UK playwright Simon Longman’s bittersweet comedy about two friends from rural Herefordshire, on the cusp of manhood, is smart and thoughtful theatre that resonates – perhaps even more powerfully – 10 years after it was first written.
In this Australian premiere, director Iain Sinclair has brought together two wonderful actors, William McKenna (an exceptional talent, who previously walked from finishing school into playing Scorpius Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and Laurence Boxhall (The Mousetrap), to play Paul and Snowy.
Paul has finished a history degree and is desperately trying to get a job – somewhere, anywhere – and finding his dissertation has left him qualified for precisely nothing. Snowy just wants Paul to go for a walk with him in the countryside and hold off growing up just that little bit longer.
The cavernous fortyfivedownstairs converted warehouse space has been made more intimate by orienting four seating banks inwards, towards the rectangular stage made entirely of fake grass, evoking the rural pastureland of the play’s setting. The audience faces each other, and the staging allows the actors to perform in the round – although sometimes it does mean that it’s hard to catch some of the lines, particularly from McKenna in some of his more softly reflective moments.
At the beginning of the play, a bottle of milk is spotlit – before the light opens on Paul, on the phone to a recruiter, tapping the bottle thoughtlessly with his foot as he talks.
Before long, we find out that Snowy has discovered a cow in a field, lying on its side, clearly very unwell. He ropes an unwilling Paul into helping him attempt to heal it, with medicine he procures (er, steals) from a neighbour.
The shared cow problem becomes the primary point of dramatic tension of the play, which – for all its surface silliness – allows the underlying story of both young men trying to find their way in the world and the progression of their childhood friendship into one tempered by responsibility, fear, trauma and uncertainty, to fill out the emotional landscape.
It’s really great writing – funny, smart and layered – but, at its heart, a simple story, wrought from the tragedy of the hopelessness of two young men who should have the world at their feet, but who find themselves helplessly lost.
It’s a story that made me think deeply about the plight of young people today – and particularly young men. Paul and Snowy are full of life – Snowy just can’t get enough of the simple joy he finds in walking outside, feeling the air in his lungs, and the beauty he finds in nature. His tragedy emerges as the play progresses, as we are given clues about his home life: a mother who is largely absent and a father who has anger issues stemming from his military service. Snowy’s tragedy is one that hits home because it is all too common: sons who are destined to repeat the sad story of their fathers and their fathers before them, turning their bright eyes dark and their hearts hard.
Paul and Snowy are young men, Gen Zers, who have been gifted a world increasingly aware of the damage patriarchy and late-stage capitalism has wrecked on society, yet without the resources or know-how to change it. There seems to be no help coming to either of them, only the looming pressure to “grow up” and take what scant opportunity there is for them.
The sick cow (represented as a bright footlight that turns on from any one of the four corners of the room, just offstage) can be seen as a metaphor for so many things – youth, hope, our society – and, as it lingers on, holding onto life despite literally bleeding out of its eyes, it feels as if its death is representative of the death of something fundamental in both men.
Read: Theatre review: Two of Them, Adelaide Fringe
Milked is a sentimental play, and I don’t mean that pejoratively. It is quietly moving, tightly written theatre, in the hands of a first-rate director and two top-of-their game actors. It will leave its mark long after the lights are up.
Milked by Simon Longman
fortyfivedownstairs
Presented by The Ninth Floor Productions
Director: Iain Sinclair
Assistant Director: Kirsty O’Connor
Lighting Designer: Richard Vabre
Set and Costume Design: Louisa Fitzgerald
Sound Design: Connor Brown
Stage Management: Jessica Smart
Production Manager: Ashleigh Walwyn
Fight Choreographer: Lyndall Grant
Producer: Laurence Boxhall
Cast: Laurence Boxhall, William McKenna, Richard Piper (not performing the night I saw it)
Tickets: $35-$49
Milked will be performed until 10 March 2024.
