Review: Getting pushed out of THE NEST is not easy, especially if you’re not a bird!
Review by Karlo Bran
A nice take on matters too often left alone and not spoken, ‘Leaving the Nest’ is a light tale of growing up and the things that stop us from doing so.
Andrew is a young man, with a seemingly normal life. He lives alone and he’s not getting enough shifts at the store where he works, so he’s behind on his rent. The landlords have sent potential roomies to view the spare room, but none of them will do. Things then turn a little dire, at least in Andrew’s mind, when an old school-mate comes to inspect and decides to stay.
The man behind the story is Tremayne Gordon. Charismatic and easy to connect with, he lets us see Andrew, the main character, in a ‘matter of fact’ sort of way. His performance is worth noting, with good use of the space and movements that beautifully complement the character and the anxious episodes in his plain, yet chaotic life. Fair to say Gordon also moves between characters very well and displays reasonable flexibility in changing from the hypervigilant sort that Andrew is, to the deep voiced ‘winnie blues’ smoking, post apocalypse surviving, shop customer!
The staging for the show is very basic with black curtains all around, a seat at the back and Gordon dressed in black shorts, shoes and hoodie. It really didn’t need much else and the space itself was the right approach to tackle a one man show of this sort. The down-side however, mostly to performance spaces like this sort and to festivals like ‘anywhere’ is that the unexpected can happen. It was a little disappointing that some of Gordon’s performance was completely taken out by the loud R’n’B music playing upstairs and by the hackling of what sounded like a hens night on steroids. But the nature of a festival like the Anywhere Festival is that it ‘is’ about the unexpected, performance that is anywhere may result in anything happening.
“Leaving the Nest’ was a one night only event, which was also little sad as it did feel like the show was only warming up. I do feel like chance has been cut short, it would have been nice for Andrew to have had another go. To its advantage, the story does modestly bring up a learning note, perhaps the essence of what the character is about will stay with the audience by explaining that trauma will affect people differently, no matter how small or significant, it can stay with us, without us personally knowing or understanding what it is.
