Seventeen has lost none of its power to twang the strings of your own nostalgia.
Limelight - Jason Blake
Seventeen has lost none of its power to twang the strings of your own nostalgia.
Five schoolies and one younger sibling arrive at a suburban playground for a night of binge drinking to celebrate the end of high school.
Mike (played by Peter Kowitz) is the evening’s ringmaster, showy in his pleasure at being free of the classroom for good. For Tom (Noel Hodda), the evening is at least doubly significant: he is headed for university in another city. A whole new life beckons even as the current one remains in flux.
Mike’s vivacious girlfriend Sue (Di Adams) and her brainy bestie Edwina (Katrina Foster) rock up, the former more ready to party than the latter. Ronny (Colin Moody), a kid from a dysfunctional home with nowhere else to go, has invited himself. So has Mike’s 14-year-old sister Lizzy (Di Smith).
The evening unfolds in time-honoured teenage fashion. Beers are chugged, tequilas slammed. Haphazard dancing erupts. Mike gets louder. Edwina gets sick. Yearnings are aired in a game of Truth or Dare. Unimagined rivalries and romantic attractions blossom as the night wears on. Ronny gets whacked on the head with a bottle.
Whittet stipulates that Seventeen is to be played by mature actors, in their sixties and up. Therein lies much of the play’s poignancy. Watching performers reach back to their younger selves, we can’t help but do likewise, though much depends on everyone playing their parts sincerely with no cartooning of teenage physicality or attitudes. We should laugh because what is said is truthful, not because it is being said by an actor old enough to be the character’s grandparent.
Directed here by Mary-Anne Gifford, this cast delivers. Kowitz brings the bluster as Mike and shines in the closing minutes of the play as dawn creeps in and the young man’s façade crumbles. Hodda is contrastingly gentle as Tom, Moody striking as the fearful Ronny. Adams and Foster convince as besties, which makes a betrayal bite all the harder. Smith is good as a precocious Lizzy.
This opening night performance felt a little loose in the joints at times; scene transitions could have been be tighter; some of the interplay more sharply edged. The sound design lacked some euphoric, room-filling oomph in key moments. Minor quibbles, really. Seventeen is a sweet place to be.
https://limelight-arts.com.au/reviews/seventeen-wildthingproduction-and-seymour-centre/
"The heartbreak, the confusion, the sense of opportunity and of loss, the joy and intensity of being a teenager, it all feels utterly familiar. After all, there are no adults in this world. Only ageing children."
Sydney Morning Herald- Harriet Cunningham
Matthew Whittet’s 2015 play, Seventeen, has a simple premise. Six characters meet in a park after their last day at school. They hang out, they drink their hard-won stash of stolen alcohol and, in the course of the night, they change forever. The kicker to this fertile ground is the casting: all six actors are veterans of Australian stage and screen, closer to seventy than seventeen.
As Mike, the alpha male, Peter Kowitz owns the stage. His best mate, Tom (a soft-spoken Noel Hodda), can barely keep up. Indeed, he’s not sure he wants to. Mike’s girlfriend, Sue (Di Adams) is a fun-loving sweetheart, while her bestie, Edwina (Katrina Foster), is a straight-laced school swot. Ronnie (Colin Moody) is in the park because he has nowhere else to go. Finally, the Puck-ish Lizzie (Di Smith), Mike’s annoying little sister, is there to bear witness to the transformations of a midsummer night’s dream.
Director Mary-Anne Gifford plays it curiously straight to the point that you can almost forget that these actors are, in real life, old. They are, after all, acting; being someone they are not is the whole point of the exercise. But this successful suspension of disbelief undercuts the play’s power, taking it dangerously close to being a stage version of Heartbreak High.
A game of truth or dare plays out without major surprises; you can see the kiss coming a mile off; the nakedness and vomiting all happen offstage. Perhaps the most exhilarating moments of age inappropriateness come through in the characters’ dancing (choreographed by Sally Dashwood). Sue’s party piece is a hot mix of teenage self-consciousness, latent sexuality and childish delight, and Ronnie’s visceral response to the music is like seeing a caged animal set free.
But the whole point of the casting – having older actors playing seventeen-year-olds – feels like a joke simultaneously stretched too far and underplayed. When, on first night, Di Smith accidentally trips and falls (and bounces back up with admirable energy) those of us in the audience who are no longer seventeen gasp with concern. That must have hurt. But when they play out the heartbreak, the confusion, the sense of opportunity and of loss, the joy and intensity of being a teenager, it all feels utterly familiar. After all, there are no adults in this world. Only ageing children.