Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW)

All The Fraudulent Horse Girls Aug 30 – Sep 14, 2024
Playwright: Michael Louis Kennedy
Director: Jess Arthur
Cast: Janet Anderson, Caitlin A. Kearney, Shirong Wu
Images by Robert Catto

Probe Sep 5 – 14, 2024
Playwright: Becca Hurd
Director: Rachel Chant
Cast: Ryan Panizza, Ziggy Resnick
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
The first in a series of double bills, at the New Works Festival by Old Fitz Theatre, features All The Fraudulent Horse Girls by Michael Louis Kennedy and Probe by Becca Hurd. The former tells the whimsical story of an 11-year-old’s fascination with horses, full of comical imagination if slightly too bizarre to meaningfully engage in. The latter is a two-hander about the current state of the film industry, with a particular interest in the prevailing gender inequity that firmly undergirds the system, notable for its mischievous dialogue, but could benefit from some thoughtful editing.

Direction for both pieces are sensitively and elegantly accomplished, by Jess Archer for Horse Girls and by Rachel Chant for Probe. There is a bold theatricality in their work that translates as an effervescence to help sustain our attention. Lighting design by Emma Van Heen demonstrates a keen for dramatic tension as well as for humour, able to manufacture effective atmospheric transformations to keep our sensibilities attuned.

A uniformly excellent group of performers, each one of them deliberative yet uninhibited, insists on making us convinced and interested in what they present. Janet Anderson, Caitlin A. Kearney and Shirong Wu are wonderful with the kookiness of their equine themed creation, offering great variety to their depictions of something fantastical and strange. Playing filmmakers at different stages of their careers, Ryan Panizza and Ziggy Resnick are often powerful with what they bring, and impressive with the level of conviction they deliver for a couple of very challenging characters. These two plays in the first instalment of New Works Festival prove demanding in different ways, but the cast makes it a worthwhile experience, in an artform that is always collaborative, and as can be witnessed here, eternally optimistic.

ww.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.instagram.com/sourcherry.productions