Babyteeth

Babyteeth
By Rita Kalnejais. Belvoir (NSW). Director: Eamon Flack. February 11 – March 18, 2012.

Babyteeth is a story about a dysfunctional family and the hangers-on who tag along for the ride. Of course ‘dysfunctional family’, nothing new there right? Who hasn’t seen that story before? But what makes Babyteeth so interesting is that while you see each character as being enmeshed in an ensemble you also see them as individuals, starkly drawn with hideous and noble traits all at once.

It centres around Milla (Sara West), a girl, who, suffering from the ravages of cancer, will never reach her fifteenth birthday. And yet for being so young and in many ways innocent she is an old soul with the ability to deal gracefully, wholeheartedly and rebelliously with her fate.

While Milla cannot escape her pain, it is her parents Henry (Greg Stone) and Anna (Helen Buday) who skirt around the sidelines of theirs hoping against hope that “this time the treatment will work“. Despite performing the perfunctory tasks associated with being married there is a sense that if they lose Milla then they will only have each other and what then? This is a couple struggling to find that spark which brought them together while dealing with every parent’s nightmare.

Along the way Milla falls for 25 year old Moses (Eamon Farren), a junkie/drug dealer who specialises in scabbing money off people at train-stations. In her last weeks, Moses becomes a regular fixture at the family home - you know the drill, making himself comfortable, being told off for smoking inside the house and sleeping in Milla’s room. While this may sound fairly clichéd it is remarkable that Rita Kalnejais is able to create fresh dialogue that raises the hairs on the back of your neck - at once touching and extremely uncomfortable.

Toby (Kathryn Beck), the family’s heavily pregnant, very simple, glass half full neighbour, serves as a foil or a counter-point to the undercurrent of gut wrenching pain that is threatening to overtake Henry and Anna. And Milla’s Latvian music teacher Gidon (Russell Dykstra) is the perfect comedic pressure valve, so politically incorrect, but so, so very funny.

Despite this being a difficult story there is much to like about this production. There are moments that will make you gasp in shock because of their sheer brutality and gritty realism. And there are times when Eamon Flack’s direction, combined with the beauty of Robert Cousin’s set design (think massive lazy-susan) and Steve Francis’ sound create a cinematic quality that is breathtakingly beautiful and rarely achieved in theatre.

But there also are times when the script and direction wobble like a toddler trying to walk across the lounge-room on its chubby little legs. However, the highs certainly outweigh the lows and there is a feeling that the show will find its rhythm once it is run in.

Babyteeth is difficult to watch because it deals with the very unpleasant but very human subjects of staring full faced into oblivion, of shuffling off this mortal coil and the unscrupulous hand of fate that can be so unfairly dealt.

Whitney Fitzsimmons

Images: (from top) Greg Stone & Kathryn Beck;  Helen Buday and Greg Stone, & Eamon Farren and Sara West. Photographer: Heidrun Lohr

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