Pale Blue Dot @ La Boite

Pale Blue Dot @ La Boite

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Posted 2014-07-27 by Damsel Martinfollow

Sat 19 Jul 2014


In the end, we are all alone. Even the deepest of human connections are fleeting, the most blissful pleasures brief. This is the lacerating premise underlying Pale Blue Dot , playing until 9 August 2014 at Kelvin Grove's La Boite Theatre . It's a testament to the skill of local actor and playwright Kathryn Marquet that Pale Blue Dot is so bleak and yet so beautiful, riddled with a savage dark humour that paradoxically serves to lighten the mood.

The setting in which the action of Pale Blue Dot unfolds is, refreshingly, the Darling Downs city of Toowoomba. Best-known for the annual Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers , Toowoomba is also known for its high record of UFO sightings . This is a play which concerns itself with broad cosmic mysteries, like are we alone in the universe? It also poses deeply personal questions, such as can we ever really know another person?


Insurance assessor Joel (Hugh Parker) is a comically-harried corporate stiff who spends his days processing preposterous insurance claims, like that from the Mercedes owner who reckons he left his brand-new vehicle unlocked, with the keys in the ignition, outside a shopping centre. Or the German immigrant Greta (Caroline Kennison), seeking to cash in on the supposed alien abduction of her teenage daughter Storm (Ashlee Lollback) who vanished at a party and was later found in an empty field 200 kilometres from home.

Joel's home life is no less complicated, with his wife Holly (Lucy Goleby) rendered hysterical by the demands of new motherhood. Many men will relate to the goofy-footed Joel as he repeatedly wades into the unfamiliar, sleep-deprived, nappy-strewn territory of home where the only guarantee is that he will never get anything right. Against this backdrop is the tantalising prospect of an illicit relationship with Storm - and the frightening possibility that his unsettled new baby is part-alien.

Aliens. UFOs. Abductions. Starseeds. Reptilians. With all of these elements, Pale Blue Dot , in less skilled hands, could so easily have strayed into the realm of farce. But arising out of Marquet's fresh, funny scriptwriting, the firm but gentle guidance of director Michael Futcher and cast members' ownership of these deeply-flawed but highly likeable characters, it comes together as a thought-provoking comedy.

"Our fear of being alone and defenceless against the creeping dark seems absolute," says Marquet. "I'm interested in our aloneness - our alienation - both from each other and together, as a species."



#brisbane_city
#humour
#kelvin_grove
#theatre
#theatre -reviews
#july
!date 19/07/2014 -- 09/07/2014
%wnbrisbane
181600 - 2023-06-16 01:39:18

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