Silent Disco

22 Apr 2011-04 Jun 2011 ,

Theatre reviews

Recommended

Plug in, tune out

First published on 14 Sep 2010. Updated on 5 Jun 2011.

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Don’t be confused if you’re handed a pair of hot pink headphones when you rock up for the latest Griffin production.

You’ll have two different channels to choose from. On one channel, plaintive cooing (“Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone…”) and wistful daydreaming (“Be my lover, my lady river”); on the other, world-weariness (“Oh, I don’t see it that way, I don’t see it that way…”) and anti-establishment fury (“Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!”).

You’re listening to the soundtracks to the lives of Tamara Brewster and Jasyn Donovan, the two troubled teens at the centre of Silent Disco, in which the ever-present headphones hint at the temptation to plug in and tune out. Tamara (newcomer to the main stage Sophie Hensser) and Jasyn aka ‘Squid’ (Meyne Watt, staying on for more at Griffin after The Brothers Size) have a whole lot they’d like to block out with noise-cancelling earbuds: fuck-up parents, complicated home lives, minimum wage jobs and annoying teachers. Tamara and Jasyn are in tune with each other though – and the end-of-year formal is “something to look forward to, but”. If only this new song they’re dancing to can drown out the noise from the rest of the world.

Lachlan Philpott’s script has been fine-tuned since it won him the Griffin Award in 2009, but right away you can understand that it struck the judges as something bold and original. An ex-teacher himself, Philpott effortlessly taps into school hallway vernacular, finding a beat and rhythm and unintentional poetry in every ‘as if’, ‘whatever’ and perfunctory ‘nuh’ – but he also lets Tamara and the other characters slip into narratorial, stream-of-consciousness soliloquies, scratching away at the scunge and grunge and giving us a glimpse of the gleaming surface underneath. The language is all the more beautiful against the gritty urban backdrop.

And it’s not just the vocabulary of a modern Australian classroom that Silent Disco hits smack-bang on the head. From the moment Mrs Petchall (Camilla Ah Kin) addresses the audience as her students, we’re immediately transported into a modern Australian classroom – gum under every flat surface, retarded ceiling fan tottering away, the paralysing fear of being called up to the whiteboard. Silent Disco brings that familiar world sharply, sometimes painfully, back into focus.

Philpott also conveys, again sometimes painfully, the Sisyphean existence of the teacher. Camilla Ah Kin portrays Mrs Petchall as one of the nice ones – there’s warmth in her voice even when she tells her students “I don’t care about your rights or what your parents say” – but you can tell by her numb, anaesthetised smile that her spirit’s been crushed a few too many times. She recalls the full names of former students, her own roll call of fallen soldiers: Jane Spitteri, Suzie Furlong, Brittany Maycomb, Jade Walters. And even a teacher, we soon learn, can find some comfort and release in the embrace of an iPod.

The cast really gets to show us what they can do in Silent Disco, and it turns out they can do it all. Camilla Ah Kin deftly juggles three roles (her cuticle-inspecting GO-LO worker Dezzie is a riot), Kirk Page brings some serious menace to proceedings, and Meyne Watt convincingly switches modes from boyish and charming to genuinely frightening. Sophie Hensser is an instantly endearing performer too – putting in a fairly heart wrenching performance as Tamara but also whipping up a fleeting flash of comedy gold as Diana Filokostis. And, as Philpott’s stage directions helpfully recommend, she sure can dance like a possessed slut.

The play is also a great chance for a director of Lee Lewis’s calibre to come and shake their groove thing, and here she does the directorial equivalent of tearing up the dancefloor. Everything about Lewis’s direction here is fluid, focused and energetic, and, as the story of Tamara and Jasyn unfolds, it’s through her guidance that Silent Disco is elevated into the realm of classical tragedy. When Tamara and Jasyn do actually come across a silent disco – a touching moment, plugged in to each other’s iPods, like stethoscopes planted on each other’s hearts – we know that heartbreak is not far away.

We at Time Out would never condone truancy, but here’s a new Australian play well worth wagging school for – unstuffy, engaging theatre that doesn’t feel like homework. And those of us long out of school shouldn’t dismiss it as mere adolescent drama, or a condescending anthropology of teenagerdom. Silent Disco is about the lingering ache of realising your lot in life, hope and hopelessness, being fucked up and fucking up – themes much bigger than the schoolyard.

There’s one last important thing to note about Silent Disco: there’s a whole lotta love in this project. Honestly, without getting too new-agey here, you can feel the love. It’s splashed all over Griffin’s foyer walls, it’s pouring out into the streets (check out the official Silent Disco flash mob below), and you can be sure that it’ll be on show at Griffin’s actual silent disco(!) later this month. And yes, they’re handing out the headphones with the Tamara and Jasyn channels at Monday, Friday and Saturday performances throughout the season. The generosity of spirit behind all these extra-curricular activities is astonishing and enriching. Thank you, Griffin, for fighting for our right to party.

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Words by Darryn King