DNA

‘DNA - Deoxyribonucleic Acid’ was written by Dennis Kelly, who was born of Irish stock in 1970 and raised on a council estate in Barnet, London. ‘DNA’ is a psychological horror story that was written specially for the National Theatre Connections Festival in 2007. This production is presented by the Western Australian Youth Theatre Company and ‘Act, Belong, Commit’. It is playing at the Subiaco Arts Centre Studio nightly at 7.30 until Saturday, 22^nd May. The play is 80 minutes, without interval.

            After a horrendous series of abuses from her school mates, Anna suffers a fatal accident. Jan (Brianna Williams) and the rather dim Mark (Andrew Dawson) tell the others. The group bully, John (Cameron Clark) asks if they are all together ‘as one’, if so the word ‘dead’ should never again be mentioned. In panic a cover-up is arranged. 

           The highly intelligent Leah (Sophie Kesteven), nervously rabbits on incessantly to her heartthrob Phil (Liam Graham), the silent, threatening, cult leader who, when he is not eating, displays a callous survival streak. Rachael (Rina Freiberg) arrives at the meeting with sadistic Kane (Tom Vowles), who thinks the whole thing is a huge laugh.

          Quiet Lou (Chloe Ng), gullible, cry baby Brian (Michael Collins) and her friend Danni (Hannah Rice) are dragged into the misguided clan, who then decide to concoct a cover up.

          Will their consciences come to the fore? What will happen to the aggressors?

A truly terrifying, poignant suburban ‘Lord of the Flies’, which displays the survival instincts of the school kids of today, with their lost innocence and giving an insight of today’s playground politics. With some humour, this very dark, gripping tale takes us through a passage of moral unease. There were several excellent monologues in the script, but on the whole I felt that a bit of script editing would have helped – lose the last five minutes.

As in The HotBed Ensemble’s ‘Pool - no water’, Dennis Kelly advocates that the characters' genders, names and roles are all interchangeable. He gives the reasoning that ‘there isn't the huge gap between men and women, we are different, yes, but our similarities far outweigh our differences.’ Director Renato Fabretti decided to play the production straight, which, with a youth group is probably wise.

Matt McVeigh’s simple set of dumped shopping trolleys in a park, with woodchip ground cover was most effective. As always Trent Suidgeest’s lighting was perfect. The original background music, which ranged from a threatening rumble, to a soft melody, was played by ‘the Men from another Place’ i.e. Dave Richardson and Steve McCall, this gave real depth to the suspenseful moments.

Well directed by Renato Fabretti and his assistant Amanda Woodhams, they convincingly created eleven very different characters. Special congratulations to Sophie Kesteven, Cameron Clark and Donnelle Gardiner - who played a broken schoolmate.

A difficult show, well executed, that makes one worry for the future of our children.