[2015117] Sweep Under Rug
East 55 Productions @ Star Theatre Two
11:00am, Fri 6 Mar 2015
Star Theatre Two seems to be the go-to venue for school drama productions in recent years; though nominally presented by East 55 Productions (a western Adelaide youth theatre group), Sweep Under Rug appeared to be the output of Year 11 SACE drama students from Seaton High School.
It initially appears to present an interesting science-fiction dystopia, where families are expected to have a human-like Bobby Sue android in their home; Bobby Sue is there to “guide” members of the household to make socially-correct decisions. But when the human characters in Sweep Under Rug choose to make their own decisions, and attempt to subvert the guidance – and monitoring – of Bobby Sue, pressure is bought to bear by other, more “correct” members of the society.
Sweep Under Rug is very much a youth-theatre play… but it seems to be an almost embarrassingly shallow idea of near-future dystopia. Most of the young cast do well, though the pivotal Bobby Sue isn’t quite cold or distant enough to be convincing. Direction is solid, and the staging is perfunctory…
…but the mostly unremarkable production can’t elevate the lightweight script. Look – it may be a perfectly adequate play to study within school – it does present some interesting ideas. But there wasn’t enough in the delivery to make the lacklustre text compelling.
(117) Sweep Under Rug: Appropriately adolescent bleak big-brother dystopian future. Some decent performances. #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) March 6, 2015