Thirty Three – TAP Gallery
From Abigail’s Party to August: Osage County, playwrights have always enjoyed sinking their teeth into the dramatic and comic potential of awkward, booze-fuelled dinners. So it is with Thirty Three, the latest production from the Cathode Ray Tube theatre company, written by Alistair Powning and Michael Booth.
Saskia (Emily Stewart, outstanding as the play’s emotional centre) is a schoolteacher getting her Newtown flat ready for a dinner party in celebration of her 33rd birthday. Suddenly, her estranged brother Josh (Powning, who bears a striking resemblance to Jake Gyllenhaal — all hangdog eyes and sullen impassivity) walks through the door unnanounced. Theirs is a fraught relationship, a shared tough childhood forcing them apart rather than bringing them together.
But efore they have time to pick at each other’s scars, a steady stream of Saskia’s friends arrive for the party. There’s an ultra-chic lesbian singer-songwriter (Gemma Atkinson, who shines in the play’s one acoustic musical number), who arrives frazzled from a fresh relationship break-up. There’s tightly-wound real estate agent Maya (a hilarious Jessica Donoghue), who arrives separately from her husband (Booth), the pair on the verge of divorce. And there’s sleaze with a heart of gold Lachlan, played to comic perfection by an assured Ben Dalton.
It’s a dangerous mix of personalities, and before long — fuelled by far too many shots, pills and lines, all courtesy of Lachlan — tensions spill over.
Booth and Browning’s writing is enjoyably loose, with actors drifting in and out of conversations as the night progresses. At times, the cast is perhaps a tad too loose — small details changed in the course of some scenes (Saskia told one friend she hasn’t seen her brother in two years, another, three; Lachlan invited the group to a house party in the Rocks, a moment later, it was in the Cross), which jarred in what otherwise seemed a well-rehearsed and carefully considered production.
Still, there’s much to enjoy here, particularly for people who’ve attended their fair share of messy house parties — a late-night scene in which the three female characters, having obliterated themselves on a variety of substances, decided to go out dancing in Kings Cross despite barely being able to put on their shoes drew particularly loud howls of recognition from the audience.
info: Thirty Three, TAP Gallery, 8pm Wed – Sat until July 17. $20 on the door. Bookings: www.trybooking.com/PFU
