Review: 80 MINUTES NO INTERVAL LEAVES 'EM WANTING MORE at Old Fitz Theatre

No concept is ever simple, ladies and gentlemen, but if you are lucky the mercy will be in whether the concept is short and sweet, or exhaustive and painful. If you are an audience member of 80 Minutes No Interval, you are in luck, and you're the only one I might add. A might-be-absurdist-but-don't-let-that-stop-you take on the milieu of millennial struggles, 80 Minutes is writer-director Travis Cotton's return to working with Old Fitz Theatre, and he proves again to be a creative capable of marvellous humour and intrigue.

A cursed child, a waiter on a power trip, the next facebook game addiction, and the best shade ever thrown at Mamet, 80 Minutes is an example of what happens when you bring a cast together like alchemy, choose cutting edge over classic, and deliver damn near perfect pacing with all the narrative charm of a shaggy dog story. But heck, is it ever an entertaining exercise in voyeurism. The subject is Louis, an aspiring yet unaccomplished writer whose luck has run out - in so much as according to his ex, parents, boss and publisher, he never had any.

You can really tell when a cast is having fun. Ryan Johnson's needling but arcing lead worked wonders to arouse both your pity and, well, arousal, but ultimately your unadulterated schadenfreude. It is no easy task to generate empathy when you're the eye of a storm such as the characters surrounding Johnson, but he holds the reigns of lead role with strength and drive. Sheridan Harbridge, a stunning mix of Judith Lucy and Michelle Dockery, is an actor who could have been watched all night, displaying an instinct for tone and expression that left no note unfunny. Robin Goldsworthy went balls-deep into character, a master of slapstick and melodrama while Jacob Allan made a truly hilarious mountain from a molehill role we've seen done a million times. Kudos to Julia Rorke for a sensitivity that made a race to the finish feel like What Dreams May Come. Together with every trick in the book cleverly woven in by Production Designer Georgia Hopkins, Lighting Designer Ross Graham and Composer Hamish Michael, what we have here is a wickedly funny blend of meta-self-indulgence and uber-modern storytelling to make a night completely worth stepping out our reality and into Cotton's consciousness. It feels remarkably similar to back when you watched your first ever Split Enz video.

80 Minutes No Interval might be a show for more intermediate theatregoers keen to have their self-awareness challenged, but there is more than a soupcon of boldfaced comedy to keep anyone having fun. Sure to make you feel much better about how your life is tracking, the show is only guilty of taking itself too seriously. Or perhaps, not seriously enough. Either way, if you chuckled or bemused even once reading my bamboozled but beloved interpretation, then you'll have a whale of a time. This review was not written by a red box.

cover photo by Steven Siewert

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