Review: YOU GOT OLDER Is An Honest Expression Of Family Relationships and Coming To Terms With The Challenges Of Life and Death

Saturday 21st July 2018, 7:30pm, KXT Kings Cross

Clare Barron's Obie Award winning play (2015) YOU GOT OLDER makes it's Sydney Premiere under Claudia Barrie's astute direction. Drawing on Barron's own experience, the challenge of a child coming to terms with a parent's illness and mortality along with the complexities of life plays out with simplicity and truth.

Mad March Hare Theatre Company pairs with KXT Bakehouse to deliver another well crafted expression of the realities of life. YOU GOT OLDER sees the 30 something Mae (Harriet Gordon-Anderson) returning from Minneapolis to her childhood home in rural Washington State to live with her father (Steve Rodgers). Along with needing somewhere to live post separation and job loss, Mae is also home to help her father who is dealing with a rare aggressive cancer of the throat but the focus of the story remains on Mae's ability, or inability, to cope. With seemingly little other contact with people aside from her father, an old school friend she can't really remember and a rare reunion of siblings at her father's bedside, Mae has a lot of time on her hands which leads to frustrations and unusual imaginations that distract her from the realities around her.

Isabel Hudson (Set Design) has created a very simply furnished space on the traverse stage to allow the scenes to move seamlessly between the family home, particularly Hannah's old bedroom, a dive bar and a hospital room. Light wood lines the walls with a large picture window dominating one wall whilst the other remains unadorned save for two coat hooks. Basic raw timber Ikea chairs, a single bed and a night stand with lamp are the only furniture and a solitary chili (pepper) plant sits in a planter in the middle of the room. The dust gathered in corners remains unexplained. Whilst the program notes indicate the setting of Wenatchee, rural town situated at the foothills of the Cascade Range in Washington State, without the night scene out the window and the snowfall, this story could be anywhere outside of a big city, reinforcing the universality of the story that could apply to any middle class family where educated children have gone off to forge their own paths but are drawn back to the nest. Emily Brayshaw's costuming is equally simple as she draws on the rural setting without airs and graces to allow Mae and Dad to be comfortable in tracksuit pants and flannel shirts. Younger sister Jenny's (Sarah Meacham) youth is captured in a smock dress whilst oldest sister Hannah's (Ainslie McGlynn) roles as a housewife and mother is presented in 'mom jeans' and embroidered sweater.

Benjamin Brockman's lighting helps define the changes in location and perspective. Easy warm washes of light capture the moments between father and daughter as they inspect the garden whilst blue dominates Mae's imagination and erotic dreams and stark fluorescents punctuate the hospital room's clinical harshness. Benjamin Pierpoint's music and sound design works beautifully with the work to deliver a sensitive soundscape that doesn't overpower the story but adds to it. The music box tune as Mae settles in for her first night home is delicate and brings back memories of childhood which is a brilliant contrast to her rather grown up dreams of a Canadian cowboy (Gareth Rickards) that likes it rough.

Rodgers does endearing mild mannered middle aged man wonderfully and his portrayal of the patriarch of this relatively normal family, aside from their apparent smell, is a delight to experience. He ensures that the father is seen as caring and concerned for his daughter whilst trying to make her transition back home easy, even if he isn't always aware of boundaries and a girl's need for some time alone. Gordon-Anderson presents a realistic grown daughter struggling with balancing her own needs with the knowledge that she should be looking after her father as she shows Mae moving between moments of self absorption and moments of care as her concern for her father eventually wins. She handles the absurdity of some of the character's quirks well, delivering the revelations with an understatedness as Mae tries to pass them off as something everyone imagines.

As Mae's siblings, McGlynn, Meacham and Alex Beauman, as brother Matthew, help paint the picture of a family where the second generation has become distanced to a degree with the implication that some or all of them have moved away as they have grown up but that they all come back together with an ease of a close family. Barron's inclusion of random topics for the siblings to discuss whilst they wait for their father's sedatives to wear off gives an insightful expression of family interactions where random things are discussed and not much is off limits. Local guy Mac is presented by Cody Ross who presents Mae's high school alum with a simplness and lack of complexity aside from his strange habits whilst also ensuring that we see the local boy as having an awkwardness about him.

Regardless of whether you have ever been faced with a family member's serious illness or not, YOU GOT OLDER is a well crafted expression of life, relationships and family bonds. Wonderfully presented and universally relevant on many levels.

http://www.kingsxtheatre.com/you-got-older

13 July - 4 August 2018