Wisdom and wit as we watch the watchers

By Caitlin McGrane

It’s incredibly fitting that The Flick is playing across the road from the iconic Astor Theatre. Nestled in the shadow of the great institution, Red Stitch has truly outdone itself with this production. The show is beautifully touching in the way it employs humour and pathos to tell its story. There’s an awful lot of sweeping as Avery (Kevin Hofbauer) and Sam (Ben Prendergast) clean the cinema at the end of each screening. ‘The Flick’ itself is a small, one-cinema theatre that employs Avery, Sam and Rose (Ngaire Dawn Fair). Avery’s the new guy; he’s skittish and sweet, asking Sam, ‘What do you like wanna be when you grow up?’ Sam’s the old guy, with an unrequited crush on Rose, who’s so carefree she’s intoxicating.

The Flick sets the audience up like a fly-on-the-wall, watching the three interact with each other. As Avery slowly gets a handle on what ‘dinner money’ is and impresses Sam with his terrifying encyclopaedic film knowledge, the character is revealed as the emotional heart of this play and Hofbauer does a particularly wonderful job of keeping the audience on his side throughout. Prendergast’s Sam is wise and sensitive, played with no small amount of wit. And Fair as Rose is beautifully languid yet earnest: I wanted to go for drinks with her afterwards. What’s so charming about this play is that no one character is truly without fault, and it’s great to see how playwright Annie Baker has dealt with depression, suicide and growing up in a way that is truly sensitive and insightful.

The set, designed by Shaun Gurton is simple but extremely effective, and the cinema seats and projection booth were both very accurate. Lighting designed by David Parker was immersive as the audience played the role of the screen. Expertly directed by Nadia Tass, The Flick was a delight, and I left thinking deeply about the future of cinema and the people we interact with on a daily basis. It’s remarkable how much we get to know about the three protagonists as the play unfurls, and Baker has delivered a production that is sharp, funny and poignant.

The Flick is playing at Red Stitch Actors Theatre, Rear 2 Chapel Street St Kilda East until May 23. For ticket bookings and more information, visit https://events.ticketbooth.com.au/event/TheFlick2

A world of illusions and trickery

By Beth Cregan

 I head off to The Melbourne Comedy Festival’s Alex and Luke’s Make Your Parents Disappear with my own trick on either arm – my ‘magic minded’ nephew (aged 8) and his worldly older sister, aged 11 (11.75 to be exact!). It might be hard to impress this techno ‘review panel’ with a few simple magic tricks. But soon enough, it’s clear to all three of us, that this show is far from simple magic. More than once, I jabbed my niece’s side and whispered, ‘Hey how did they do that? to which she just shook her head. Welcome to Spiegeltent and the world of illusions and trickery.

When we meet the brothers, Alex and Luke, they are up in their bedroom, completing their magic school homework, when Mum reminds them it’s nearly bedtime. They want to stay up. (We want them to stay up too!) With a little prompting, the audience soon suggests that perhaps if mum and dad disappeared, bedtime would be a thing of the past. And so begins a fast paced, interactive narrative, where Alex and Luke race to eradicate one of the worse words in the world – bedtime!

Along the way they entertain us with an impressive list of magic tricks. Both of the boys attend magic school but Alex is not as skilled a magician as his brother, which adds some wonderful slapstick humour and funny antics to the show. Think folded, squashed bananas and tricks that go terribly wrong, amidst much laughter from the audience. You’ll find all of your children’s favourite illusions in this mix – card tricks, disappearing dice, coins that come out of nowhere, balloon animals and tables that dance metres off the floor. But some more complex tricks may take you completely by surprise. In the early part of the show, a mother from the audience gave up her phone for a trick (brave, I know). The woman is reunited with her phone in last few minutes of the show. It is snug inside a can of beans! Yes baked beans! (Thankfully the phone was in a zip lock bag.)

The characters of mum and dad are also plucked from the audience and made to disappear, only to turn up minutes later in the audience. The narrative is engaging and the tricks are seamlessly performed but what really impressed me was the high level of audience participation and the rapport the magicians developed with their volunteers across a wide age range. They say, don’t work with animals or children, but these two guys make it look like tremendous fun, despite the lights, the constant action, unpredictable audience members on stage and the endless line of tricks to perform.

So on the tram after the show, I ask my young reviewers, would they recommend the show to their buddies? Yes, is the unanimous reply; ‘Everyone should go and see it!’