NAF: AIRTALK

A show that will ask you to think outside the box in order to make sense of the boxes we have put ourselves in today’s world, an enjoyable and thoughtful show. (Review by Shika Budhoo)

Running on the National Arts Festival’s Fringe, Airtalk operates on the idea of ‘airtalk’, much like the ‘airtime’ we get for prepaid cellphone calls. The idea being that what if one day we had to operate on this system of monitoring speech and selective speech because speech becomes a commodity? The play works within the Poor Theatre and Community Theatre framework, with minimal props and costume, a bare stage in which the words, the performance and the message communicated takes priority. Airtalk has a cast of 13, with an accompanying pianist, adding great texture to the songs and some dialogue.

The ideas explored in this show were particularly interesting to me. I love the presentation of the possible concept of an ATM marriage machine that can produce marriage certificates at a price and the press of some buttons. The idea of body parts having a mind of their own - and manipulating the body they belongs to - is an interesting commentary on choices. What I found hilarious was the idea of buying a baby from a store, and exploring the difference between buying babies from Pep or Woolworths.

Highlighted is the need to talk sense, rather than nonsense, because as they say in the play ‘there is a lot of air in our talking’. The show proceeds to show various scenarios of a world that was, is and shall be. A world were nothing normal makes sense, and the only sense is what you make of it. The scenarios all depict a strangeness to the world we know, a unknown in the known. I enjoyed the surprising comedy moments that the performers brought to the piece. Their energy was high and the enthusiasm of the performers evident from start to finish.

In its genre, Airtalk successfully communicated love, loss, confusion, life, death, danger and forward thinking. A play that will ask you to think outside the box in order to make sense of the boxes we have put ourselves in, in our contemporary life. Airtalk is running at the Drill Hall during festival. – Shika Budhoo