If you think you remember what it was like to be sixteen, the genre-defying Teenage Riot will make you think again. Created by Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed, this is the second part of a trilogy tackling the teenage experience. All the familiar issues are here – body anxiety, rampant sexuality, the pleasures and pitfalls of pop culture, frustration at lack of personal agency, the hypocrisy of parents and society – but with a sense of conviction and furious humour that renders them freshly urgent.
Most of the action takes place inside a giant box onstage, decorated inside with crude collage and graffiti. Audience access to the interior is provided by a hand-held camera operated by the cast and projected onto the outside surface. This box serves multiple symbolic functions: it’s the legendary ‘teenagers’ bedroom’, that space of escape, anarchy and fantasy where anything is possible, but it’s also the box that older people use to cage teenagers with their lazy definitions and arbitrary rules. The fact that most of the action is mediated by a screen also reflects the media culture that saturates the characters’ world, especially in the sexualisation of girls and the extreme violence of computer games.
It’s easy at first to dismiss the characters’ complaints as bratty narcissism, until they turn this criticism on themselves with a hilarious group piece skewering their own self-pity. Some of the more experimental, purely physical sections go on for too long or feel too much like the pretentious outcome of a gestalt theatre workshop, but in retrospect it’s possible to see how these contribute to the overall shape and impact of the show.
By turns unsettling, shocking, deliberately moronic, blackly funny, abrasively satirical, deeply sad and surprisingly tender, Teenage Riot is definitely not theatre for the faint-hearted. But for those with the stomach for some confronting imagery and uncomfortable truths, this is ultimately an exhilarating experience that will linger in your mind long afterward.
Rating: 3 1/2 stars
Teenage Riot
16 October 2013
Melbourne Festival
Director: Alexander Devriendt
Writers: Joeri Smet & Alexander Devriendt
Dramaturgy: Mieke Versyp
Scenography: Sophie De Somere in collaboration with Helmut Van den Meersschaut
Lighting Design Jeroen Doise
Music: Korneel Moreaux
Technique: Tour Geert Willems, Jan Vangesselen
Performers: Edouard Devriendt, Alice Dooreman, Jorge De Geest, Ian Ghysels, Marthe Hoet, Nanouk Lemmerling, Elies Van Renterghem, Anna Jakoba Ryckewaert
Arts Centre Melbourne (Fairfax Studio)
15 – 18 October
Image: Production still from Teenage Riot, courtesy of Melbourne Festival Official Website
