By Nick Dent
BIG YIKES!
Underground Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse
Until March 23
★★★
When nervous school-leaver Loxie (Juliette Milne) starts a job as a barista, her gender-diverse colleague Charlie (Billy Fogarty) tells her that working at the cafe is part of their plan to save up for a houseboat.
“When the world goes underwater,” Charlie explains, “all the houses will be in boat form.”
Juliette Milne plays a school leaver anxiously awaiting her QTAC offers in new Brisbane play Big Yikes!Credit: Stephen Henry
Besides, it’s not as if they could ever afford an actual house.
The fact that a rosy future is no longer a young person’s birthright simmers in the background of this likeable coming-of-age comedy from Brisbane playwright Madeleine Border.
Developed by Playlab in consultation with high school teachers, Big Yikes! addresses what the educators see as a major issue: student anxiety.
It’s essentially a character study of a neurotic 18-year-old caught in the limbo between the end of school and the arrival of university offers. Like many teens, Loxie is self-conscious, naive, needy, low in self-esteem and directionless – only in her case, dialled up to 11.
Christopher Paton and Tenielle Plunkett play multiple roles in the play, which tackles anxiety among young people in a humorous way.Credit: Stephen Henry
The play tracks Loxie as she flounders in her hospo job, plays peacekeeper between her divorced parents, moves into a grungy (and possibly overpriced) sharehouse, and stokes her skittishness with frequent doses of a gruesome true-crime podcast.
On stage for the entire 90 minutes, Loxie could easily be tiresome, but it’s a thoroughly endearing performance from Milne, a recent Griffith University graduate making her professional debut. The character is cut from the same cloth as lovable dorks such as Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall and Greta Gerwig’s Frances Ha.
Milne’s three castmates slip between myriad characters. Christopher Paton amuses as Loxie’s shallow best friend, Darcy, whose idea of fun is to judge people on their fashion choices.
Billy Fogarty performs slam poetry.Credit: Stephen Henry
As played by Tenielle Plunkett, cafe manager Steph is a hard-arse whose iron grip on the key to the staff toilets encapsulates her attitude to life.
Billy Fogarty’s Charlie is all friendly professionalism until a scene where the smitten Loxie confesses her feelings and Charlie has to deliver some hard truths. It’s a moment of pure cringe – the good kind.
Where the play loses steam is in a series of event nights (karaoke, slam poetry and stand-up comedy) the cafe stages in a bid to get on TikTok. These time-fillers reach for broad comedy but end up as cringe – the not-so good kind.
But with judicious cutting this would be the perfect show to tour to high schools, because it has the guts to level with kids about what it feels like to have nothing shielding you from adulthood. And it does it without being crass or negative.
It’s also in tune with this generation’s suspicion of gender labels. None of the characters save Loxie is given a specific sex, and the performers lean into the androgyny.
Border’s script, which doesn’t break the fourth wall and features ironic chapter headings, would make a good TV pilot, although director Ian Lawson makes the on-stage transitions seamless with polished character work and Peter Keavy’s fidget cube-like set.
One wonders what Loxie would do if – as in real life – her course offers did not arrive on time due to technical failures at QTAC. She’d probably have to take up vaping.
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