EAT THE YOUNG FRESH
Q Theatre, The Vault, Auckland
24/02/2015 - 28/02/2015
Production Details
Eat the Young Fresh
Child poverty is an issue that often provides heated debate and over the centuries many solutions to solving this issue have come and gone. Jonathan Swift wrote an interesting and insightful article into the oppression of the English aristocracy and a solution to the persecuted Irish during the potato famine, with a tongue in cheek article penned in 1729 – ‘A modest proposal’ providing a solution to the issue by selling the infants of the impoverished Irish to the wealthy English rulers so they may be cooked and eaten. Even providing recipes for preparation of the meal!
This provides the platform for Eat the Young Fresh. The tale centers on a love triangle and the pressures this brings upon an educated and upwardly mobile young married couple. They face the challenges of redundancies in the Global Financial Crisis, unpaid bills, unexpected pregnancy, mental illness, substance abuse, extramarital affairs, sexual orientation, and many more. The results of which are hilariously gruesome and not for the easily nauseous.
Presented as a black comedy, with a challenging score to balance the gruesome plot, Eat the Young Fresh is full of drama, lies, music and FOOD. The audience will be treated to a ‘feast’ for the senses, when they arrive and throughout the show, as they take the journey with the characters on stage.This original New Zealand musical is not to be missed.
– See more at: http://www.qtheatre.co.nz/eat-young-fresh#sthash.81KROQtl.dpuf
Music & Book by Patrick Kelly
24-28 feb at Q Theatre Vault, 305 Queen Street
$28/$23 (show only) $35/$30 (with light meal)
Bookings: https://www.patronbase.com/_QTheatre/Productions/5814/Performances
Proceeds from the sale of each ticket are donated to Variety the children’s charity.
Performers: Romy Hooper, Alexandra McKellar, Paul Fagamalo
Produced by Harmonious Events
https://www.facebook.com/pages/info_request/create/?field_type=376081639179091&location=testing&recipient_id=226723874006807
75 mins
A black comedy-musical roller coaster
Review by Raewyn Whyte 24th Feb 2015
Eat The Young Fresh is a black comedy-musical roller coaster ride with a running time of just one hour. Inspired by Jonathan Swift’s well known satirical 1729 manifesto A Modest Proposal (which imagined an end to Irish poverty by selling their surplus children to the British aristocracy as food), Eat The Young Fresh has been developed by Patrick Kelly and extends themes explored in his Love and Other Mysteries which was presented in the Short&Sweet Song festival last year.
Set in the somewhat oppressive confines of Q Vault, the plot combines lyrics, dialogue and interaction to subject its three capable performers (Romy Hooper, Alexandra McKellar, and Paul Fagamalo) to a vast array of contemporary ills. The pressures builds relentlessly as they work their way through a failed advertising pitch, devastating social media failure, the impact of redundancy coupled with a mounting overdraft, unresolved grief from the recent death of a parent, marital disharmony, unplanned pregnancy and miscarriage, substance abuse, mental illness, a love triangle, one night stands, post-natal depression and negotiated parenting duties, culminating in a particularly wonderfully shocking ending.
The music takes its flavour from popular rock-blues-jazz standards and is at its best in anthems and duelling exchanges which match each performers’ natural range and optimal pace. Fagamolo is confident and heartfelt in delivering No Misunderstanding in my Heart, McKellar is concvincingly optimistic in Waiting and distraught in What If I Told You, and Hooper is at her best in the angry How Did I Not See. At other times, when the pace is superfast, and the lyrics are comprised of unwieldy multisyllabic sentences, or the range is just beyond the performer’s natural limits, the words are too easily lost in the just-a-tad-too-loud recorded score, which perhaps could be turned down a little.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments