Photo by Lorna Sim.

Dazed and angry, sixteen year old Kyle staggers past the strewn debris of drunken underage party-goers; away from the shattered plate glass window through which he has pushed the blood-stained Manson in anger at his girlfriend’s break-up announcement; around the wine-stained sofa and past the huddled form of house party host, Graham, blubbering at the sight of his own vomit on the carpet.

He stumbles his way through the kitchen, smashing in a cupboard door as he goes and out onto the driveway and into the breaking light of the early dawn. In a final act of frustrated rage, he smashes the letter box and disappears into the night.

It is a credit to the skillful performance of solo actor, Matt Kelly, the keen and observant eye of writer, David Finnigan and the tightly orchestrated direction of Stephen Barker that Finnigan’s one act investigation of teenage teetering on the precipice of adulthood succeeds in capturing so incisively the bizarre rite of passage that is the underage house party.

Caroline Stacey, Artistic Director at The Street Theatre, Canberra’s highly successful community theatre venue, has transformed the theatre since her appointment into a vibrant and adventurous venue for professional and amateur works, emerging artists and new initiatives. As part of her vision for the theatre’s dynamic place within Canberra’s expanding theatrical scene, she has initiated a script writing commission and a season of solo works, titled Solo at The Street.

Finnigan’s Underage House Party Play was selected by Stacey as an ideal choice to promote a local emerging artist and commission a solo work that would both challenge and support a local professional actor.

Finnigan is no novice playwright, however. As founder and writer for his Boho Interactive Theatre, Finnigan’s earlier works have explored the mysterious sciences of game theory, network science and Complex Systems science. The highly acclaimed A Prisoner’s Dilemma has toured extensively and established an enviable reputation for this innovative company. Underage House Party Play represents a departure from Finnigan’s earlier works. It is grounded in reality, a narrative depiction of characters and events that are immediately recognizable, and underpinned by an implicit morality.

Finnigan’s characters, played with dexterous, sharply sketched individuality by a versatile and charismatic Kelly, utter the voice of their generation, assertive and confident, confused and insecure, defiant and defensive. Gradually, and with the skill of a portraitist, Finnigan adds to the canvas of his characters’ lives as they hurtle blindly in their self-absorption towards an inevitable, yet unexpected, consequence.

Finnigan’s narrative, Brechtian–like, sets the scene and then plays out the action, inviting an audience to judge, liberated from the euphoric blindness of catharsis. We observe, detachedly, yet in a state of lucid recognition, the preparation for the night’s events with Kelly as narrator to the drama, as well as transforming into the five key characters of Finnigan’s play. We see Anna using fake ID to buy booze for the party, and Kyle securing dope from his dealer. Necessity becomes the mother of adolescent cunning. We meet the lanky Manson Lane and Graham Mott, the nerdy host, caught in a desperate dilemma of clashing Christian values and lustful longings for A grade student, Gwen.

Finnigan, better known perhaps for his more conceptually driven works that, Stoopard-like, tease the intellect and stretch the imagination, has contained his inquisitive imagination within the parameters of realism.

Kelly cleverly and engagingly plays the characters as sub cultural archetypes, switching from one to the other with convincing agility. His portrayals, though at times poignant, are largely comical and expressionistic, swiftly sketching the absurdity of a night spiralling out of control and swallowing its victims in an eddy of comical misfortune.

Barker’s direction guides the action with precision and superb comic timing, reaching its climax in an hilarious scene, between Manson and Gwen as they struggle clumsily with a condom conundrum in pre-coital confusion.

In the intimate black box space of Studio Two at The Street, and on a Berber carpet square with an overturned standard lamp in one corner and a technicolour yawn stain in the other, Kelly captivates his audience as he unravels Finnigan’s panoply of calamitous consequence.

Tightly directed, skilfully performed and effectively lit by Gillian Schwab’s simple, yet atmospheric design, Underage House Party Play is a thoroughly absorbing portrait of a generation’s youth and their evolutionary quest for identity and status.

Finnigan has found his forte as a voice for his generation in a work that is ideal for touring to schools, communities and festivals. If Underage House Party Play plays at a theatre near you, don’t miss this mirror held up to Nature.

It could be your reflection that you see.

Credits