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It is always good to see the arrival of an accomplished new Australian play. This is the case with Lachlan Stevenson’s debut play FOR THE TIME BEING. Stevenson is an alumni of TheatreiNQ’s mentorship program, The Bridge Project and the Bachelor Of Arts in Acting course at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. As well as being the writer, Stevenson also directs and takes on one of the roles.
Stevenson’s play takes us into the fraught world of house sharing. It’s a world that many of us know only too well, the world we enter into when we leave the family home until we bunker down with a partner, if we are fortunate to have one. We all have stories to tell from that time in our lives when we shared houses not just with friends but also with people who were, to begin with, complete strangers.
It’s just a little precarious. There’s nothing quite like the experience! It certainly got Stevenson’s playwriting ‘juices’ going as the program note reveals that he has been house sharing for the last six years. He is, of-course, not the first Australian writer to explore this terrain. John Birmingham wrote the legendary novel ‘He Died With A Felafel Hand In His Hand’ which was later made in to a motion picture.
The play starts comically with three daggy looking guys disconsolately splayed across a living room sofa, as they hear their female flatmate loudly, and in a very protracted way, orgasming from her (off-stage) bedroom. We find out that their mornings have started out this way every day for over two weeks.
Their pissed off attitude isn’t helped when after her latest lovemaking session she enters the living room nonchalantly, and is followed, not long after, by her boyfriend who is just clad in a towel.
What follows is a pastiche of house sharing ‘scenes’ including smoking dope, to bickering over who is going to do the cleaning, to falling for a flatmate, to clowning around and wisecracking, to partying without any inhibition, to worrying about when the axe will fall with the real estate agent.
The play was well crafted with plenty of good touches. There is an old and true adage that in good acting, the actor shows rather than tells. The same is true of good playwriting, the writer shows by actions and inferences rather than explains. Stevenson does this very well.
Stevenson couldn’t have asked more from his production. The staging was excellent with a good use of a compact living room set and the surrounding areas. The stage was lit well by Pip Haupt.
The cast worked hard and were excellent with Brittany Santariga playing the lone woman, Vive, James Thomasson playing Jack, Harlee Timms playing Gordy, Kyle Barrett playing Johnny, and Stevenson himself playing the role of Pat.
I hope that this play has legs. Theatre companies looking for a good play to put on, a dramedy, that richly combines comic and dramatic strands, with laugh out loud moments and real tears coming from the audience, please note.
The play represents another first. It is this year’s first production by the enterprising Stacks On Theatre Company. Their production of Lachlan Stevenson’s FOR THE TIME BEING is playing Flow Studios until the 14th April 2023. Performance times are Tuesdays to Saturdays at 7.30pm and Sundays at 6.30pm. Ticket prices $30, Concession $15.
Bookings link http://linktr.ee/stacksontheatre
