Crush review

In Rob Young’s Crush, three employees working for a national newspaper struggle with keeping their personal lives outside of the workplace as well as the news. While the premise begins interestingly enough with its authentic office atmosphere and entertaining tête-à-tête between Johnny the journalist and Celia the editor, the writing struggles to remain on track with its intentions.

Young seeks to explore what happens when love and sex enter the workplace while at the same time looking at office politics and the lengths people will go to to break a story. Unfortunately the latter is barely probed and the outcome of these decisions, such as whether Celia believes the paper should profit from the death of her ex-partner, are more or less forgotten about as soon as they occur.

Furthermore, there is a lack of believable vulnerability from the characters due to the amount of time dedicated to the three of them discussing their feelings and experiences in relation to people who are not in the show instead of between themselves. As a result, there is little emotional impact throughout, where by the conclusion of the play it still feels like we haven’t fully scrutinised their fears and hopes on love.

Flesh Eating Tiger review

The Owl and the Pussycat returns for its 2015 season with the Australian premiere of Flesh Eating Tiger, written by Amy Tofte. I’m not going to beat about the bush with this one, I was sorely disappointed by this production and it is not at all what I have come to expect from this theatre venue.

My biggest issue lies with the script. When looking at individual scenes, it can be funny and sharp, but as an overall story it is just one big mess. Flesh Eating Tiger follows the relationship between two people, “A Woman” and “Some Drunk” and the destructive nature of obsession and love. However, before we can even get to know who these people are, the narrative is going off in so many frenetic directions that I could not keep up, and halfway through I frankly stopped caring enough about these people to even try.

The story is incredibly convoluted, which is surprising given how the scenes just seem to repeat themselves throughout the duration of the play. It almost reached the point where if  “A Woman” cried one more time or “Some Drunk” got angry and shouted, I probably would have done the same thing.