One of the surest signs of a great performance is the ability to hold an audience rapt while doing absolutely nothing at all. Well, not nothing, exactly. We humans aren’t very good at that. We fidget, we fuss, we glance around and muss up the stuff around us.
So it is with Holly (a remarkable Mich McCowage), the would-be centre court sideliner in playwright Liv Satchell’s Ballkids (or, scenes from a friendship). Holly is an adorable mess of ginger curls mooshed into a sun-safe navy cap with a neck protector. From the start, we can tell they’re a very particular type who likes things just right.
Just watch them perched on their butt on the edge of the white-outlined blue of an outer court at the Australian Open. Tongue protruding and eyes intensely focused as they slip, slop, slap their sunscreen, the audience likewise zooms in on their spreading process. It’s almost ritualistic in its precision, right down to rolling down their socks to make sure no unexpected droop exposes their ankles to sunburn hazards. The audience’s chuckles, gentle at first, steadily rise to a level that would have any umpire commanding, ‘Quiet, please’.
Ballkids review – quick links
Slip, slap, slop
If you’re prone to awkwardly dorkish determination, you’ll recognise Holly’s level of commitment, and perhaps also read in an attendant level of loneliness. This is a kid who perhaps finds it harder than most to find their people.
As set designer Filipe Filihia’s ingeniously simple scoreboard to the rear announces, in a series of swap-in title cards, it’s 2004 and Holly is 13 years old, way before any widespread discussion of neurodivergence. Their mum hopes that, in embracing their tennis obsession, they’ll make friends who can see the beauty in their care factor.
Holly’s joined on the sidelines by fellow ballkid Sam (a sparkling Izabella Yen), who exudes an energy that’s at once similarly jittery (particularly around the fact that their sibling is already embraced by the Open) but perhaps more confidently so.
Holly, equal parts intrigued and nervy about Sam’s presence – and by the fact their sports bag says ‘S Williams’ – asks if the other try-out needs suncream. Yen also indulges in top-notch non-verbal comedy, insisting they have their own, only to rummage around their bag, increasingly frantic, only to acknowledge they don’t.
That Sam’s subsequent smear of cream is chaotically focused far too thickly on their thighs and literally nowhere else both amuses and disturbs Holly, but an unbreakable bond is already forging.
Therein lies the rub.
Doubles match
Satchell tell us so much about these characters with seemingly so little, acknowledging that theatre is as much a visual medium as it is verbal, with director Julian Dibley-Hall, Yen and McCowage all bringing out what’s between the lines.
Presented by VIMH, the award-winning Ballkids was originally staged in a super-short run at La Mama in 2024, as part of Melbourne Fringe. This month it received an exceedingly well-deserved remount at Melbourne’s Fortyfivedownstairs, all too rare for local indie works, though sadly the run was sadly cut short due to a family emergency.
I sincerely hope it comes back again, because it’s an astonishingly beautiful work and as many folks as possible deserve to see it.
Packing so much into its short, 75-minute duration, Satchell sketches two decades of friendship in great depth. Served up in rapid-fire snapshots, some fleeting, others more fulsome, it requires McCowage and Yen to age up from 13 to 33 – a task they achieve with aplomb, all while retaining their ballkid navy shorts and tee. (Filihia is also on costume design.)
We watch Sam and Holly’s confidence grow, supported by one another, as their finely tuned vocal and physical performance plays catch-up, with assistance from movement director Xanthe Beesley. We’ll witness the pair figuring out who they are and where they want to be – Holly will worry if they’re asexual and if that’s ok, then go onto being bamboozled by Sam’s ex, a nurse, while accompanying their mum to hospital.
This isn’t a flashpoint. The pair have their ups and downs, but never with one another, beyond the occasional clumsy trip-up easily fixed with, ‘I love you, miss you, wish you were here.’
Through family drama, flats, uni, separation, success, depression, illness and marriage, we’re invited. Through lockdown Zoom rooms to a surprise party where the front row will ever so gently get involved, party poppers at the ready, we’re pulled into dual lives circling around one another.
Lighting designer John Collopy’s subtle work guides the transitions from online chatrooms to Italy and the swirling spotlights of a club, where, in a goofily gorgeous moment, the pair suck on lollipops while blissfully high, gyrating suggestively for one another’s amusement to Cher’s Believe at either end of the stage. We sweep our eyes from left to right and back again, as if we’re still centre court while on a dance floor.
Ace work
The combined craft of the show, deceptively simple, supports Satchell’s precise writing. Returning director Dibley-Hall’s understanding of the work is faultless, as are the central performances by McCowage and Yen, who slice and spin through an astonishing match of a lifetime.
When the scoreboard cards are spent, Sam and Holly’s journey brings us full circle back to the Australian Open, now as paid spectators. We’ve become so invested in the pair to the point of great sobbing sighs, joyous cries and even the occasionally rowdy whoop.
That unseen umpire is going to be so cranky, but stuff them, because Ballkids is a theatrical grand slam as gifted as Evonne Goolagong, with Satchell’s triumph deserving of all the trophies.
