TRAPPER by Arena Theatre Company - A Review

On 2 August, my year 9 drama class went to see a show by the Arena Theatre Company in the Fairfax studio underneath the Arts Centre. Christian Leavesley and Jolyon James created the play Trapper, and the four actors were: Rachel Perks, Hamish Irvine, Daniel Schlusser and Naomi Rukavina. The Fairfax studio stage and space worked really well for this show. The actors were close to the audience allowing them to have a closer view. It was my second time in this space and I feel that this performance worked better on the stage compared to the one that had more actors because it did not seem cramped.

Trapper was a play that I found to have a highly interesting plot and theme. It appears that the actors are trapped in a world that is ruled by other forces outside their control, but really, they do control their actions. I feel that the writers had points in the play that were very entertaining and intriguing, but I did not feel that they all fitted into the same theme. The actors were all showing how they individually interpreted the plot and this meant that the play seemed disjointed in parts. I felt that it was jumping around chronologically and this made the main plot less powerful. The themes in the play were hard to find, but entrenched in the dribble of some of the disjointed scenes, were strikes of brilliance. The theme of addiction was conveyed strongly in the play and it is shown when one of the characters cannot stop checking her phone. There was another strike of brilliance from the writers of Trapper, when one of the actors was talking about going on dates with road signs, I felt this to be a poetic moment in the script because it described how people can reflect their emotions directly in their mannerisms. “You’re not great at reading the signs; remember that creepy keep left guy”… “so obsessive”… “or that give way sign”…“who always said ‘fine’ when he meant ‘no’”. In this excerpt from the script it shows how the writer has used personification to convey emotion. When I read about the play, I did not expect it to be as poetic. The play explored complex ideas and made me stand up and think.

In Trapper the set was brilliant and it made the space seem synthetic and fabricated but when the poetry was added it gave off an eerie resemblance to the real world and showed how much of a machine the world can be. I feel that the play used non-naturalistic and naturalistic techniques depending on the situation. The parts in the real world used naturalistic techniques but the parts where the set became the main attraction were non-naturalistic allowing for a constantly changing performance. The two stand out performers for me were Daniel Schlusser and Naomi Rukavina because of their long string of dialogue half way through the play where they argue about individuality. They both take opposing sides that have a direct relationship to their life experiences, and their age, which I feel, made the show. In parts the performance was hard to follow and difficult to understand but I think that each actor conveyed their own separate message within the plot which somehow came together.

I found this play to be inspiring in parts but I also felt that the script could have been tighter. It should have had a more consistent story line. In the end, I did enjoy the play and the experience of seeing a professional play was inspirational. I would recommend this play to people, but only if they had seen shows before and could take something from the play. I give this show a three out of five because of the set and the brilliant moments encased within.

Finnegan Comte-Harvey

Year 9

NEW STEPS

Kew High School has again benefited from volunteer work by the Yarra Bend Rotary Club.