{"id":15127,"date":"2025-11-02T03:32:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T16:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/?p=15127"},"modified":"2025-11-02T03:32:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T16:32:04","slug":"observer-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/2025\/11\/02\/observer-control\/","title":{"rendered":"OBSERVER: Control"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Presented by Flatpack and Theatre Works, Control was an interesting sci-fi odyssey which gave a glimpse, but only a glimpse, into what the late 21st century might look like.<br>The play had three acts. In the first, four astronauts are aboard a spacecraft heading to Mars to establish a colony. Or maybe they\u2019re not. The second act, also involving four characters, takes place a decade later in Melbourne at the Museum of Childhood Memories. The final act, a further decade into the future and located on New Earth (formerly known as Mars), sees a technician programming an android so it can teach young children.<br>Written by Keziah Warner, Control was bold and ambitious in scope. Each of the three acts was radically different from the others in place, time and characters. However, they shared a similar structure as each consisted of a series of short scenes involving different combinations of characters. The writing varied from wildly passionate and exclamatory to moments of tender intimacy, poetic almost.<br>The structure of the play and nature of the writing meant much was demanded of the actors involved. Happily all four main performers &#8211; Seon Williams, Faran Martin, Lachlan Herring and Alex Duncan &#8211; acquitted themselves admirably. They gave each of the different characters they played distinctive traits and energies. In addition, there was a terrific sense of ensemble acting, with the dynamic between performers vital and strong.<br>Realising the different worlds of Control was no small feat so all credit then to the director Olivia Staaf. She had a strong vision for the play and, with her actors and production team, brought that vision to life through robust performances and smooth transitions between scenes and acts.<br>Given its scope and ambition Control suffered from being too short to fully and more satisfyingly explore the tantalising peek it provided of a dystopian yet also hopeful future. May the odyssey continue.<br>Venue: Explosives Factory, Rear Laneway 67 Inkerman St, St Kilda<br><strong>Review by Peter Murphy<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Presented by Flatpack and Theatre Works, Control was an interesting sci-fi odyssey which gave a glimpse, but only a glimpse, into what the late 21st century might look like.The play had three acts. In the first, four astronauts are aboard a spacecraft heading to Mars to establish a colony. Or maybe they\u2019re not. The second&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_siteseo_robots_primary_cat":"none","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-observer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15132,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15127\/revisions\/15132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}