Review by Greg Gorton
Mad Nun Productions’ “Flick” is a play that is in the process of becoming one of the best single-actor shows you’ll ever get to see. An early version was shortlisted for the 2022 Rodney Seaborn Playwright’s Award, and it is clear that is only being improved. What it might end up being, if its bare-bones production and evergreen humour remains, is perfection.
Flick is a palliative care nurse who appears to be as eccentric as the patients she takes care of. When a new patient happens to be an attractive young man, she quickly becomes obsessed with his world. This basic premise hides one of the funniest and heartfelt productions in Melbourne today. The narrative is perfectly constructed, not leaving you entirely satisfied with Flick’s excuses for her behaviour, or the consequences she faces, until the very end. There’s more than a joke a minute (at one point I timed them) and literally not a single one failed to land with the audience. At just under an hour long, there isn’t a chance for repetition, for the energy to wane, or for us to ever get bored. While an occasional line may sound more “from a monologue” than a character, they are few and far between.
Madelaine Nunn (who wrote and performed the piece) is a theatre-lover’s actor in a world filled with screen-obsessed semi-professionals. She has won The Martin Lysicrates Prize, The Rebel Wilson Scholarship, The ATYP Foundation Commission and The
Jopuka Eldersee Commission. She has been shortlisted for the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award three times and longlisted for the Griffin Award and the Lysicrates Prize. This all might seem like a well-curated list to make someone seem greater than they are, but five minutes of watching Nunn on stage and you’ll wonder why the list isn’t longer.
Nunn holds the audience captive on a mostly-empty stage with the kind of ease that would make any other performer or public speaker immensely jealous. I was previously blown away by her abilities last year as she played the main character in the VCA-selected “Garage Girls”. Flick is no Alice Anderson, but Nunn plays the character so well I needed to remind myself that the actor is likely nothing like the manic nurse. As Flick mimics her colleagues and patients, we see a character playing a role to the best of their ability, with the consummate professional hiding behind the second layer.
Nunn and her director, Emily O’Brien-Brown, know how to use space in a way that pleased me to no end. Flick is the sort of story teller who would definitely use her hands a lot if seated at a cafe, and given the stage moves about with over-enthusiasm, cheeky “self-awareness”, and a tinge of shame. Her dance moves are perfectly horrendous and her comic timing is impeccable.
The lighting for “Flick” is the best you can expect from La Mama (our city has a serious problem when it comes to venues and lighting), never trying to be more than it needs to. However, I have to wonder exactly why a professional sound designer was used in this production. While competent, and mostly fitting for the tone of the show, the sound was completely unnecessary and, at times, a little distracting. A carefully curated series of sound-effects might have made a greater impact than the musical cues and transitions the production currently employs.
“Flick” is a play for anyone who wanted to flip the bird at a dying person, or couldn’t move from the couch to the bed for months on end. Whether at Fringe, the Comedy Festival, or somewhere even bigger, the second this show comes back I’ll be buying tickets. You should too.
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