Infertility leads to infidelity in the infinitely engaging EVERY SECOND, the new play by Vanessa Bates now playing at the Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst.
This spry, wry, and fly production is all about breeding, and the lengths modern couples go to achieve conception. Whether it’s blokes shooting blanks or sheilas shackled with wombs wherein seed can find no purchase, the need to breed takes up every second that ticktock the biological clock.
Four friends, bound by barrenness, Bill and Jen, Tim and Meg, share the frustrations of non fecundity, and the plethora of reproductive panacea, from praying to fertility gods to the latest scientific espousals.
Sacrificing favourite foods, booze, sleep and spontaneity, their intimacy is invaded by the all encompassing premeditated, per medicated pursuit of procreation.
Zealots of the zygote, subservient to the ova, walking the dog or going for a drive seems preferable to the males than masturbating into a specimen jar or experiencing performance anxiety.
Julia Ohannessian as Meg gives an hysterical performance in both meanings of the word, with sharp shadings of the hilarious counterpointing the heart breaking.
As her hounded and harangued husband, Tim, Simon Corfield nails the hang-dog, pussy-whipped emotionally and physically exhausted spouse, love and lust lost to time managed coitus.
The older couple, Bill and Jen, are played with a more stoic semblance of procreational desperation by Glenn Hazeldine and Georgina Symes. They’ve opted for the IVF route, the needle prick subjugating Bill’s willy and Jen’s genitalia.
Under Shannon Murphy’s firm handed direction and on Andy McDonell’s sunken, spiral set, the four play with a fine suppleness, given exuberant throttle in a sequence depicting the competitive single mindedness of spermatozoa.
All master Bate’s fulsome script which is pregnant with poignancy, pathos, fear and fun. It’s a play that has a profundity that contemporary audiences are sure to engage and empathise with.
EVERY SECOND by Vanessa Bates plays the Eternity Playhouse until July 22.