|
 |
Bedtime For Bastards Pestos Manifesto Savvy Bar Lounge Until Sun 14 March 'Bedtime For Bastards' is the banner for a collection of three distinctly different plays: 'Kitchen', Morning On A Rainy Day' and 'Capital', all written by young NSW playwright, Vans Badham. Unfortunately the night we went along to review this one of the cast members for 'Kitchen' took ill, resulting in its cancellation. 'Morning On A Rainy Day' was first on, and here we join Ben (Samuel Booth) and Polly (Jen Hamilton) as they not only recount and question the night before, but also the last nine years of their friendship and the convenience it's lent them to enjoying casual sex with each other. Polly, having just returned from an overseas trip, is now engaged to someone else, and has has often wanted something more to come of her and Ben's relationship, Ben feels that things should continue as they are, even after she's married and despite other girlfriends he'll continue to have. Though coming across a little play acted, this, along with the simple setting of just the bed, accentuated the many intertwined issues and very clever lines dealing with human companionship and infidelity. 'Capital' takes on the spin doctoring methods used by a PR company to justify America's occupation and subsequent rape, torture and murder of orphaned children by marines in post 9/11 Afghanistan. High up in their '110th' floor office (illustrating just one of the many barbed subtleties scattered throughout this very wry offering), two men, Jim (James Beach) and Bob (John Thorpe), have thirty minutes to embellish a few damaging truths shown on a video that's about to be released to the American public. Using the SWOT Analysis system (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), the two, though clearly horrified by what they see on the screen, are more concerned about the loss of their jobs and immersed by their own talented ability to twist words. Not just content with the application of some very effective absurdist wordplay, here Badham has also added a few parts of extreme slapstick, which, much to the credit of the writer and actors alike, never once detracts from the focus of the message. |
|
The latest issue available now!     |
All content copyright dB Magazine