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.