Last night I had the absolute pleasure of attending the Brisbane Premiere of 2.20AM by award-winning playwright Rebecca Lister at Ad Astra.
As a theatre maker, I love creating and working with conceptual works; works that explore the human condition in a highly innovative and engaging way. Works that make us think, feel, cry and laugh. Watching 2:20am, I felt all of the above and I found myself at times turning towards my partner who was sitting beside me and telling him what a clever artistic choice something was, how beautiful the prose was, how I loved that use of imagery and often times, it would be along the lines of 'I would have done it that way' too. It was a slice of heaven.
The script was exquisite. As a creative writing graduate, it captured the atmosphere of a writing class perfectly. From the sequencing of the writing activities themselves to the delivery of the content was spot on...it was all very on brand. The characters were also wonderfully written and brought to life by the four actors. The actors occupied their characters personalities in a very honest and believable way that it was easy to forget that we were watching a rehearsed performance. It's not an easy job playing grieving, broken and hurt characters and especially playing them convincingly, but the actors did just that. We could hear the pain, the betrayal and the anxiety in their voice. When they cried we cried and when they laughed, we laughed.
Directed by Jacqueline Kerr, I loved the use of a minimalist list and how each character had their own corner, their own world of grief, on stage. B'Elanna Hill did an excellent job lighting the characters stream of consciousnesses in scenes in an eerie blue in contrast to the bright lights of the creative writing class.
To say that I throughly enjoyed attending this production would be an understatement. It's not everyday that you see a production that has an exceptional script, characters, direction and production design. Well done Ad Astra.
Rating: 5 Stars
Playwright | Rebecca Lister
Director | Jacqueline Kerr
DESIGNER | B'Elanna Hill
CAST | Sandra Harman, Caitlyn Leo
Georgia Shaw, Gregory J Wilken
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