Knowing that playwright Jess Sayer wrote this play when she was 21 is both amazing and somewhat disturbing. Her carnal knowledge of what it is like when someone experiences a personal crisis is phenomenal for someone of such a tender age. 

However I quickly forget that this is the case as Fix basically sucks us all in as audience members. Whether you like it or not Sayer takes you for an emotional roller-coaster ride like none other. The beauty of this play is not only the sensitive subject matter but Sayer’s amazing turn of phrase that gives the whole piece its genuine feel, making us buy into the storyline from the get-go. Her ability to write such compelling conversational dialogue is fabulous, no wonder Fix was awarded the 2012 Playmarket Award. [More] 

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Emerging playwright Jess Sayer packs plenty of bitter black humour and verbal violence into FIX, her play centred on a shocking family revelation, which gate-crashes an already dysfunctional family and sends it into a tailspin. Clearly not one to beat around the bush, it’s plain to all after the first few minutes, that Sayer’s end game will not be pretty. 

Choosing to launch her audience straight into the unthinkable during scene one, emotions and dialogue are highly charged and raw from the get-go. There’s little time for exploring or guessing themes and motivations: instead the audience is catapulted head long into a dark comic narrative where normal family boundaries and expected mores have been left well behind. 

Director Sam Snedden unnerves his audience with a recurring sound effect from designer Mel Collocott that evokes images of a distorted heart monitor. Natasha Pearl’s set design in traverse further unsettles us, as we watch the pained and shocked expressions of some of our counterparts on the other side. However, I would highly recommend sitting in the first block as you walk in, or the first row of the opposite block, otherwise you’re in danger of missing some of Nicole Kawana’s great work, as she lies in a broken heap in one corner at the start of the play. Perfectly formed orchids growing in upside down pots hanging on the wall of the daughter’s apartment, is another aspect of Pearl’s design which appeals to me greatly. 

Snedden’s cast give fine individual performances and it’s clear they will grow as an ensemble and feed into each other’s work more and more as the season goes on.

Kawana gives a devastating and affecting organic performance as Grace, a mother broken beyond repair; while as Grace’s mother, Elizabeth Hawthorne is every bit the mad, uncompromising, bitter and brutally honest yet fundamentally flawed Matriarch. Andrew Lang chooses to play Carter, Grace’s husband, as weak and mannered and as such, occasionally comes across as slightly emotionally disconnected from the gravity of his situation.

The fledgling players, Ryan Dulieu as the son and Hanelle Harris as Grace’s daughter, both portray very well that uneven mix of youthful irreverence, naivety, and at times, an overly simplistic world-view. Harris is at her best playing opposite Kawana, as she slowly realises the permanent destruction of her actions, while Dulieu portrays a growing self-awareness and ‘coming of age’ with great believability, playing alongside Hawthorne. 

Sayer’s writing is not for the faint hearted. However, she gives those in the audience who cannot fully commit to the subject matter licence to laugh on a regular basis with her canny knack of slamming black humour into the middle of what would otherwise be unrelenting heavy duty material. She has the ability to be off-hand and flippant, then hard-hitting and punishing, sometimes within the same sentence. The result on opening night is a mix of younger audience members laughing nervously throughout, while others are drawn in and involved throughout.   

FIX is an affecting work from an exciting emerging playwright, which regular theatre audiences are highly likely to appreciate. Yet all enquiring minds should investigate FIX, as it explores the fact that when facing up to unthinkable liaisons, not all family love is unconditional; just as family loyalties are never absolute. 

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