Adelaide
\nTheatre<\/p>\n
Jesikah
\nby Phillip Kavanagh
\nState Theatre Company
\nThe Space, Adelaide Festival Centre
\nMay 27. Tickets : $18 – $36.
\nBookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au
\nDuration : 75 minutes
\nUntil May 31.<\/p>\n
When he said \u201cIn the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes\u201d, Andy Warhol didn\u2019t even know about the internet. Now, anyone with a phone can communicate with multitudes they\u2019ve never met – and call them followers and friends.<\/p>\n
For this year\u2019s featured production in State Theatre\u2019s State Ed secondary school\u2019s program, the company has commissioned a new work, Jesikah<\/i>, from award-winning, emerging playwright Phillip Kavanagh. Jesikah is a high school student who, like Macbeth – the character she is rehearsing for her drama production – desperately wants to succeed.<\/p>\n
She has vaulting ambition, and like the Scottish king\u2019s, it definitely o\u2019erleaps itself. Just how much is both a fascination and, at times, a challenge to our credulity as Jesikah, alienated from her staunchly loyal friend Denise, manipulates her mother and teacher and retreats into the narcissistic and grandiose world of her YouTube site, Jesikah\u2019s Bedroom.<\/p>\n
Director Nescha Jelk has created a crisp, stylish production with sumptuous lighting from Ben Flett and a well-judged sound design by Will Spartalis.
\nOlivia Zanchetta\u2019s minimal set, built for thrift and portability for the production\u2019s extensive schools touring, is pretty-in-pink with a single scroll stage mat and backdrop, enabling a large projection area for the live-action video feed which, appropriately, has Jesikah\u2019s on-line image dwarfing and monstering her physical self.
\nKate Cheel is excellent as Jesikah, restless, defiant, devious and paranoid. Dressed in a tartan school skirt, with matching red Doc Martins, she chatters in teenage patois, on the edge of caricature but not quite over it. Elizabeth Hay spars with her as Miss H, the ill-treated drama teacher, and as Jesikah\u2019s flummoxed, under-assertive mother. As Denise, in fluffy jumper and carefully pleated skirt, Hay is the dutiful, unworldly A-grade student who unwittingly inflames Jesikah\u2019s spiraling insecurity and resentment.<\/p>\n
Kavanagh is probing various elements of self-performance in everyday life. Jesikah is a drama queen in every sense, moving from one role to the next, one impersonation to another. The play suggests that the pressure for young people to present themselves, and to excel, is ever accelerating, and, with the further distortions of the cyber world, personal disintegration is almost inevitable.<\/p>\n
However, with its satiric edge and Mean Girls<\/i> tropes, Jesikah <\/i>short-circuits the characters\u2019 motivations and emotional pressures. The friendship with Denise, and its complications, is unexplored, depriving audiences, especially the young target audience, with a chance to invest more in the unfolding situation. By crimping the real emotions of the piece, Jesikah<\/i> becomes just a little too cool for school.<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
\u201cAmbitions of a teenage drama queen\u201d, The Australian, May 29, 2014, p.16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adelaide Theatre Jesikah by Phillip Kavanagh State Theatre Company The Space, Adelaide Festival Centre May 27. Tickets : $18 – $36. Bookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au Duration : 75 minutes Until May 31. When he said \u201cIn the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes\u201d, Andy Warhol didn\u2019t even know about the internet. Now, anyone with a phone can communicate with multitudes they\u2019ve never met – and call them followers and friends. For this year\u2019s featured production in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,5,16,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-31","category-archive","category-australian-texts","category-state-theatre-company","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2420,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419\/revisions\/2420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}