper into depression and began to self-harm with tragic results.

Pike’s direction kept it fast, helped by Jason Glenwright’s excellent lighting design that quickly established time and mood.

Peter Pinne

Photographer:Joel Devereux.