Couple of Kids
by Julianne O’Brien
Magpie Theatre Company.
May 1989.

Directed by Angela Chaplin

• Design: Kathryn Sproul
• Lighting: Peter Taylor
• Composer: Andree Greenwell
• Choreographer: Helen Herbertson
• Cast: Eileen Darley, Nic Hurcombe, Claudia La Rose,

Richard Margetson, Caroline Mignone, Stephen Mitchell,
Brett Wood, Peter Wood.

Magpie’s Angela Chaplin has taken on an ambitious task with her production of Julianne O’Brien’s Couple of Kids. Staged in a former church at Site 55, Port Road Hindmarsh, with an imaginative design by Kathryn Sproul, Couple of Kids threads a narrative of teen lovers, Carmille and William, with the legend of Tristan and Isolt. The often excruciating experience of adolescent love can often make for excruciating theatre as well – it is fiendishly difficult to capture the mixture of freshness and sincerity, banality and delusion that are the ingredients of youthful courtship.

In Couple of Kids, writer O’Brien only partly succeeds to find a language of love that a target audience in their mid-teens won’t find too icky for words. That said, the production has a courage, verve and originality that is admirable. The use of the Tristan and lsolt legend provides a poetic shapeliness in contrast to the more lumpy naturalism of the contemporary storyline.

Shrewdly, with splendidly economical dialogue, O’Brien has Tristan as an overheated young Top Sword – equal quantities martial artist and bull artist. While he tests his machismo in the service of King Mark of Cornwall, the present day youngbloods Mark, William and Darren practice their taekwondo in Helen Herbertson’s fluently choreographed fight scenes. The crucial shift from soldier to suitor is less effectively achieved in the modern setting than in the myth. Additional elements such as sibling rivalry, the teenagers’ resentment of their mother’s new lover and peer pressure and hostility are credible complications, but at the cost of blurring the symmetry of the piece. Also, the theme of adultery in the Tristan and Isolt story pitches the emotional dynamics beyond the more childish anxieties of the contemporary lovers.

Designer Kathryn Sproul has made excellent use of the height of the venue, creating two storeys of action – the upper level for the myth and the lower and foreground, complete with magical tree and heart-shaped pond, for everyday action and emblematic contrast. The bunting, banners and martial costume, ancient and modern, bring a vitality and energy to the production which is enhanced by Andree Greenwell’s Renaissance synthesiser and lambent flute score.

Helen Herbertson’s movement work is seen to excellent effect with Tristan’s dragon fight and, at its best, O’Brien’s script has a briskness and wit as well as the simple lyricism which distinguishes her writing. Perhaps assisted by the greater fluency of their text Peter Wood’s King Mark and Eileen Darley’s Isolt are especially assured and Richard Margetson’s Tristan is both comic and touching in his exuberance. Claudia La Rose and Stephen Mitchell are more uneven as the modern lovers and Nic Hurcombe is tentative as brother Mark. Brett Wood is sharp in the dual roles of troublemakers, Andret and Darren, and Caroline Mignone does well with the part of Brandy despite some tipsiness in the writing.

Overall, in Couple of Kids, Angela Chaplin has provided challenging and creative theatre with a production which contains much pleasing detail. But in its analysis of Romantic Love it neither quite captures the intensity of the experience or critically examines its implications.

“Couple of Kids”, Lowdown, Vol.11, No.3, June 1989, p.83.