Virgins and Cowboys

Over beers, three cowboys (ordinary blokes) chew the fat. It seems that Sam, a lowly Subway employee, has met two different women online, both of whom are virgins. What should he do? This is the light-hearted starting point of Morgan Rose’s study of female sexuality, which has come up from Melbourne’s FLIGHT Festival of New Australian Writing. It doesn’t stay light-hearted for long.

The women are difficult. One is 19, Lane (Penny Harpham), and the other is 29, Steph (Katrina Cornwall), and as this is a feminist play about sex you can imagine the pitfalls that await young Sam (Kieran Law). 

Plenty of pitfalls wait the audience, too. For instance, just as we are getting used to the colourful set with its Ten Pin Bowling game, its garden setting and its indoor drinking area, the cast revolt and, in a trice, reduce the stage to smoke-filled, black-walled nothingness.

As the five-strong cast (and plenty in the audience front row) play games with a tennis ball, we are left to ponder what Morgan Rose is getting at. Some of the set pieces are so strong, like Steph’s recounting of her first sexual encounter and the account by Kieren (James Deeth) of his worldwide quest for intimacy, you wonder why they aren’t presented in a more readily accessible form.

By the end the cast are exhausted from non-stop games, someone has died (possibly Steph), and Sam has been promoted to manager of his local Subway. Direction is by Dave Sleswick, who seems to know exactly what’s going on, and there’s fine Sound Design by Liam Barton.

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Ashley De Prazer.