Terrestrial
\nby Fleur Kilpatrick.
\nState Theatre Company South Australia.
\nSpace Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
\nMay 24. Tickets: $32- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online
\nDuration 60 minutes (no interval)
\nUntil June 2.<\/p>\n
Playwright Fleur Kilpatrick dedicates her newest work, Terrestrial, <\/em>\u201cto lonely girls, to bored boys, to quiet towns.\u201d Part of State Theatre\u2019s State Ed schools program, it has already toured regional schools and centres, with more to come when this Adelaide season concludes.<\/p>\n In State\u2019s 2018 season brochure, Terrestrial <\/em>is linked to Leigh Creek but in this production details are far less specific. It is deliberately generalised. Lonely girls, bored boys, and quiet towns are many and various in regional Australia, experiencing dwindling hopes in declining circumstances, and with few offers of assistance, or even consolation.<\/p>\n Liddy is a teenage terrestrial who is definitely looking for some thing extra. She is new in town and knows no-one. She and her mother have been constantly on the move, trying to get distance from her abusive father, but caught in a pattern of toxic reconciliations. When everything around her looks bleak, Liddy looks upwards to the stars. Her hopes are other-worldly, to be beamed up and beyond, like the UFO and alien capture cases she eagerly reads about.<\/p>\n Her new friend Badar is also an outsider. When Liddy asks what his name means, he says \u201cFull Moon\u201d. \u201cSpaceman ?\u201d she enquires, \u201cMuslim\u201d he replies. Badar is attached to his new town, generally optimistic even though the mine is closing, patient and generous with Liddy despite her restless desperation. Both talk about getting away but the options are unclear and, unlike Liddy, Badar\u2019s intentions are thoroughly grounded.<\/p>\n Director Nescha Jelk has astutely managed Kilpatrick\u2019s spare, elliptical, often enigmatic text, counterpointing the teenagers\u2019 heartfelt dialogue with the inter-galactic (or not ?) mysteries of the final scene. Meg Wilson\u2019s functional set is a simple demountable fa\u00e7ade with a deck and a large mirror window, Chris Petridis\u2019s lighting, like Andrew Howard\u2019s excellent sound design, is appealingly understated \u2013 except for the close encounters of the explosive, indeterminate kind.<\/p>\n The performances are vivid : Annabel Matheson as Liddy, vexed, vulnerable, determined, and Patrick Jhanur, as Badar, empathetic, resilient, emotionally intelligent. They capably carry the ambitions of this intentionally inconclusive play.<\/p>\n Fleur Kilpatrick has written about teenage distress and anomie, expressed through science fiction fantasy and the systematic scrutiny of a police procedural. Questions are being asked of Liddy by an investigator, referred to only as \u201cHim\u201d (the disembodied voice of Patrick Frost). A gun was fired, someone is missing, the police are dragging the reservoir .<\/p>\n These and other conundra are genuinely engaging, just as the predicaments of the young people are poignant and meaningful. Terrestrial<\/em> raises more than it resolves, but it has invention and suspense enough to provoke spirited speculation among young audiences lucky enough to see it.<\/p>\n \u201cLooking to the heavens for escape\u201d, The Australian<\/em>, May 28, 2018, p.14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Terrestrial by Fleur Kilpatrick. State Theatre Company South Australia. Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre. May 24. Tickets: $32- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online Duration 60 minutes (no interval) Until June 2. Playwright Fleur Kilpatrick dedicates her newest work, Terrestrial, \u201cto lonely girls, to bored boys, to quiet towns.\u201d Part of State Theatre\u2019s State Ed schools program, it has already toured regional schools and centres, with more to come when this Adelaide season concludes. In State\u2019s 2018 season brochure, Terrestrial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,5,16,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-38","category-archive","category-australian-texts","category-state-theatre-company","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938","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=2938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2939,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938\/revisions\/2939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}