“Simple. Satisfying. Superb.”
Kate Stratford
[ 4.5] Stars
Venue; KXT on Broadway
Sydney
Dates Until August 2nd
Babyteeth is ostensibly about a dying teenage girl who falls in love for the first time, but what it’s about is different from what it actually is. The trope is a cliché, But Babyteeth is different – it isn’t the experience of cancer which transforms. It is love.
You may think you know what this play is about and in a way, you do. Love and loss. The story is as old as time but how Rita Kainejais has chosen to tell the story is something else again. No-one is predictable and the script sparkles with wit, charm, humour and a deep sadness. When such a script is delivered by actors who completely inhabit their characters with sincerity, vulnerability and individuality, the familiar becomes something else – a new way of looking. What theatre should offer.
Four people have to deal with the unexpected. Their individual reactions run the gamut of human emotions as they try. Sometimes there is courage, sometimes there is despair. There is grief. They act out. Get angry. Lash out. Apologise. Use drugs to medicate and to escape. And throughout we have a sense of people simply trying to get a handle on life with all its vagaries and curve balls and moments that make everything worthwhile.
When Milla (Rachel Thomas) and Moses (Campbell Parsons) meet on a train platform, barely any dialogue is exchanged, there is an immediate connection and easy intimacy. He is older than she is, and obviously something of a lost soul. But he attaches himself to her instantly with disarming charm. When her nose starts to bleed, he offers to help her handle it and Milla is overwhelmed by him. She is enraptured.
Milla’s parents, psychiatrist Henry (James Smithers) and former pianist Anna (Jane Angharad), do not know what to do when their precious daughter—who still has one of her baby teeth—brings Moses home. Ordinarily, they would have insisted he leave. But their daughter is slowly dying so they want her to have what she wants, even if she wants her first love to be a homeless small-time drug dealer. Of course Moses is not the sort of young man any parent wants around their daughter and their concern pushes Milla into rebellion. But in many ways, she is a child, so it is complicated. Even when Moses breaks into the house in the early hours to rob them, Milla rushes to his defence.
This is the story of four people. Not just one. And the voices are clear and highly individual. Smithers’ Henry is gentle and sanguine, a man a little lost in trying to deal with the chaos around him but attempting to stay real, in the moment. Angharad’s Anna rages against the dying of the light, clearly exhausted by thwarted hopes and dreams. At the centre, Thomas’ Milla insists on living whatever is left of life to the zenith. She revels in the new feelings she gets to have with Moses, she is in awe of him. And Parsons opens his Moses up completely to her, defying expectations about what a character like that could possibly have to offer a young dying girl. He is not there, as it turns out, to get something out of the situation. He is a compassionate human, offering what he can.
There are peripheral characters – Philip D’Ambrosio delivers a passionate, thunderous violin teacher whose love for music supersedes any care for humanity. He is Anna’s line back to music, to something other than her home and its attendant problems. His pupil Thong (Jeda Osorio), who he literally pulls off the street, is a reminder to Anna that one cannot force love and talent, no matter how much one desires it. Meanwhile, Henry’s neighbour Toby (Esha Jessy) connects him to life with her unconventionality and vigour. It is what he needs at this time. Each member of the family – mother, father, daughter – finds who they need to get them through the tragedy they are living.
Kim Hardwick’s directing is confident and creative. In such a small space, transitions are handled deftly with a sense of simultaneous action and a pace which is gentle and engaging. Sound (Michael Huxley) and lighting (Topaz Marlay-Cole) play softly into the intimacy.
White Box and Bakehouse really do not do enough productions but what they do is always so rewarding to see. The scripts selected always offer up something just a little precious and are explored with a love and commitment to story-telling which are never vainglorious. And the acting is always brilliant.
Simple. Satisfying. Superb.
Photos by Phil Erbacher
Kate Stratford, Theatre Now
