“When it comes to our emotions, we’re generation vexed” — Hook Up review

AS the audience lines up outside the Ballroom of the Lithuanian Club in North Melbourne, an energetic and buzzing young man with notepad at the ready asks each one of us a simple question: “What is your relationship status?”

After we are seated and the show begins, the same man races onto the stage and reads out the statistics he’s gathered to a smattering of applause and laughter.

Hook Up, written and directed by the artsy power couple Nick Hedger and Ben Nicholson, is a cabaret musical at the Melbourne Fringe Festival that explores some of the relationship stereotypes that plague Generation Y.

The show turns out to be a fun social experiment that puts actor-singers Vincent Milesi, Michelle Brasier, Laura Johnston and Josh Ellwood into a variety of different relationship snapshots that play out like short skits, all of which are narrated by Hedger behind his keyboard-piano to the side of the stage.

A lesbian couple who fight about whether or not they fight, a man doing whatever he can to woo the woman of his dreams, a marriage that is resuscitated by opening up the relationship, and a “gaymer” (gay video game player) who proposes to his boyfriend — all “accidentally inspired” by the writer’s friends. There is something familiar in every one of these scenarios, with the theme of commitment tying them all together.

Refreshingly witty and hilarious, Hook Up finds a way to use comedy to make the audience let down their guard and examine why it is that we are sometimes so terrified of being in a relationship and being committed to another human being, especially in an age dominated by dating and hook-up apps like Grindr and Tinder. As Hedger aptly puts it at the start of the show: “When it comes to our emotions, we’re generation vexed.”

Hedger’s awkward presence and humour, beautifully-written songs that had the audience crying from laughter, and amazing singing performances from the actors, particularly Johnston and Brasier – these are just some of the reasons why everyone needs to go and see Hook Up and experience this wildly energetic show.

HOOK UP

Where: Fringe Hub – The Ballroom, Lithuanian Club

When: Now until Friday, November 26. Various times.

INFO + TICKETS: melbournefringe.com.au