Review: Blessed, Attic Erratic (Poppy Seed Theatre Festival x Malthouse Theatre)

There’s something incredibly uncomfortable about seeing a show about poor people by non-poor people, essential for rich people in one of Melbourne’s most highly regarded theatre venues.

Blessed explores the lives of Maggie and Grey, two poor people who fell in love as teenagers and had heaps of fun, then Grey disappeared for ages and Maggie found him in a disgusting apartment, they talk about their past and what they’ve been up to and then towards the end it turns out that Maggie is pregnant and is the mother of god. The play ends with a beautiful monologue by Maggie about how her son is going to be a kick-arse god.

Blessed has been described as an ‘insight into the lower class’ and as someone who grew up in a family with very little money, I honestly just find that offensive.

It was a grossly one dimensionally portrayal of people from low-socio economic background, it portrays us as drug addict, angry, hopeless people with weird accents, it portrays us as people with no agency and no control over our lives.

Of course that may be the case for some people with a poor background, but what good is it doing putting it on stage that the vast majority of the audience will be from a privileged background? The characterization of Maggie and Grey did no favors to the script, I felt completely unsympathetic towards either of them, in particular Grey, who was played as a ‘crazy’ angry verbally abusive man, an insight into the lower class? Nope, you’re just further stigmatizing them.

I think Fleurs writing was really beautiful, but I cannot think what the director was trying to do in his interpretation of Fleurs’ script. I think the script really could have worked with the right director. It was a funny play, I could see the humor trying to break though but the direction, set and sound design was forcing the audience to suppress that, it forced us to feel pain, from the scratchy, grim sound design to the aggressively invasive flickering lights during every single scene change. I found myself drifting off and disengaging at multiple points in the play, mainly because I felt like I was just being yelled at and I’m not really interested in being yelled at, but also because I found it so ridiculously unrealistic

We got to see flash back of when Maggie and Grey first met when they were 15, and I had a few problems with this – the same actors played their younger selves, which just seemed silly because they were taking it so seriously and forcing the audience to take it seriously, I wish they had have gotten actually younger actors to play these scenes, I think it would have been a lot more effective, or at least do something drastic to the lighting or costume during these scenes, it was so weird for it to be just in the same setting and lighting but the actors ‘acting 15’. And on that note, I found the portrayals of 15 year olds really disingenuous, they seemed like they were playing 6 year olds to be honestly, if I was a 15 year old I would be offended.

Blessed is one of four shows part of Poppy Seed a theatre festival for independent theatre makers. Despite my negativity, Poppy Seed Theatre Festival is something everyone should support, and encourage. Check out their website to see what else they have on offer.

Blessed is showing at The Malthouse until the 20th of November.

Written by Ebony Beaton.

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