Company of Rogues is an award-winning theatre partnership helmed by producer Robbi James and producer/performer Eric Lovell, our program tells us. At their Sydney Fringe Festival double bill last Friday we witnessed two powerful, funny, captivating, and erudite thought evoking plays. And if you're quick, you can still get yourself to one of the performances, as Rogues Double Bill is playing in the old World Bar, Fringe HQ Bayswater Road until 19 October.
This is indeed powerful theatre. Small, intimate, independent and yes brave. And yes, all the more powerful for it.
Gravity Guts was originally written as a one-woman show, which director Erica Lovell has reimagined to represent a broad spectrum of women, and brought to life with an ensemble of performers. It's riveting stuff. Deeply thoughtful, perhaps magnified with any interest mathematics, astronomy, or science fiction. Yeup. It's a girls' sci-fi work - teenager Sophia is into science, wants to be an astronaut and digs Sigourney Weaver.
But you don't need that. Because underneath it all, this lively one act is about the heart, human emotions and (in this all girl cast) Sophia's relationship with the dad she rarely (and we never) see.
Special kudos to the playwright Sophia Simmons for an enormously entertaining and intelligent work. Gravity Guts received the 2018 National Pioneer Playwright Award, and Sophia performed her own work at the 2019 Adelaide Fringe Festival.
Ginger. Black. Brunette. Blonde. is a confronting invitation into the mind that we don't quite understand until deeper into the play, into the mind of Sarah. There is an undercurrent of sci-fi here again too, holding hands with fantasy, suspense, horror and psychological thriller. Yet I had imagined the hair colours, and we do see a women sitting under a hair dryer. But do not imagine for one minute that these words are superficial, that the portrayal is of beauty. This is one of the most challenging plays and both embraces you while leaving a pit in your stomach. Even better, this thought provoking hummer erupted from personal experiences of local Western Sydney playwright Peter Maple.
Beyond each of these pieces what I find most poignant here, is the combination that Company of Rogues has pulled together. Both plays are produced by Erica Lovell and Robbi James. They've brought together a play about the relationship with the Dad, by a female playwright and female director, and a play about the relationship with the Mum, by a male playwright and a male director. In the Yin and Yang of the program we find perfect balance, albeit among some unsettling questions in the script. Outstanding acting by Emily McKnight convulses our heart beyond the written words, and brings to psychoanalysis the subconscious of both relationships.