A spontaneous act of revenge is at the centre of this new play.
Felicity Castagna’s racy novel about two teenaged girls behaving badly has the makings of a movie, and perhaps a play – but this was not quite it. In adapting the book for the stage, Priscilla Jackman has lost some of the fizz and lightness of tone, and as director she hasn’t fully extracted the requisite performances from her two leads: Ziggy Resnick as Rosa, the narrator, and Nikita Waldron as Asheeka.
Rosa and Asheeka attend a Parramatta girls’ school, where the main extracurricular activities are cruising in the back of loud, lowered cars and eating McDonald’s. You can understand why they suspect life contains more options. Having been treated like dirt once too often by her boyfriend, Asheeka drives off in his iridescent blue Falcon with a wide-eyed Rosa beside her. After the spontaneous theft, their only option is to keep driving.
Opening night glitches with gauzy screens that track across stage were entirely forgivable, but perhaps point to the solutions having been overthought. The resultant delays must have been challenging for the cast, but the performances and characterisations don’t consistently have the ring of truth, anyway. Lines that work in Castagna’s pages sound more author-driven than character-driven when spoken, such as girls “disappearing into their own anger” and “learning to walk in my own body”.
Jackman has Suz Mawer, Ella Prince and Alex Stamell sharing some 20 other roles, and performing with an emphasis on physicality and such devices as unison line delivery. There’s an intensity in this ensemble work that may contain the less literal key to fully unlocking the book as a play.has written about music and theatre since 1981 in more than 30 publications, including for Fairfax Media since 1993.
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