Another Twin

‘Another Twin’ is a further winner from award-winning, American born, dramatist Lally Katz. She moved to Australia in her teens, and now, still only in her mid-thirties, has already won many of the East Coast’s prestigious writing awards.

This two and a half hour, Western Australian premiere is showing at the Dolphin Theatre, UWA, 35, Stirling Highway, Crawley. Curtain up at 7.30 pm on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday until the 6^th July.

The stage has piles of defunct and broken computers piled at the sides. The back wall has hundreds of pictures of the inhabitants of this small rural town. In front of this wall, across the stage width, are several large frames of stretched muslin which act as projection screens (set and costume design Lauren Ross).

        Many of the town’s people are marching in the street, when there is a massive explosion and they dive for cover. This is a civil war. The audiovisual changes from pictures of caring hands with soft colours, to a mass of fast moving, computer binary calculations (AV Mia Holton). A girl in a white dress, Aishling (Charlotte Westrip), that glows like a sprite as she walks, passes between them.

        Twin sisters, Samantha (Rachel Chamberlain) and Clara (Lucy Clements) have turned up at the local Old Folks’ Home for a consultation with Martha (Olivia Finlay). They are met by Cassandra (Violette Ayad) the Home’s administrator. She explains to them, that until now the world has been run by God, who has cared for us all and tried to share out the world’s wealth, but now, the Internet has started investing its vast profits into buying land. 

        Cassandra calls for the nurse in charge, the slightly dippy Angela (Kaycee Graham), she takes them to Martha, who, with all of the authority of a surgeon scans Clara’s stomach and makes a profound analysis - without the instrument even being plugged in!

        It becomes clear that Martha is in fact simply a resident with very few visitors. Even her son Andrew (Nic Doig), who has an important position in society, rarely calls. A friend of the twins, James (Campbell Greenock) and his travelling friend (Matt Young) know that the apocalypse is near, and so records everything on his video camera.

       A smartly dressed estate agent, Hayley (Jodee Anderson) is going around each house trying to buy up land, to become part of the conglomerate, Doubletown. There is strong resistance from a disabled girl, Amana (Verity Softly) and a pregnant widow, Frieda (Catherine Bonney), who has the postman (Kieran Wych) to look after her needs.

       However, the Internet is like a vacuum cleaner, they just move across the country indiscriminately, with profits in mind, buying everyone’s house. Has your computer had a virus? Nothing compares to the self-developed viruses emitted by this Internet, along with all of its insidious cams. Some of the residents are aware of the cunning strategy; none more so than quiet, shy Tim (Murphy Voight). Others have just caved into the Internet.

       Dressed in army camouflage, is God’s Army. Two followers, swag carrying Mark (Daley King) and his companion, Linda (Madelaine Page). Linda, who is intensely interested in one particular group of animal life, have decided to take on the Internet. Cheer leader, Bernadette (Emily David), an old friend of Mark, turns up and decides to join the cause.

      Friends, families and neighbours are all being divided. Has God got a hope in Hell?

The play tackles a genuine fear for the future. Many large companies already control strong governments around the world.

Seventeen of WA’s best young actors have been assembled for WAYTCo, by talented actor and artistic director, Kirsty Hillhouse. Lally Katz’ play is a thrilling character study that gives every actor a great deal of depth and interest to build upon. Kirsty has ensured that the cast have really understood the complex traits and interaction, and then kept the pace moving along beautifully.

One small point is the number of set changes. The cast were very quick; most only took seconds to set up, however, I got the impression that this was a TV script as some scenes were effectively set up as cutaways.

The excellent lighting design by Joe Lui was smoothly controlled by Zac Whitcombe. There were half a dozen short songs in the play, with the music written by the soundtrack designers Nikki Jones and Shaun Salmon. The music often had an excellent melody but the singing was discordant, emphasising the apparent pleasant world depicted, facing the struggling undertones.

This was quite a tricky play to present, with multiple threads running through it, but the cast produced a lucid, fascinating and professional performance. Many congratulation to all concerned, with one or two faces to look for in the future.

A good night out, with few twists in the story that kept up the interest. Most enjoyable.