Fourteen | shake & stir theatre co.
This show is about a young Queer person attending a Catholic high school in Central Queensland. I was once a young Queer person who attended a Catholic high school in Central Queensland. Based on this alone you’d think Shake n Stir’s Fourteen seems like it was built for me and for my fourteen-year-old self. This production more so reads as being intended for the inner-city cishet audience, however.
To be fair, this line might have been better walked if the script was dramaturgically sturdier by one or two drafts. There is so much material included that is ripe for nuanced and fresh commentary about the Queer experience, especially in rural communities, but it is so often sprinkled over the top of a single scene and never interrogated again. This is not to say every narrative thread must be tied off neatly but when so few of them are, it begins to make the work feel incohesive.
The most prominent of these blunders is the criminal under-utilisation of Johnathon (the out kid at the all-boys school for those playing along at home). He is initially introduced to the audience as a foil to Shannon’s shame and internalised homophobia. He is witty and unbothered and goes toe-to-toe with the bullies who plague Shannon for the entirety of the show. Due to this diametric opposition myself and my plus one were under the impression that Johnathon would become key to Shannon’s growth as a character. We thought that he would directly or indirectly model modes of escape and survival in this environment that seeks both of their destruction. What we get instead is a campy regurgitation of every stereotype associated with the way gay men speak, walk, and dress who is utilised only for the purposes of comic relief.
The show wants so badly to be about Shannon’s relationship with his mother and with the other Queer people in his community and so much of that magic gets lost in exposition and dance sequences and campy vignettes that, yes, add to the vibe, but do not drive the plot forward. In my opinion, this show needs to either be made longer so that it can accommodate the social intricacies of the events it portrays or those intricacies need to be unravelled slightly (and a dance sequence or two removed) in order to accommodate the work’s shorter runtime. Honestly, the latter is preferable for if this show were any longer I’d be questioning why it wasn’t adapted to television instead.
Fourteen like its protagonist holds such great promise, but unlike Shannon the work is unable to overcome the obstacles it faced during its development. Narratively crowded and bloated with the spectacle of its production design, this work swallows the nuance and heart of its cast’s otherwise wonderful performances. Every member of the cast shines in their role(s) to the point I put aside my gripes about people in their 30s playing teenagers. Conor Leach and Karen Crone in their roles as Shannon Molloy and his mother in particular capture the essence of the show and operate as its beating heart. Both give resplendent performances.
Fourteen is fun and it is good for a #itgetsbetter play. I would not recommend you go out of your way to see it when Heartstopper is a show you can watch on Netflix for much cheaper than the $80 ticket price and one that is much more joyful and cohesive, however. Also, I heard the f-slur more times during this 100-minute show than I have in my entire life. Please, refer to the first two sentences of this review if we are confused about why that might be pertinent.
