Review by Greg Gorton
Let’s not waste each other’s time: Slay is the best original work I’ve seen in Melbourne for a long time. It straddles the border between intelligent contemporary comedy and nuanced political commentary in a way I haven’t seen since before the pandemic.
Now that is out of the way: yes, I meant every word. While not a perfect show by any means, this original comedy has so much I could praise that, for a few hundred words at least, I’m going to read like a slightly unhinged fanboy.
Let’s start with the writing. While it is true that I haven’t genuinely laughed at original works as much as I did tonight, the comedy is simply a cleverly used tool. A tool built from a strong knowledge of 90s horror comedy, forged in the hellfire of gen z sensibilities, and implemented by brilliant actors, but a tool nevertheless. The intelligence of this script lies in how it interweaves a deeply personal tale about young queer relationships with a darkly humorous look at political discourse today.
The premise of Slay is simple: A fascist political group of lesbians known as SLAM, is putting Australia’s democracy at risk. Meanwhile, four friends are trying to deal with their own personal crises, including having a friend (a SLAM member herself) go missing.
As more people go missing, or are murdered, SLAM seems only to grow in power and controversy.
It’s not just the narrative that is impressive, though, but each carefully considered line. Users on social media have characters that come across in a sentence. The “manifesto”, with large sections read throughout the performance, is creepily reminiscent of all the history-changing manifestos we know. The four main characters are cut from real life.
Writer/director/producer/show-off Steph Lee obviously has the vision to see what makes compelling theatre, but also the know-how to plumb the depths of the creatives around her. The creative design team (for sound, lighting, and AV designs were perfectly in concert) should be praised for possibly the most aesthetically brilliant show I’ve seen on a small stage. From live recordings and shadow-play to carefully crafted surtitles, the visual effects are far above the big-budget musicals Disney cram down our throats almost every year. I refuse to spoil how, but a particular murder scene in this play is one of the top three deaths I have ever witnessed on stage.
Tom Vulcan, as set and lighting designer, shows a strong respect for the history of theatre, producing (for the first time I’ve seen at the explosives factory) a beautiful proscenium arch stage that still has flexibility for performers and director to play with. Lighting within this small stage, while also offering the ability to use overhead projectors both on back curtains and the arch itself, and keeping all actors well lit, and using such vibrant colors as to invoke 90s movies, summer afternoons, and the dark corners of the web - It gives me a headache to think about it, but Vulcan somehow did it all.
II cannot say much about Louisa Fitzgerald’s costume design except the one thing I think is the highest praise. Every one of the main characters wore the clothes I could only imagine that character wears, and there were no unnecessary costume changes.
I am always impressed by Jack Burmeister’s skills as a sound designer. The sound for this production would never work if it was subtle. It had to be loud, powerful, scary. It had to remind us of Nazi rallies and Wes Craven films. The music had to sound like you’d also hear it coming from the car of a young person, or out their apartment window as they were getting ready to leave. This really wasn’t the sort of production that could get away with much silence, and I think that Burmeister hit the right tone for every scene.
The use of audio-visual technology in theatre is a risky matter. Besides the obvious concerns about practical issues during the run, it is easy to make something the audience will only see as a gimmick. Alyssa Jayde Clay’s design is far from gimmicky. While I mean this as no disrespect to the writing or performance, the work done with the live-projection and “social media posts” served to highly performances that may not have so entirely captured our attention.
Under the guidance of Lee, and the taking onboard of the insightful dramaturgical work by co-devisor Sarah Iman, the four stars of the show shine in uniquely different ways.
Ziggy, played by Raven Rogers-Wright, is performed with so much warmth and heart, in a play that focuses more on laughs and thoughts. Her every word serves to remind us these are real people suffering.
Cora, played by Anita Mei La Terra, has the most opportunities to offer a punchline, or a physical gaffe. Anita finds a playfulness that doesn’t detract from the very serious conversation this comedy is trying to have.
Louisa Cusumano, as both Valentina and Kiki, offers such strength to her performances while never stealing the limelight from any of her co-actors.
It was Jessica, though, that I found myself most interested in. Played by Jackie Van Lierop, the character is often the foil of jokes, rather than the teller, and it requires a certain timing to pull off such a role so well. Van Lierop also plays the most believable of the politician/terrorists, being the one actor who I believed might kill me.
For every complex sound, lighting, and AV design choice, for every entry and exit off stage, for every damn social media comment, some poor person has to note it all, prepare it all, and make sure it somehow all goes off perfectly on the night. Somehow, Lexie Jaensch did the impossible, and will do the impossible every night of this run. I hope she gets a holiday after.
Okay, this play isn’t perfect and it would be unfair if one or two comments were not made. While the ending of this play has the perfect (in my mind) resolution to the whole scenario, the final scene itself betrayed an insufficient amount of time in choreographing and rehearsing, leaving me a little less impressed than I was in other action-heavy scenes. I think this will hurt a lot of audience’s impressions as they leave, having experienced the weakest point only at the end, when everything else was near perfect.
Some characters are better fleshed out than others, though it is difficult to fill a character with depth when they are already dead. There are also a couple of scenes in which the company did not trust itself enough, and filled the stage with unnecessary action that did little to add to the text. This final point, I am sure, many will disagree with.
If you don’t get it, yet: I loved this. So rarely does original theatre in Melbourne excite me - perhaps once every year or two. While I’ve been able to see many ambitious plays lately, I’ve seen few that execute their vision so well as the creatives behind Slay. Catch it at Theatre Works Explosives Factory while you still can.
