Intrigued By What Inspires - a review of the 10 x Ten Play Fest

Last Saturday night I was at a performance of the Wagga Wagga School of Arts (SoACT)’s 2023 Ten X 10 Play Fest.  It is an annual event where SoACT invites playwrights from across the country to submit previously unproduced 10 minute dramas to a committee and selects 10 of them to stage.  It is made possible by a series of local sponsors, most prominently Riverina Water. I've been to the Play Fest twice before (disclaimer - my daughter was in one of the dramas the first time I went). This year's theme, Intrigue and Inspiration, was reflected in some of the selected works but was essentially a hook on which to hang their marketing.

Promotional poster

The bill opened with Therese Edmond’s clever, compelling The Return of Sherlock Homes, a two hander premised on Conan Doyle trying to get the detective monkey off his back and write about spiritualism only to be faced with the bitter pill (appropriately enough for a trained physician) that Sherlock would be his legacy no matter what ‘silly’ or ‘very silly’ subjects he tried to tackle later in is writing career. Ian Wright and Felix Hadler acquitted themselves very well and co-directors Urzy Hadler and Cat May used the Playhouse’s stage and limited props (most impressively a flamboyant feather quill) very effectively.

Amanda Ley’s Hitman Wanted followed setting a mood of dark comedy that permeated several of the night’s offerings. Ley pushes the joke of regretting a drunken post into sinister territory when one of her characters realises she has summoned an eastern European hitman to ‘take out’ her ex fiancée. Craig Dixon did a nice comic turn as the multi-talented assassin Sergei and the line about Air Tasker providing him with better leads than Gumtree was one of the best quips of the evening.

Diggin (sic) Up The Past  introduced us to a rather posh, glam blonde motel proprietor who narrated and commented on the action - a tale of two scoundrels hoping to find proceeds of crime where they had secreted them some years before. Julian Smith’s and Adrian Hallam’s more naturalistic delivery and comic timing deserve commendation but overall the play was too episodic in structure and for me at least the denouement was telegraphed from the outset.

Robyn Horwell’s Daze and Vi was an exercise in gently humorous dialogue delivered by the eponymous elderly women. They scoured the newspaper obituaries and riffed on acquaintances they’d sent off and how they’d like their own exits to be conducted revealing their contrasting characters and attitudes to mortality as they did so.  The play’s ending – when the discussion became less theoretical – was a touch heavy handed.

The next play, The Authoress, was the disappointment of the night for me. The program notes state that playwright Seth Freeman has an impressive career as a writer and is active in ‘the empowerment of women and human rights’. Why then he would pen this confused and trivialising drama about gender roles and giving voice to the marginalised is anyone’s guess. The charismatic Imogen Rubi was underutilized and obliged to deliver absurdly inconsistent lines and casting Eddie Pratt as a cross dressing wannabe expert on lesbian relationships with no reference to his beard obliterated even the slimmest chance that an audience member could suspend disbelief.

At interval one of the SoACT members whispered to me that the best was yet to come and Suzy Wilds’ A Perfect Fit kicked off the second half of the program (and some stylish footwear) quite strongly. It was well-structured with strongly drawn characters and tackled themes of poverty and domestic violence with assurance even if Bob Hitchens’ homeless character was perhaps a little too well-groomed and insightful to ring completely true.

A Criminal Mind was intent on packing its ten minutes‘ duration with a maximum number of plot twists and titillating ideas. Paula Armstrong’s script  gave us accountancy jokes, marital  intervention,  potential  S&M antics and gallows humour all enacted by Balin Willis and Tamara Dixon with commendable energy while the hostage characters had little to do but look frightened and impatient. Less would have been more with this plot and more balanced contribution across the cast would have worked better too.  

Jeffrey Barnes’ Free Kill bamboozled me. Was it a satire on commuting, an homage to Sharon and Kim, or a warning not to dabble in or underestimate the dark arts?  Maybe all of the above. Cleverly staged but with a distractingly overwrought characterization from Bec Huxtable, this play’s ideas could have been streamlined and refined further. There was so much comic potential in creating the characters of annoying train passengers that wasn’t really exploited.

The next offering Second Guessing was an attempt to depict the predicament and dynamics of the disciples in the immediate aftermath of Christ’s crucifixion and apparent rising in a modern context. It had plenty of tension and some of the most unfussy, convincing acting of the night. Adrian Hallam is to be congratulated for the tempo and mood he and his cast created. However, apart from the feat of transposition it was unclear what playwright Glen Hunting was trying to say.

Above left: Therese Edmonds and right: Suzy Wilds

Finally another two hander, The Octopus Pot, Louise Hopewell’s expose of the true nature a seemingly likeable bloke via the device of his widow composing his eulogy. A clever idea and it worked to some extent.  Shaun Perry struck the right balance with his characterisation, coercion, menace and eventually violence erupting plausibly. Jo-Anne Strader had the unenviable task of convincing the audience that she had been controlled and abused until a few days prior but was now bursting with chutzpah and verve at the chance to dish the dirt on Harry. Not 100% convincing and at risk of trivializing real life domestic violence scenarios. 

And then we were done (to paraphrase the title of SoACT’s next production)*…

As Fay Walters and Margaret Bannister say in their program notes, the 10 by Ten Play Fest has been ‘bringing writers, directors and actors (I would add audiences) into a vibrant annual theatre event’   for fourteen years now and the recency of the works selected and performed means there is a ‘freshness to the topics and the way they are handled’.  Wagga Wagga should be proud that our community provides this yearly opportunity for emerging dramatists to practice and hone their craft.

The Riverina Playhouse, venue for 10 by Ten

* Agatha Christie’s And Then there Were None opens on 6 August