Ruby Boukabou
Beat Magazine
August 2004

With a title like this who can resist? Steve Wheat’s three hander, in a return season from Grainfed Theatre, dives in the deep end with the opening image of a bright red headed woman (Simone, played by Sarah Bollenberg) with a gun down the throat of a man in a chair (Nigel, Craig Goddard), watched by a terrified, shaking woman on a couch (Michelle, played by Lauren Clair). It’s a hostage drama with gender issues that is confronting and ambitious. Or perhaps it tries to be confronting. Wheat’s dialogue in this ‘black comedy’ too often feels contrived, the one liners too easy which, later in the piece, break the tension that he has spent time delicately setting up.

I’m wondering if the title should have been called ‘man woman sex revenge phone’, with the over use of the off stage policeman constantly calling, that at times is comic but could have been quartered for a better effect. Director Beng Oh works the flashback scenes well as we flip between Nigel and Michelle’s living room and Simone’s flat at various points of her former relationship with Nigel and discover just why Simone is so mad.

It takes a good 20 minutes to swing into tonight but happily, after that, the play becomes absorbing and quite watchable. Sarah Bollenberg works her butt off in the highly emotional and in-your-face revenge role. She does well. Goddard plays strongly in some scenes but he fails to convince us of why these two women would have fallen for him; it’s a shame because it’s not that he isn’t capable, as we see some great emotions from him in flashback. I would like to see Lauren Clair in another production as she has a great presence but feels miscast in the role. One particularly touching moment from her, though, is when Simone and Michelle have a tête-à-tête on the couch while Simone takes a pee [sic]; it is authentic and moving. If Wheat can perhaps sink into himself as a writer and reach more for this calibre of work, he will give his actors so much more of these opportunities.

A bold, if patchy production.