Sometimes life and other people can cause you to feel stressed, anxious and generally unhappy. What to do? While there are plenty of ways of dealing with this, you generally want to “go to your happy place”. But what if you can’t find, or don’t have, a “happy place”. What if you just have anger, pain, despair, solitude and fear?
For the first time in history, teenagers are now openly talking about mental health and nine of those teenagers, the cast of Hungry Wolf Visionary Youth Theatre’s incredible production of Goodbye Rosetta, are lifting the lid on a problem that is just getting worse and worse with the pressures of the modern, social media driven, teenage world.
Keisha (Pauline Kehlet-Schou) and Mo (Bronte Sandwell-Moore) are foster sisters and enthusiastic star gazers, together with their best friend Dylan (Oscar Lloyd). But Mo is having issues with her mental health and, on one fateful exam day, the pressure is too much to bear and she ends up in a hospital together with others struggling with mental health issues.
At the same time, Dylan’s brother Noel (Owen Edmonds), his best friend Tam (Jasper Ryan-Cater) and Tam’s girlfriend Laura (Georgia Simpson) are dealing with their own pressures. University, parties, gap years, shoplifting, drinking, and the dreaded parents all feature heavily in their story, as the show seamlessly intertwines between both parts of the tale.
The other patients that we meet in the hospital are Matt (Roman Hayeck-Green) who is close to being discharged, Jodie (Mia Mottier) who is dealing with her overpowering anger issues and, Micky (Amy Lubach), an anorexic who “only has to eat” to earn her release but who continues to struggle with the issues in her mind that prevent her from doing so.
Writer, Katherine Manners, and director, Conor Baum have spent a year working on the play and both display a fantastic knowledge and insight into the lives of 21st century teenagers. The characters are all totally believable, the language they use is typical of any teenager and the situations are so familiar that, at points throughout the show, each member of the audience can say “been there, done that”.
The nine supremely talented young people in this production have achieved something that very few performers do – they don’t look, or sound, like they are acting. Their performances are so wonderfully natural that it’s almost like we are watching a proper “reality show”. They take each moment and squeeze every ounce of emotion, good or bad, out of it with a surprising amount of humour.
Goodbye Rosetta tells a tale that is so current, so real and so true, it’s justifiably the hottest ticket at the fringe!
***** Five Stars