REPETITIVE SCRIPT UNDERMINES PERFORMING POTENTIAL |
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) Photo: Michael Smith By Polly Stenham Directed by Hera Dunleavy Next Big Thing / Auckland Theatre Company at The Basement, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland From 6 Jul 2012 to 21 Jul 2012 Reviewed by (critic uncredited), 10 Jul 2012 originally published in New Zealand Herald online |
Tusk Tusk by the UK's Polly Stenham is a highly-strung drama with a premise taken from a child's make-believe game: three siblings – aged 16, 14 and 7 – have to fend for themselves when their mother disappears. All this information is drip-fed to create artificial suspense, lengthening the show to two hours. But the concept is interesting: when trying to avoid your bogey man, you can create a worse situation through your panic (and not know it).
Directed by Hera Dunleavy, the young cast have a lot of potential (particularly leads Arlo Gibson and Lucelia Everett-Brown, and young Flynn Allan, on "Finn" duty the night I saw this) but the repetitive script ("I'm serious!", "I mean it!" "you can't stop me!" etc) seems to lack authority and grounding. [More]
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