Make Your Move - Theatre Review

What: Make Your Move
When: 19 - 22 September 2018
Where: Studio Theatre, Gasworks
Concept by: Gemma Flannery
Performed by: Louisa Carpentri, Tara Kennedy, Luke Livermore, Hayley Marlow, and Robyn Mclachlan

Tara Kennedy, Robyn Mclachlan and Hayley Marlow

Make Your Move is a devised piece of theatre created around the idea everyone has a moment or moments in their life when they must make a decision which will alter the course of their lives forever. It is playing at Gasworks as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival for four nights only, so blink and you'll miss it.

Since moving to Melbourne Flannery has taken to teaching devised theatre and has created Make Your Move with a group of people interested in exploring this form in more depth. Working in the mode established by companies such as Frantic Assembly and Forced Entertainment, Flannery gathered this ensemble together and explored the idea as well as the individual skills and talents each performer brings to come up with this intriguing production.

Kennedy and Marlow really shone in the characters they developed. Kennedy stood out as Sarah, the spoilt and narcissistic young woman, and Marlow positively shone as Gidget, the flower selling university drop out and she has fantastic comic instincts. Mclachlan gave a steadying performance as Eve, the woman who is still far too attached to her dead husband. Livermore was probably the least convincing as an alcoholic gaming addict.

These characters find themselves in a game show where they are forced to face the decision they don't want to make. This is a great idea and my one disappointment is so much time is spent setting up these characters, but we don't get to find out what happens once they 'make their move'.

Spattered throughout is a vignette which repeats a major life decision by another pair of characters. This scenario plays in several iterations of indecision. I really loved this idea and eventually the audience gets to join in as noone on stage can decide what to do.

As with a lot of post-truth work, the Brechtian techniques of breaking down the fourth wall and alienating the performance from performing feature strongly in Make Your Move, and the audience leave with a gift and a challenge. Or is it two gifts?

Make Your Move is an intriguing hour of theatre. Gasworks has quite an enticing Fringe program this year so I encourage you to make a night of it. Book in for this show and one or two others on the same night and take a wild ride of ideas and stories.

2.5 Stars