Mancub
The script is very funny. The play is brilliantly directed. It was a treat to watch...
Overview
You can receive $5 off the price of a ticket to Mancub if you use the special promo code RHINO when you book online or at the booking office.
I don’t know what the purpose was of this play. Some plays do have a purpose. They leave you breathless with all the new challenges going on in your head. This play left me breathless because it just moved so jolly fast! It’s a crazy trip through a teenage boys rather large imagination and sets a high standard for re:Generate Theatre’s debut performance.
In Mancub, written by Scotsman, Douglas Maxwell and directed by Kiwiman, Bryan Johnston, we meet Paul. He’s a teenage kid with, literally, a wild imagination. He is animal crazed, has a big soft spot for them, knows a lot about them, and can talk to them. Throughout the play, which is basically a highly animated monologue, we see him metamorphous from a shy young lad into a raging bear-beast-boy as he attempts to deal with the angst of teenager-dom.
Ryan DuLieu was wonderfully invested in Paul and was very likable. The audience certainly loved him as he dealt with his best friend Jerry, his own crush on the school babe Karen, and his typically annoying parents. The other two stars of the three person show, Tansy Hayden and Richard Osbourne played multiple characters each, chopping and changing between character mannerisms and accents with an endearing sense of ease. My favourite minor character was Osbourne’s talking bulldog whose jutting lower jaw and bowed front legs made him unmistakeably canine.
The play has a lot of physical action that is further pushed by its interactive set. A two walled ‘room’ faces the audience, from which open doors, fridges and windows, and vomits out benches for the actors to move around throughout the piece. Johnston’s direction is wonderfully commendable. I imagine there were many well-earned bruises and scrapes for the actors, but it was definitely worth their pain for my gain.
The script is very funny. The play is brilliantly directed. It was a treat to watch, but while the action was appropriately fast paced, a lot of dialogue from the lead, DuLieu, was missed as he attempted to speak as fast as the action, which I’m not sure was needed. As a result, I think this may be partly why I struggled to determine any purpose in the play. Perhaps I missed it in all the kerfuffle on stage.
Despite that though, I definitely enjoyed it and consider it as one of my near favourites from the play season so far this year.
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