Short & Sweet Pineapples - Week 1
Snags have sizzled, corks popped, ribbons snipped, speeches made….now the real Short & Sweet Festival begins. The plays are in play.
Week One is in full swing in Melbourne, the first third of the Top 30 scripts, playing in the Fairfax Bunker below the Arts Centre.
As a fellow writer I won’t play critic, but I can offer some ringside reports about the flair and flavour of this year’s short-listers.
CARNAL PSEUDO-SKEWERED PIG has to win the gong for bizarrest title (closely contested by a kidnap comedy on the same bill: THRILLING HOSTAGE MELODRAMA AT HIGH SPEEDS WITH PINEAPPLE. Seems brevity is old hat.
But first PIG, by Victorian writer Jane E Thompson, where a Toorak power-couple enters self-destruct mode. Cynthia and Alistair are about to host a soiree. But before a guest can lob the night turns savage, in an accelerated Edward Albee vein. The bile is meted out by oily previews of guest patter, marked with jazz. Actors Amy Humphreys and Lawrence Price swallow their toxic doses with skill.
(Oops, that sounds like a critic…) Maybe I’m better off saying, this week’s ten offers an exquisite gimmick based on captivity (you’ll never look at an orange jumpsuit the same way), a late-love story, a perverse comedy built around gay rape (more perverse than comic, he has to add), plus a kitchen-sink monologue spliced with a washing-machine counterpoint.
Oh, and a breakneck gagfest involving two trainee abductors – and a pineapple.
Won’t be able to make the Wildcards show this Saturday (can someone send a call of the card?) but look forward to the rest of the Fest, running till Gala Night on Dec 23.
More than a showcase of unsung writers and fresh theatre talent, Short & Sweet is a surreal boxing bout. No matter your ticket – for a Top-30 night or Saturday’s Wildcard matinee – you’ll be going 10 rounds with a sparring mate who morphs from flyweight to feather, welter to heavy, before you have time to guard your jaw.