Gorgon
\nby Elena Carapetis
\nState Theatre Company
\nSpace Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
\nMay 3. Tickets : $20 – $38.
\nBookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au
\nDuration : 60 minutes
\nUntil May 7. SA Regional tour May 9\u201327.<\/p>\n
\u201cFeel \u2026what is that\u2026 I feel\u2026pissed off ?\u201d asks Lee, a teenager at the end of his tether, \u201cYeah. Like my whole body has become a fist. I\u2019m made of fists, all of me, ready to smash something.\u201d In this year\u2019s State Ed schools touring production, State Theatre Company features a new work from Elena Carapetis. Like The Good Son<\/em>, her excellent debut play from 2015, Gorgon<\/em> is set in contemporary Adelaide and examines the intense, alienated, frustrated world of late adolescence.<\/p>\n Maz and Lee are close mates but their friendship is strained by Maz\u2019s cruel arrogance and Lee\u2019s envy and unspoken angst : his father is a bully and his mother mentally ill, whereas Maz\u2019s parents are affluent and doting. He even gets a car for his 18th<\/sup> birthday. When the two go speeding in the Adelaide Hills, there is a fatal accident. The play then focuses, exactly a year later, on the impact on Lee, the guilty survivor, and Maz\u2019s twin sister Lola, perpetually lost in the shadow of her favoured sibling.<\/p>\n Drawing on the Greek legend of the Gorgon Medusa and her snake-haired sisters, the writer not only questions male and female emotional stereotypes but reverses the myth so that, instead being a terrifying monster who turns men to stone, it is the Gorgon who is trying to restore the young man to life.<\/p>\n From the staccato opening image of Lee\u2019s anguished dance, accompanied by Will Spartalis\u2019 heavy metal score, with spiky monochrome back-projections and stark footlighting from Chris Petridis, director Nescha Jelk\u2019s production has a pace and urgency which is catnip to its young audience. Kathryn Sproul\u2019s astutely minimal design features a cracked concrete grey wall (for text and other video display) and a bulky sofa for the car ride sequences. The set is then pried open to become a chaotic apartment where the cathartic confrontation between Lee and Lola takes place.<\/p>\n In the dual roles of Maz and Lola, Chiara Gabrielli is key to Carapetis\u2019 theme of gender duality. As Maz she presents both his swaggering entitlement and his undeclared feminine, while as Lola, she captures the persistence and courage of a young woman staring down rage to find resolution.<\/p>\n James Smith is outstanding as Lee. While depicting the torment and sullen grief of the character, he also highlights the playful comedy and wry narrative asides which Carapetis blends into her text.<\/p>\n Nescha Jelk and State Theatre have excelled with this well-targeted production. Gorgon<\/em> looks long and hard at some timely themes.<\/p>\n Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n \u201cGender duality in world of adolescent alienation\u201d The Australian, May 5, 2016, p.18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gorgon by Elena Carapetis State Theatre Company Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre May 3. Tickets : $20 – $38. Bookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au Duration : 60 minutes Until May 7. SA Regional tour May 9\u201327. \u201cFeel \u2026what is that\u2026 I feel\u2026pissed off ?\u201d asks Lee, a teenager at the end of his tether, \u201cYeah. Like my whole body has become a fist. I\u2019m made of fists, all of me, ready to smash something.\u201d In this year\u2019s State Ed schools […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,5,16,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-36","category-archive","category-australian-texts","category-state-theatre-company","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699","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=2699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2700,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699\/revisions\/2700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}