What a week! Art exhibitions in the Link and free coffee out on the lawn – aah, what a cultured University we all attend. In sticking with the 24-hour time frame, it’s hardly a panic to find something to write about for this issue, as dear old Allen hall will always have something for us there. Thanks Allen Hall.
Heading the bill at Lunchtime Theatre this week is the award-winning Angels In America. Never heard of it? Shame on you! Set in ’80s America at the height of the AIDS epidemic, the play orbits around multiple characters’ lives, weaving in and out of one another. Like Love Actually but way better – with three-dimensional characters and stuff. Yeah, I went there.
Tony Kushner’s piece is rife with political and social commentaries of the time, with the multiple layers often paralleling historical events. With a piece this dense and with a running time of approximately seven hours – yeah, I know – it’s obvious it will have to be cut down for a lunchtime slot.
Director Heidi Geissler, a fourth-year theatre student, is taking the piece on for her honours year, and has adapted the play into a compilation of scenes revolving around one of the main characters, Harper. Harper is described as “sex-starved,” “pill-popping” and “a Mormon” (all of which are true). Geissler has managed to take a huge piece of theatre work and weave this one, fragmented story into a solid and coherent performance. You’d almost forget it was part of a larger piece. Featuring other characters, such as Harper’s husband and multiple hallucinations, we see the Valium addict fall in and out of reality. Played by Abby Howells, Harper is brought to life in a truthful and innocent manner; as an audience we are made to feel connected to her despite her bizarre circumstance. Luke Agnew, Daniel Goodwin and Ben Blakely also feature in the piece, giving stellar performances, nailing the accents and looking great in drag.
As an honours student, obviously a lot of work goes in to these pieces, along with a lot of sweat and a lot of tears. So it’s only fair that you come along and appreciate all of the hard work that’s gone in to the piece! It’s also one of those plays that people who like to seem intelligent talk about, so you could go and then casually mention that you’ve seen it and “really enjoyed the social commentary and really felt for housewives of the time,” and maybe, if you’re feeling cheeky, pretend you’ve seen the seven-hour version and impress all those big shots and act all cultured. That’s what it’s about.
I highly recommend you all come along for a bit of magic in your lunch hour. Or if you’re a busy med student there is also an evening performance on Thursday at 7:30pm. Score! Catering to the masses! And at only $3 a ticket – why not?
American Angels
