You Got Older

For the most satisfying evening in ages you have to climb the (many) stairs in the Kings Cross Theatre and then clamber over the setting on the traverse stage to take your (uncomfortable) seat for You Got Older by Clare Barron, first staged off-off-Broadway in 2014, Australian premiered in 2016 by Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre in Melbourne. It’s an absolute cracker, a must for every mountaineering theatregoer.

Director Claudia Barrie has assembled a peach of a cast for this brilliant play about a family returning home to Seattle to be with their failing and fast-fading father. Chief among them is Mae, played to perfection and beyond by Harriet Gordon-Anderson, who has been ditched and sacked by her lover and boss, hasn’t had sex in 41 days and consequently is coming out in a rash. And she’s having a torrid fantasy affair with a randy cowboy (Gareth Rickards).

All this, and she has to deal with her father about his vegetable garden and her lack on a toothbrush. Steve Rogers is excellent as the dying man, so grateful to have his daughter on hand, but what’s she doing here anyway? 

When he goes to hospital other members of his young family turn up. Hannah (Ainslie McGlynn) is there, perhaps nursing her own problems, and Matthew (Alex Beauman) and Jenny (Sarah Meacham): they form an amazingly co-ordinated team of believable family members, warm and caring. Cody Ross completes the cast as an old friend of Hannah’s, misplaced by Mae, hoping for sex but, when it comes, just grateful for the bed.

Clare Barron’s play, by turns bawdy and touching, is a great joy, completely unpredictable, the final scene a never-to-be-forgotten release of pain and youthful energy. 

The fine set is by Isabel Hudson and the excellent Lighting (Ben Brockman) and brilliant Sound Design (Ben Pierpoint) only add to Claudia Barrie’s directorial concept. Congratulations to her, and here’s to the next!         

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Clare Hawley