The Melbourne Review

Escaping from Godot

November 2012

It’s a story that never fails to be relevant – a bunch of young adults in their early 20s facing a crossroads and pondering what to do with the rest of their lives… To stay in a small town and be reconciled to a dull life of routine and comfort, or take the plunge and leap into the unknown that’s somewhere far away from home? Featuring a cast mostly made up of ex-pats – like director, Adam Spellicy – theatre company Exhibit A’s production of Eric Bogosian’s SubUrbia is not unlike Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting For Godot – with the exception that in the end ‘Godot’ actually shows up, as Spellicy explains.

“This group of characters just hangs around the carpark at the local 7/11, coming to grips with adulthood and indulging in nostalgia of their high school years,” says Spellicy. “They’re just trying to get a sense of themselves and what they want to do with their lives. In the meantime, they’re waiting for a visit from one of their friends who was unpopular at school but left town and became this big rockstar. He’s now touring back in his hometown and this group is waiting in anticipation of his visit which ends up being a catalyst for change in these young people.”

The fact that most of the actors themselves are not Melbourne natives has been an added bonus, according to Spellicy, injecting unmistakable authenticity into the performances and making the actors all the more convincing in their individual roles. Originally hailing from Adelaide, the director himself claims he is able to pinpoint aspects of himself in a number of the characters in SubUrbia, and says the audience will probably be able to do the same.

“Having creative aspirations, most of the cast are actually from other states around Australia,” he says. “They’ve decided to leave their home states and move to Melbourne to pursue acting as a way of escaping their own background. Even I can relate to this personally with my own life-story. I spent my teens and early 20s in Adelaide which is a nice place to come from but it can easily lead to procrastination. If you come from a small town and you have aspirations, it does take some courage to actually make good on those things. It takes courage to leap into the unknown and leave the comfort and habit that you’re used to. I certainly felt that. The problem was that the town I came from started to feel constricting and I started to feel like I’d outgrown the place. I think it’s also about just having a natural curiosity about the rest of the world combined with a bit of a terror about the unknown.”

Much like the rockstar friend who left the small town to become a famous musician, Spellicy says he too left Adelaide and moved to Melbourne with his own band in pursuit of bigger and better things. And while he jokes that he wouldn’t necessarily label himself a ‘rockstar’, he does claim that the smaller the town the bigger the case of ‘tall poppy syndrome’ when one decides to move to ‘the big smoke’.

“I understand that frustration and I’ve seen it too,” he says. “Adelaide is pretty much the suburbs and there is a lot of pot-smoking and people just resigning themselves to their habit and comforts. When you ask people why they stay, they get defensive about it. Not that it’s necessarily good or bad to make that decision to stay – it’s just a question and yet people get offended!”

The problem, however, is that “wherever you go, there you are”, as far as Spellicy sees it, anyway. Leaving your old life behind is all good and well, but you can never truly escape yourself – which is something a lot of the characters don’t seem to comprehend.

“Sooze is a good example. She’s made the decision that she has to leave and she’s already starting to create a new persona for herself. The thing is, though, you can try to run away from a place but you can never really run away from yourself, and yet she feels like she has to run away from her hometown, thinking that’s going to fix things. It’s actually a funny play but it’s also a tragedy. Eric Bogosian really portrays human nature in a very honest way. It’s almost impossible not to identify with this group of people or at least take something away from it.”

Exhibit A: Theatre’s SubUrbia shows from December 3 to 7 at the Abbotsford Convent, 1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford.

abbotsfordconvent.com.au

facebook.com/ExhibitATheatre

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