The Short and Sweet Festival, an annual celebration of playwriting in the short form, and one of Sydney’s major fringe theatre events, is in its second week at the Newtown Theatre.
Week 2 of the Top 110 plays showcased ten new ten minute plays. As always, the most impressive features of the night were the variety of ideas explored by the writers, and the talent and commitment of the casts and creative teams in getting their particular writer’s vision across. Not all the results were great, that goes with the territory, but one always goes away feeling enriched and stimulated by the creative energy and teamwork that this kind of Festival generates.
Three plays stood out for me. In her play ‘Queen Of De-Nial’, Queensland playwright Carmen Cuskelly tackles a weighty subject, Australians obsession with pokie machines, with intelligence and humour. Her angle; the play charts the course of a love affair between a woman and her pokie machine. Christopher Cherry directed, Eliot Weekes played the pokie with the playwright playing the besotted woman.
Con Nats’s piece ‘Just A Date’, a Crash Test Drama winner, was a well crafted and poignant drama about a man who has fallen for the wrong kind of woman. ‘Just A Date’ opens at just the right moment dramatically. A middle-aged man comes through the door of an attractive woman’s apartment. His spirits are buoyant, he announces to her that he is going to leave his wife and that they can finally be together. Let’s just say for Casanova it’s pretty much downhill from there! The play features a great little reversal which the audience loved.
James Balian, a fine playwright in his own right (‘The Viagra Monologues’), does well in the director’s chair, and the piece is strongly performed by Tai Scrivener as the middle aged beau and Deborah Bradshaw as the heartbreaker. There is some talk that Balian and Nats are hoping to put on a double bill of ‘Just A Date’ and Balian’s piece ‘The Viagra Monologues’ at a Sydney theatre some time this year.
New South Wales playwright, and well known art collector, Bryan Niland’s ‘The Real Story’ was like a bolt out of the blue. Niland’s story of a road-trip from hell featuring a disturbed son, his angst ridden mother and more than a hint of incest, was impeccably directed by Aarne Neeme, and featured razor sharp performances by Daniel Hunter and Julie Hudspeth. Whilst the play was in performance, a young woman started sobbing and had to leave the theatre, such was the head on impact of this play.
Audiences can enjoy a vast array of new short theatre, sometimes sweet and at other times very sharp theatre right up until the Festival’s Gala Final Finale at NIDA’s Parade Theatre on Saturday 12th March, 2011. Check the Festival’s website on http://www.shortandsweet.org for more details.
