Minimalism in stage design can suggest that an austere performance awaits the audience. However, nothing could be further from the truth with the latest propulsive, joyous and big-hearted work from Merciless Gods playwright and former MTC writer-in-residence Dan Giovannoni.
A white line traces the edge of the stage as we take our seats for Slap. Bang. Kiss. As envisioned by set and costume designer Kate Davis, the space is dotted with an array of grey boxes, measured out in a rigid grid pattern. The lights dim, followed by the startling glare of twin spotlight flashes, and three figures emerge as the blur fades from our retinas. Standing atop one each of these makeshift platforms, they begin to speak – at first predominantly in monologues – and much like the staging, what unfolds is deceptively simple, but soon gives way to a much bigger picture.
Giovannoni paints in the details of political awakenings undergone by three very different teenagers living in unspoken (but easily guessable) corners of the globe. “Slap” is the first word spoken by Tsungirai Wachenuka’s spunky character Immi. She’s living under the glare of an occupying force of ‘peacekeepers’ who appear to be anything but peaceful. Something snaps, prompted by her turning a self-protective blind eye to the unfair treatment of someone ahead of her in a checkpoint queue. She finds herself marching up to one of these ‘PKs’, whose tanks menacingly crowd her neighbourhood, and slaps him. The Minnie Mouse t-shirt she wears prompts a viral social media sensation that inspires graffiti and an uprising.
Sarah Fitzgerald’s character Sophia pierces the Lawler theatre with a loud “bang”, conveying the profoundly confused state of someone who has been unexpectedly injured. Shot by an unknown assailant, what unfolds bears an uncanny resemblance to the stand of American school-shooting survivor-turned-activist Emma González.
If these adroitly overlapping narratives take us to dark places, then comic relief is always only a line of sharp dialogue or two away, thanks to the third interlocking story. Spun by adorably upbeat Sequin in a Blue Room star Connor Leach as Darby, he plays a young queer man living in country Australia. He has somehow taken it upon himself to beat the world record for the longest continual kiss, aiming for a skin-shredding 37hrs lip-locked to school hunk Daniel in a Woolies carpark (ewww). Not that it’s all plain sailing, though, with a homophobic assault sparking another social media outcry.
Snappily directed by Katy Maudlin, the work races along in a gripping, always entertaining hour. Slap. Bang. Kiss is a nimble show that requires all three excellent performers to grasp the baton, repeatedly pulling focus from one story to another at a moment’s notice. Leach, in particular, captures the sparkling internal cacophony of a young gay man falling instantly in love, all the while second-guessing himself and the world around him. Fitzgerald has the requisite stoicism of an accidental activist, and Wachenuka is also convincing as a freedom fighter born in an instinctive reaction. They switch roles in a heartbeat to play support characters for one another, and make full use of that simple staging to conjure everything from stages to barricades. Each slide of a box, or deployment of a field of flags, has the remarkable effect of transporting us into their wildly different yet universally similar experiences.
While Giovannoni’s work may, predominantly, be aimed at high school students roughly the same age as his characters, in Maudlin’s assured hands it is mature enough to offer hope for all of us in this wildly spinning world. Leaping from hope to despair and back again in the blink of an eye, it banishes lazy assumptions about young people being too apathetic, highlighting that it’s almost always the adults letting them down. Never tediously didactic, it’s a refreshing banner-raiser that pulls us into the fray, asking us to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those not yet consumed by cynical surrender.
If you’re around my age, you may just find yourself humming along to a certain Heather Small song... “What have you done today to make you feel proud?”