Review: Set Me On Fire

Set Me On Fire opened Wednesday night (24th July) at Backdock Arts in Fortitude Valley. It’s a heartfelt drama about the breakdown of a relationship, but a lack of detail and the undefined jumps in chronology made it difficult to get invested in the emotional core of the play.

There were many moments where the script, acting, and staging worked together to create beautiful snapshots of Eden (played by Rachel McMurray) and Noah’s (Mannon Davies) relationship. However, a lot of the dialogue felt quite stilted, and I found myself forgetting multiple times that the characters on stage were supposedly teenagers in a heady first romance.

The set was lovely, and the setup of Backdock Arts means walking through all the knick knacks to get to your seats, which really helps set a reflective mood from the get go. I also think the use of furniture and the staging in general was very well done. Sound transitions between scenes were often quite abrupt though.

The core conflict in Set Me On Fire—the external strain of Noah’s mother on the bond between the two teenagers—is a compelling one, but I felt like I kept being knocked out of the story, unable to suspend disbelief for more than a minute or two at a time.