Reviews

This sharp-witted play puts a mirror up to the arrogance that characterises the entitled and highly spoilt young men being churned out of private schools across western culture. The reflection that is cast is rather ugly, but it is also extremely humorous. The play is set during the preparation for an important debate whose outcome could significantly impact the future ambitions of the four members of the team.

With Wittenoom, Mary Anne Butler has achieved something remarkable.  Her play is ‘poetic drama’, a form that is extremely difficult to make work.  In some hands it can be wearying, even pretentious - unless one is a poet and a dramatist:  Butler is both.  This is an intense, passionate play, sharp and evocative in its imagery, visceral in its emotions.

This show is very strong conceptually; the idea that the pandemic has transformed society into a collective medical and social experiment that has reduced all members into laboratory rats is a powerful underlying idea. The rat imagery is gradually but emphatically introduced into the show. As the performers recount their experiences of lockdown (and their gradual descent into neurosis or psychosis) the rat imagery becomes louder and stronger.

Kit (Bridget Morrison) has come out, to the horror and disgust of her fundamentalist Christian family.  Her father’s response was to beat her up and throw her out of the family home.  Her brother Peter (Ryan Tracey) not only did not defend her but wrote an open letter of disgust, denigrating her.  Her other brother, loving Dan (Charlie Boscolo), remains loyal to her, separating him from his brother.  And so, Kit’s family – albeit repressive and bigoted - has been rent asunder by Kit’s confession of her sexuality.  Worse, Kit now lives with Bi