The Well (Redux)

Overview

After a sell-out season in last year's Melbourne Fringe Festival this collaboration between Monash University Student Theatre and La Mama returns to the confines of the iconic Carlton venue for a 'Redux' season. The piece was written by Robert Reid (perhaps best known for The Joy of Text), who created this largely devised work in an intensive process with Monash students.

The Well operates with a loose, fragmentary narrative that throws the apocalypse into a headlong collision with other moments that are hilariously mundane. What stood out in the play's premiere was the skill with which the performers enveloped the audience in their world, shepherding them around the small space and making them utterly complicit in the fragmentary storytelling that splintered around them.

It's unclear how different this re-imagining will be to the original 2012 work under the new direction of Kate Brennan, but Reid's skill and the success of its first outing make this an essential piece of theatre as the year winds down.