For lots of laughter, a peek at the work of different Brisbane playwrights and some hilarious performances you need to take a micro-trip before the end of November. Micro-Trip II – the Return Journey is a whole lot of silliness bundled into just over an hour of fun.
Last year Sean Dennehy and Jo Thomas presented ‘Micro-Trip’, seven 10-minute plays, and they’ve brought the concept back in 2008 with ‘The Return Journey’. They held an open submission process where they asked playwrights to come up with new and original short comedies and then picked the best of the bunch to produce.
It’s an interesting concept, with the only downside being that they were limited by which playwrights decide to submit work and not knowing the quality of the work that would be submitted.
Not all the plays in ‘Micro-Trip II’ work but, when you hit a shaky play, it doesn’t matter too much because you know it will be over in 10 minutes. That’s the joy of a series of shorts. And when you hit a gem the minutes flash by and you wish the play could be extended.
There was one play in this series that I wanted to see more of. It had characters and a situation that warranted deeper study and left audiences longing for more. Like a good short story, ‘Silas Moorcroft’s Bane’ gave us fully realised and rounded characters with lives that went on before and after the snippet we were shown. It raised questions and made us care about the characters but also had a resolution and could be savoured as it was, without any other explanation.
‘Silas Moorcroft’s Bane’ was written by Sven Swenson, by far the most experienced of the playwrights involved and it shows. Given the prolific nature of Swenson’s work, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this little gem appearing in a full length play somewhere down the track. I do hope so.
Designing a production that will work as seven different settings is tough and Kitty Taube’s set is modest and adaptable. Geoff Squires’ lighting makes the most of the space and Taube’s light-reflecting screens. Guy Webster’s sound is excellent, incorporating voice overs and theme music to great effect.
Four actors play all the parts in ‘Micro-Trip II’, making lightning costume changes as they leap from character to character. Sean Dennehy as co-producer, writer and director has assembled a strong comic cast. Louise Brehmer shines in Swenson’s play and my only regret was not seeing more of this highly talented actor. Daniel Murphy is fabulous as a troubled man on a ledge, deciding whether or not to jump, and his lascivious Scotsman is brilliant. Jo Thomas brings an irrepressible energy to her roles and Bryan Probets is magnificent as a mute, the doorkeeper in Death’s waiting room and Neil Armstrong.
Some of the plays in the series are really extended gags, there just to deliver a punch line. This is particularly true of Dennehy’s ‘Gorsky’. The punch line’s good, the joke’s funny and that makes it work, but it’s a bit empty and this is evident when you hold the play next to ‘Silas Moorcroft’s Bane’. Nick Backstrom’s ‘A Room with No View’ is a whimsical look at what happens after we die, it’s funny but once again the characters appear to be cardboard cut-outs, propped up for this one joke, rather than existing in their own right.
It’s a tough ask to make theatre that delivers rounded characters and suspends disbelief in 10-minutes. Much harder when you have to make it funny. Funny seems to equal stand-up comedy and that’s what I saw in six of the seven pieces. I was interested to see that ‘Silas’, the play that worked best for me, was the least funny of them all. It was tender and moving and sad and had moments of humour but I’d never have characterised it as a comedy.
Maybe that’s where Micro-Trip has been limiting itself. If you ask for short comedy of course you’re going to get gags and jokes. If you ask for short theatre, you open the range to plays that will move and touch audiences. I’m glad they allowed one play to stretch the definition of comedy this year. If Micro-Trip continues in future years, hopefully there will be more room to manoeuvre and a range of offerings to tempt different taste buds.
Reviewed by Katherine Lyall-Watson
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