OBSERVER: Nihilistic Optimism On Trampoline
In a classic example of youthful exuberance being trumped by poor stagecraft, Nihilistic Optimism On Trampolines started from an interesting premise. Unfortunately, however, the premise was realised in a cumbersome fashion that dissatisfied.
The play was set in two contrasting worlds; one world was that of a group of disaffected employees of a modern day trampoline park while the second was that of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein.
Relationships, both work and personal, play out amongst the park employees while the well-known story of Frankenstein is pithily reenacted.
The script was written by Kasey Barratt with text also taken verbatim from Frankenstein. The establishment of the two worlds was done well initially but as the script developed lines between the two became blurred and confused.
The modern day setting was a jumble of cliched scenes while, even though not written to be spoken, the well-chosen text extracts from Shelley were powerful.
An ensemble of seven actors played out the action of the two worlds and were accompanied by a trio of musicians who provided various incidental music and sound effects.
Performances were quite mixed, with some actors having a strong stage presence and vocal work while others lacked presence or were hard to hear at times.
There was a lot of emoting which felt forced and artificial and, consequently, led to less engagement with certain scenes and the narrative overall.
Occasionally including band members in the action was a clumsy device and an unwelcome distraction.
The writer Barratt also directed and, while there were some positives to her direction, overall it was dissatisfying. Basically, she felt too close to her own script to see its shortcomings. In addition, several performances were either over- or under-cooked.
Admirable in its ambition, Nihilistic Optimism On Trampolines nevertheless disappointed on too many levels. It was, at best, a work in progress that needed further development with regards to both the script and the production.
Presented at Theatre Works, St Kilda.
Review by Peter Murphy