Falling Petals ****

The Black Swan Theatre and the Blue Room present Ben Ellis’s award winning play at the Blue Room until 27th May.

This story is based around three teenage students living in a small remote Australian town. Sally (Sarah Borg) is a naïve girl who loves her little home town; whereas virgin Phil (Wyatt Nixon-Lloyd) and Tania, 17 going on 27 (Zoë Pepper) are more ambitious for their futures. Their excellent feel for the characters, all delightfully played, combined with Adam Mitchell’s skilled direction, gives talented entertainment.

The lifestyles of the three, are typical of most 17 year olds with their outlook on life in general, and includes a novel way to learn TEE economics.

Then the blossom petals fall from the trees, and as with the ancient tradition surrounding the Sakura tree, tragedy is not far behind. The police need to isolate the village and the inevitable social degradation starts to set in – or should have, but I felt didn’t quite make it.

The ‘children’s’ characters developed well as the play progressed and one could really see the bonding between them. However the play also had several short parts for adults, which were a little too brief and hence confusing. Despite superb acting by both the older female (Talei Howell-Price – a talented actor not seen nearly often enough) and the older male (Bryn Coldrick – a skilled director), both of whom played several parts each, the multiple characters still never really attained any depth. The distinct costume and personality changes did not seem to help, which unfortunately meant, that when the tragedy started, I felt little sympathy for the people of the village.

Whilst the dialogue was extremely well written - some great lines – the weakness was that the writer put very funny lines and situations into the dramatic portions of the play. Hence instead of increasing the pathos by the use of contrast, it resulted in the play ending up basically as a comedy. I realise that this was an awarding winning play, but I feel that the writing was the only weak point. Perhaps I’m wrong.

Clever set (Fiona Bruce) and successful, well thought out, lighting (Lucy Birkinshaw). Effective and appropriate quality synthesised music by Ash Gibson Greig.

On entering the theatre the audience were handed hospital facemasks to protect them from the unknown plague. William Castle, the horror film director in the 60’s, always used gimmicks like this to raise the fear and tension of his cinema audiences. They didn’t work much then either.

Despite some of this minor negativity, a most enjoyable night’s entertainment, I’m sure the team will have a most successful season.

It was wonderful to see both the evening plays at the Blue Room, fully booked and crowds milling around.