By dint of being alive, we are all storytellers and can step into the limelight as performers regardless of who we are, our jobs, backgrounds or abilities. A truth that invigorating new show One Night Only, currently playing at the Northcote Town Hall, embraces wholeheartedly.
Co-writer and director Jackson Castiglione has carved an impressive career out of centring ‘ordinary’ people through his abundantly inclusive works with companies including Infinity theatre ensemble and now Rawcus, a culturally invigorating ensemble of artists with diverse minds, bodies and imaginations.
Co-written by Rawcus co-artistic director Morgan Rose, One Night Only sees Rawcus ensemble members Rachel Edward, previously artistic director of One Voice Theatre, Joshua Lynzaat and Paul Matley take to a naked stage. Its coloured tape-marked boards laid bare, the space holds the potential of theatre to take us anywhere without so much as a prop or set piece, beyond a handful of chairs.
Tonight, they’re joined by our protagonist, Phil. Dressed in funky black combat fatigues, boots and a tight pink top with a waistcoat full of pockets, he is not an actor, nor has he read the script. But he has participated in a workshop and answered some intimate questions about his hopes and dreams.
These responses have helped Castiglione and Rose refashion tonight’s adventure for both Phil and us, the audience, following along.
Your mileage will vary, with a new protagonist and, effectively, a new show each night.
One Night Only: generous rhythms
Phil had youthful ambitions to become a professional swimmer, but an early injury closed that pathway. These passions linger, and we soon learn about a moment that should have been joyful, instead becoming one of those niggling itches. You know, the ones that lurk at the back of our brain, ambushing us when we least expect it.
It was his birthday, and Phil’s mum had delivered an unusual and incredibly thoughtful present: an ice sculpture of his favourite Olympian, Ian Thorpe. Only it was a very sunny day, and this remarkable edifice promptly began to melt. All the while, Mayne’s dad scowled and tutted, irked by what he considered money wasted.
We all hold fragments like these that spike deep into our souls. Sometimes it’s when a person we trust has let us down. Others, it’s because we berate ourselves far too much for moments where we feel we didn’t rise to the moment. Like the polite mundanities Phil muttered to his dying grandad when the words just wouldn’t come.
Fleetly leaping through time, back and forward and sideways, One Night Only isn’t just about haunted moments of pain and regret.
Phil is guided around the stage gently by an eminently empathetic Edward, big brotherly Lynzaat and cheerily cheeky Matley. Asked to perform everything from a fully-clothed shower to an awkwardly alone party and a super-meet cute with a sweet guy from Barcelona that Phil met as an international student in Minnesota, there’s an endearing nerviness to his game participation.
One Night Only is the sort of form-melting theatre that scoops us up in its generosity and lilting rhythms like memories aflutter.
One Night Only: shine bright
The idea of neurons firing, as Phil reimagines his own history, is amplified by Richard Vabre’s subtly unmooring lighting design. Traced in luminous lines of light, glinting like sunlight through the veins of a leaf, they pulse on the dark-curtained backdrop of the stage. At one moment, a shimmering starscape lights up above, both the universe at large and like a canopy of trees.
Disco lights will also cast rainbows as Kate Neal and Samuel Kreusler’s thrumming sound design entreats the dance dormant in all of us. Toe tapping may occur, but you won’t have to worry about audience participation, with Phil shouldering the weight of One Night Only.
There’s also talk of Oslo’s Vigeland Sculpture Park, crowded with giants forged in bronze, granite and wrought iron, all crafted by Gustav Vigeland over a life and career memorialised with a self-portrait dwarfed by the rest. But there’s also mercurial mischief as these recollections are deliberately muddled.
Who is remembering what? Do all these dreams belong to Phil? Or are they shared with the ensemble? What of the cameos from protagonists past and present?
One Night Only plays with time and remembrance, subjectivity and the artifice in ways that shore up the best work of an ingeniously creative Rawcus, reminding us all that we are but one star in an incalculable array of constellations.
For tonight, at least, it shines brightest through Phil.
