One Punch Wonder

One Punch Wonder
By Amanda Crewes. The Actors’ Hub. Melbourne Fringe. Theatre Works. September 25 – 27, 2018

One Punch Wonder is a timely and brilliantly conceived production that addresses the current spate of one-punch-kill crimes that stem back to the year 2000.

Writer and director Amanda Crewes from Actors Hub in Perth felt a passionate necessity to make a theatrical statement that could instigate a change, to help prevent male aggression become less of a problem in Australia. She, along with four male actors (Andrew Dunstan,  Adam Leeuwenhart, Christian Tomaszewski and Levi Widnall), have hatched a well conceived plan of action creating  an astounding and thought provoking dramatized piece of physical theatre.

One Punch Wonder, staged in a boxing ring, offers a 360 degree perspective on the subject. It is a clever metaphorical device that underhandedly comments on boxing being a male dominated sport, despite women having recently claimed equal rights to the game.

The actors deliver fifty fierce minutes of hard-edged physical body collisions and back flips along with mimicry and verbatim dialogue sourced from victims, offenders, families, media and the law. The message is clear, strong and relentless - there is no turning back. One Punch Wonder dogmatically calls for a re-education and re-evaluation of the current lenient sentences on crimes that almost always result in death.

The ambiguous catch-cry ‘be a man’ questions the pressures of male bonding, that give rise to aggression from a young age along with youth bromances and a  boasting of conquests, which all become contributing factors. The boxing canvas is completely covered and nothing is left hanging outside of this ring.  This is a dynamic and fearsome show that leaves audiences shocked and aware.

The female voice-over tells of real cases. Although it’s sometimes muffled and inaudible, our focus is predominately centered on the highly-energized performances that already encapsulate plenty of physical reenactment, historical detail and statistics.

The video projection uses material and footage of male contact sports and CCTV images of real punch attacks that reinforce the need to change the way men behave and think about themselves.

Flora Georgiou

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