Review: Like Young at Club Voltaire
Review by Greg Gorton
Adeodatus McCormack’s Like Young is a story about that time in our twenties where we think we should have it all worked out by now and where everyone else is telling us “these are the best years of your life”.
Oliver has had a family tragedy and so turns to the only other person he knows has experienced similar. Paris thinks he is god’s next film auteur, and if he focuses on that he won’t think about anything else. Bella likes to sleep with Paris sometimes, and her ex is just a friend, while Holly just wishes being herself wasn’t seen as being weird. Over an hour, this foursome drink, argue, get creepy, get weird, and, for a brief moment, connect.
This is a comedy, full of laughs, but it is also so much more.
I had the pleasure of attending an early preview of this play before it opens in two weeks for the Fringe Festival. As such, the cast were still working with a bare-bones staging, experimenting with minor blocking and line changes, but fully in the groove when it came to characterisation, story-telling, the stuff that really matters. In the equally bare-bones venue of Club Voltaire, the cast and crew intelligently eschewed complex lighting or sound design, and let those on the boards do the transporting - as it always should be with good theatre.
Like Young is a play perfect for Fringe, while just as suitable for Sumner. A tight four-handed taking place in a single setting, which requires no complex design or plot necessities. It dumps its audience into a situation with little preamble, and rips us from it with the belief that, for the characters, the story goes on.
McCormack’s script has some great jokes, most of them centred around Paris’ opinion on modern cinema, but there is also so much humour in the recognising of friends, how we talk to those we don’t know, and how we don’t know what to do with crushes. There are no cardboard cutouts in this play, no one-dimensional archetypes. There are no villains.
Of course, the script is elevated by a powerful cast of four actors.
Michael Crisafulli’s Oliver has shades of Peter Parker, someone intelligent, a little scared, and ultimately someone who wants to meet everyone’s expectations. While Paris is the character most adjacent to a caricature on page, Max Nunes-Cesar’s approach is authentic and empathetic, his story known long before it is told to us explicitly.
Sabrina Rault’s Bella represents everybody who is convinced, at 20 or 50, that they should have their stuff together. She is confident enough to believe anything is possible, and anything she wants is in reach. Rault’s careful vocal changes when speaking of different characters have a powerful effect. Of course, Rault shines most when working with Bella Henry.
For many reasons, the awkward Holly was the character I engaged with most, despite some missed opportunities for deeper character study. This is, at least in part, because Bella Henry has both a natural stage presence and the actor’s sense of how to bring out the best from scene partners. Meeting the challenge of creating Holly’s quieter moments is all the more impressive in the face of this charisma, while having a matching ken with Rault allows their moments together become the epitome of Naturalism.
Like Young is the sort of play to bring friends to when I want to convince them that theatre doesn’t necessarily mean stuffy works from dead people, or esoteric works that require a five-thousand-word explanatory essay and a vomit bag. It’s simple, funny, and heartfelt. It’s performed by four talented actors and lasts just as long as it needs to. Like Young is the perfect show for non-theatre-goers and a great way to start a Fringe Festival night.
