To be very honest I was not expecting too much, never been to any of Griffin's plays before and so I just thought it might be interesting, since I love everything indie because of my hipster heart.

I was really impressed. First I love the theatre, as I've said I've never been there before but the theatre was really small, comparable to an average high school classroom. Such limited space gave the audience a more 'personal' experience at the show. I was sitting in the second row, which means sometimes I could literally touch the actors if I reached out my hands and it instantly makes the whole play completely different. I could clearly see the facial expressions of the actors, instead of seeing some moving figures on stage, it felt like we were much closer to the characters, as if they were someone we know and we were the actual witness of the story, we became a part of it. And that definitely is an advantage for a realistic production on lives of the ordinaries. I reckon it wouldn't work as fine if was about some epic medival knights and swordfights, but the theatre worked brilliantly in favour for this play.

Then the actual play itself. My friend and I were glad that it was not a simple coming-to-age play as the synopsis suggested on the website. While Alex was a very important part of the story he was not the only focus. The stories around the parents and grandparents were not any less intriguing. I shall not go on so I won't carelessly put in any spoiler here but I do think it's got a quite fine approach to the theme - regret, which one can see through all three generations, all in different contexts and degrees and it did explore how regrets haunt their lives. It may fade as time passes but it will never be gone, it will still lie in your heart and occasionally come up from the depth with the same bitterness.

And I was seriously amazed by the performance of the actors. I can only imagine that it'd be even harder to perform in such an almost interactive 'stage' so close to the audience and not affected by our presence, except in the last scene there was a slight error, in unfolding the picnic table (i mean it's their first show c'mon) and the whole audience laughed so hard, but even then the actors handled it quite smoothly that I almost thought it was intentional. On the other hand, because of the stage, it may make the variance of the performance more visible to the audience, I assume, remember I just ASSUME, because it is a quite intense program schedule and the play did require heaps of emotions from the actors. My friend may bring her fam to see it again so maybe I'll ask her about it later in the month.

Anyway, it was a very nice play and I'd totally recommend it to my friends. 

Details:

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For more info and synopsis check the website here