There is a clear, well defined brief for productions that the Australian Theatre For Young People (ATYP) put on. The play must deal with challenging, difficult issues that young people contend with.
Award winning playwright and Artist In Residence at LaBoite, Lewis Triston’s play FOLLOW ME HOME tackles some of these issues head on.
The play’s structure comprises a series of scenes with a break between each scene at which time black and white documentary footage is screened taking us inside youth refuges as we hear some of the stories.
These are just a few of the dramatic situations that the playwright sets up.
A high school boy minding his own business in a playground is set upon by two cruel schoolgirls who decide it is time to pay out on him.
Another packs up a few things to leave the family home, fleeing an uncaring mother and an alcoholic father.
A frightening incident takes place on public transport. The setting is a carriage on a suburban train. An out of control teenager is having an argument with his distraught, sullen girlfriend who refuses to go home with him. He spies a sensitive looking guy and then targets his aggression on to him.
Two brothers meet at a cafe. One brother left home a while back as a result of his parents rejecting his sexuality. He is coping, but not so well. The other brother wants him to follow him home. Can’t he just pretend, for the time being?!
ATYP Artistic Director Fraser Corfield directs with clarity and sensitivity.
The performances by Laneikka Denne, Jasper Lea-Lindsay, Sofia Nolan and Thomas Weatherall are accomplished and they each play multiple, quite different roles, convincingly.
Veteran lighting designer Martin Kinnane did the lighting, Aleisa Jeibart was the designer, Hugh Clark the videographer and Kailesh Reitmans the soundscape.
This wasn’t the play’s first incarnation. The show was first performed in 2019 at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta.
Tough to watch. Important to see.
An ATYP and Arts on Tour production, FOLLOW ME HOME is playing the Stables Theatre, 10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross until Saturday 3 July, 2021.
Production photography by Tracy Schramm.
http://www.griffintheatre.com.au