Review: The Aliens

If I’m hon­est, I walked into The Aliens last night with a cer­tain amount of cyn­i­cism.  I was­n’t expect­ing what I got — a thought­ful, gen­tle explo­ration of friend­ship and self in a homoge­nous world.

Annie Bak­er writes slow sub­tle plays about peo­ple, and their per­son­al jour­neys, and that could be stupi­fy­ing in the hands of a less empath­ic cast and direc­tor.   What does small town Amer­i­ca have to do with us?  What do we care about a 16 year old boy and a cou­ple of dudes who seem to have noth­ing bet­ter to do than talk shit and lie about?  It turns out, quite a damn lot.  Strip away the accents (bloody well exe­cut­ed, by the way) and Amer­i­can ref­er­ences, and it eas­i­ly could have been a New Zealand play.

Cas­san­dra Tse clear­ly saw that when she chose this play, one of her favourites.  Tse’s direc­tion is occa­sion­al­ly uncom­fort­able.  The silences are too long, the phys­i­cal­i­ty dis­joint­ed, grief isn’t pret­ty and men­tal ill­ness is a del­i­cate sub­ject to nav­i­gate.  But The Aliens looks com­pas­sion­ate­ly on those who don’t quite fit in but find at least a lit­tle com­fort with each oth­er.

Dryw McArthur’s des­per­ate­ly lone­ly Evan embod­ies that teenage state of not know­ing what lies ahead or whether you have the strength to han­dle it, the con­vic­tion that every­one is far cool­er and more advanced than you are, and the hun­gry attach­ment you form to peo­ple who seem to shine with con­fi­dence and tal­ent.  I felt his awk­ward­ness in my bones, and it was painful­ly famil­iar.

Jon­ny Potts played charis­mat­ic writer Jasper per­fect­ly.   Under the brava­do, he ago­nis­es over failed rela­tion­ships and feels every­thing too too strong­ly.  KJ, his fel­low drifter, is more sta­ble with his friend’s influ­ence, and in Jas­par’s absence in the sec­ond half, it’s clear he’s strug­gling.  Jack Ser­gent-Shad­bolt deliv­ers a stun­ning per­for­mance as KJ, alter­nat­ing between fil­ter­less prag­ma­tism and child­like joy with­out labour­ing either as a car­i­ca­ture of men­tal ill­ness or drug use.  And his recog­ni­tion of Evan as a com­rade, even while he him­self mourns, had me in tears.

The set is stripped back — the yard behind a cafe, a pic­nic bench and bins, a fence.  The light­ing is uncom­pli­cat­ed. The focus, as it should be, is on these three young men.  All three are adrift and alone, but they’re able to be alone togeth­er for a while.  And upon Jas­par’s depar­ture, the oth­er two must learn how to cope with­out his light…  I think that’s more of a New Zealand sto­ry than we’d like to admit.