Bright review
Bright, at Goodwood Theatre, until August 1
This week saw two thoroughly worthwhile original South Australian plays opening in Adelaide: world premieres if you like the tag.
Logan St by State Theatre Company, set in the South East Corner of the Adelaide CBD is a wonderful celebration of place and culture, written and directed by Jacob Boehme (previously reviewed on this site).
Bright, at Goodwood Theatre, is instead a salute to a rising tide of capable young actors – 15 in all – and written and directed by Sean Riley.
Riley has collaborated with the more senior performers at his Free Agents Youth Theatre to devise this barrel of laughs, a tumultuous, almost Dickensian work set in 1818 in East London’s Poplar.
It brings together two families, one crude and capable from the docks, the other living in genteel poverty.
The genius of the work is that all 15 performers have seriously creative roles to inhabit.
On a stage furnished, costumed and split between the two places the characters come and go from their upstage seats like scene-stealers giving the work its own style.
We discover the author, whose words transmute to the players as she writes them, the cad, whose plot drives the show, the maid, sly in her observations, the lodgers, slaves to the supernatural, the quacks and above all the “resurrectionists” out to deliver the newly interred for dissection….. and there’s a rich brew of other characters besides.
The dialogue is sharp, funny, and full of layered wit. The cast collectively burst with energy to deliver them. I didn’t know we could put together so many capable performers in one show.
Logan St. runs at Space Theatre until August 8. In the meantime, see Bright, at Goodwood Theatre today and tomorrow night (August 1) at 11am and 7.30pm.