Girl in Tan Boots – Griffin Independent

Overview

Hannah is a mousy-haired, slightly pudgy young woman trying to negotiate life in the big city, with her three not-always-supportive friends at her side. Sound like a story you like? Well, it will be, but it's not the one you think, and the similarities with honest comedy (hon-com?) Girls end there.

The Hannah in Girl in Tan Boots, a new play by Sydney writer Tahli Corin, has disappeared. She is represented on stage by one of those hauntingly blank missing-person mannequins. We learn about Hannah vicariously, through the eyes of Detective Carapetis (Linden Wilkinson), a Jane Lynch-esque figure soon consumed with empathy for the girl who vanished after getting on a train at Wynyard Station but has always been a bit invisible.

After chatting to Hannah's work colleagues (Zindzi Okenyo, Madeleine Jones and Francesca Savige in fine form), a chorus of adult women with high-school popular-girl mentalities, Carapetis gets a lead: Hannah was obsessed with the personal ads in the commuter rag and looking for her own mystery man, Grey Suit. That's right, Girl in Tan Boots is so far the only play inspired by mX's Here's Looking at You column — and inspired richly.

As a mystery, the play really keeps you guessing, and it also draws real meaning and depth from its set-up. If it has the aura of chick lit around it, it's only in so far as chick lit is written by women, about women and regularly has its literary value overlooked. Girl in Tan Boots is truly a funny and thoughtful dramedy that will entertain any kind of human being for its full hour and a half. As a statement on anonymous-yet-surveilled city living, it's poignant.

There's a creative, flowing sense to Susanna Dowling's direction here that really works. The team has also incorporated sleights of hand (thanks to magic consultant Bruce Glen) that some might call novelty but that are actually awesome. Not only are the magic tricks fun, they're unnerving, and they hit the right note as the feeling that things are not as they seem builds and builds.

Read more about Girl in Tan Boots in Zindzi Okenyo's Hidden Sydney interview here.