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Pictures: Phile Deprez

POSTED: 17 AUGUST 2009

Once and for All We're Going to Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen

(Ontroerand Goed, Kopergietery, Richard Jordan Productions & Sydney Theatre Company & Sydney Theatre Company | Wharf 2, Walsh Bay, Sydney | Until 29 August)

There’s a line in Once and for All that, for me, really summed up this marvellous, energetic performance about what it means to be a teenager: “It’s all been done before, but not by me!” Or words very close to that.

When that sort of statement is made at a societal level, we have cause to worry. Then it usually means that we haven’t learnt from history and that we’re recommitting the errors of the past.

When it’s made at an individual adolescent level, it’s simply a sign of the normal process of moving from childhood to adulthood — a time of anxiety, confusion and experimentation, of discovering sexuality, of insecurity mixed with absolute conviction, of throwing out challenges and telling parents about where they’ve stuffed it up.

And these 14 Belgian adolescents — aged from 14 to 18 and brought to Australia through Ontroerand Goed, Kopergietery, Richard Jordan Productions & Sydney Theatre Company — depict the trials of that transition with an exhilarating and explosive verve.

The stage setting is as simple as it comes ... a disparate line of chairs that greets the audience as they take their own seats and absorb a very teenage cacophony from the wings.

What follows is an hour and a bit of absolute mayhem as the actors repeatedly occupy the chairs and the surrounding stage space to portray various aspects of the adolescent world they are confronting and the envelopes they are trying to push.

And they certainly dodge the teen stereotype by cleaning up after themselves.

This is an exciting theatrical display pushed by great music. Go see this vibrant re-creation of your youth ... or else go regret the lost opportunity that might have been.

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