This is one of the best crop of Young & Hungry shows in its 16 year history – I reckon I can say that having seen almost every single one.

They get the tick of authenticity from Adam (15) in terms of language, technology references, set, characterization and humour. The hard-bitten veteran critic, meanwhile, finds all three commissions to be absorbing, topical, surprising and beautifully performed and produced.

Song of Four by Sarah Delahunty is set in the near future, when a dodgy and highly addictive food additive has turned the human race infertile. The corporate that’s behind the additive invests in the ultimate PR exercise, also part reality TV show, to save the human race by finding young breeding stock; fertile youth who haven’t eaten the contaminated food over the previous five years.

The four teenagers Vicki (Miranda Webster), Ben (Oliver Humphries), Rupert (Taylor Frost) and Cassandra (Ana Harris) are far from compliant, but the stakes are impossibly high – if they don’t agree to repopulate the planet, will the reign of homo sapiens come to an end?

It’s not geeky science fiction so just go with the flow.

Remember that old “sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you” adage? It was rubbish then and in these days of cellphones and YouTube, it’s even less relevant now.

In Sick! Antonia Bale and Ban Abdul take on bullying. Female bullying which is said to be often crueler than boys – more psychological, and while bruises heal, words do not. The script is full of pop culture references, and director Paul McLaughlin’s “flock of bitches” are unflinching in their roles, which involve some extreme language.

Nalini (Anisha Parshottam) is desperate to be part of the cool group, with the anorexic Fleur (Emma Haywood) and hard case T (Acushla-Tara Sutton) but knows full well that it is “not good to stand out”. New girl Kilmineny (very confidently acted by Lauren Gibson) stands up to the queen bully (Alice Varcoe) and helps Nalini out of the role of victim. Revenge is sweet but can have consequences.

“Change is OK” – but it’s not without heartache. Eli Kent (The Intricate Art of Actually Caring) has based Thinning on his own memories of how it felt to finish secondary school and have to make a decision on what do to with your life.

Here six close school friends go apple thinning in Nelson straight out of school. There are crushes, fulfilled and unrequited, to be negotiated before all six head off.

Some have wanderlust, some are under pressure to go to university or into work straight away, some are dealing with unresolved issues in their personal lives, and there is anticipation and fear in equal measure.

Rachel Lenart’s direction is gorgeous, from the backlit mini-dramas to having her brilliant cast: Nicola Morine, Clare Wilson, Zoe Towers, Lewis McLeod, Oliver MacIndoe, Jack Shadbolt and Stevie Wildewood, create characters we take into our hearts despite the fact we know them for just an hour.

Their movements are fast and fluid and they use and move the minimal set to full effect.

Song of Four, Sick! and Thinning are a great combo, short enough to see them all in one night.
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The crop of plays in this years Young and Hungry season, currently playing at BATS Theatre are as different and divergent as in other year although sex, aggression and manipulation for power do feature prominently in all three.

The first play of the evening, Song of Four, written and directed by Sarah Delahunty is a futuristic sci-fi story. New Zealand has become the last bastion of hope for saving the world after the rest of the world’s population has been made infertile by some highly addictive food additive. This is because four young people have been found in NZ unaffected by the additive so are still able to reproduce.

They are rounded up and forced into isolation in the hope that they will copulate and begin a new breeding programme. This is being sponsored by Future Foods, who caused the problem and whose CEO is out for fame and fortune when her company is seen to have saved the planet. But the fertile four rebel and escape and become the four fugitives. 

While the story line is somewhat improbable and at times puerile the concept has merit and although the characters remain relatively two-dimensional the execution of the story is slick and face paced under Sarah Delahunty’s direction.

Gabrielle Berran makes much of her part as the CEO Genevieve stopping at nothing for power and fortune and the fertile four – Rupert (Taylor Frost), Vicki (Miranda Webster), Ben (Oliver Humphries) and Cassandra (Ana Harris) – do an excellent job in providing real tension through their aggressive interactions.

The evening’s second play, Sick! by Antonia Bale and Ban Abdul, is as topical as you can get. Class room clichés are common place in schools and maintaining the pecking order of those in them and the desperation of others trying to get in is the essence of this raw and in-your-face play.  

Nalini (Anisha Parshottam) is trying to gate crash Fleur (Emma Haywood), Hannah (Alice Varcoe) and T’s (Acushla-Tara Sutton) group with the help of new girl Kilmineny (Lauren Gibson). But at the Halloween party, when Nalini thinks she has finally been accepted Kilminery turns the tables and what appears to be a treat is in fact a trick. 

The dialogue is in the idiom of today’s youth, conveying with harsh reality the bullying and bitchiness that goes on in these groups, where verbal abuse is rampant and sex, racism and everything else imaginable is used as a weapon.. 

Under Paul McLaughlin strong direction all five girls perform with energy and conviction, appearing to relish their parts, each giving as good as they got, although at times audibility suffers at the hands of the racy pace of the lines.

The third play of the evening, Thinning by Eli Kent, is much more subtle and multilayered than the others and under Rachel Lenart’s astute direction the actors create an endearing and engaging piece of theatre. 

A group of school leaver’s travel to Nelson for the summer apple picking – thinning is taking out small apples so that the bigger ones can grow faster – before they each go their own way into the future. Lily (Clare Wilson) is going overseas, Billie (Zoe Towers) who has no real plans, Adam (Lewis McLeod) is going to have a break between school and going to varsity, Troy (Oliver MacIndoe) is going into the army, Isaac (Jack Shadbolt) covers his insecurities of having no direction or purpose by lambasting those who do, and Fraggle (Nicola Morine) hits on the supervisor Mel (Stevie Wildewood). 

Although not a lot happens story-wise, the many scenes are played out with slick precision and the honesty of the performances as the characters argue, cajole, commiserate are real, believable and heartfelt, making this a most satisfying ending to a great evening of theatre.

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Maybe it’s because Young & Hungry in Wellington has turned 16 that sex is the common element in this year’s trio of very different plays. And there is more to them all than that.

In writer/director Sarah Delahunty’s sci-fi satire Song of Four, the entire population of the planet has become infertile thanks to a highly addictive food additive called Future Gain, made and marketed by the global company Future Foods which is now bankrolling the highly publicised search for young adults somehow untainted and able to breed.

Genevieve (Gabrielle Berran) is the driven corporate face of FF, obsessed with power, image and the bottom line. Her arrogant interventions almost guarantee an opposite outcome to the one she’s demanding.

Scientist and reality TV star Dr Albert Christin (Alex Rabina), who heads the re-fertilising programme, turns out to have been in a relationship with Rachel (Charlotte Pleasants), the psychologist he has recommended to join the team. He wants reconciliation and, despite discovering him at the helm, she has her own strong and personal reasons for participating.

Intercut with this intriguingly revealed storyline is the quest to find those who will come to be dubbed The Fertile Four.

From a supposedly privileged upper-class British background, boarding school-raised Rupert (Taylor Frost) has fled so-called humanity and is found in the Himalayas, his only companion a book called Understanding Happiness: silence of the souls.

American teenager Vicki (Miranda Webster) suddenly wakes from a five-year coma, as angry and stroppy as when she went into it. A ‘disruptive influence’, she seems to be an impossible challenge.

Ben (Oliver Humphries) is the only survivor of a plane crash and is riddled with guilt over that.

Cassandra (Ana Harris) – who sings, beautifully, her own version of ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’ – was taken into a remote valley by her cancer-riddled mother, intent on protecting her daughter from all the toxins.

Now they are incarcerated in a monitored cell and expected to bond and procreate. Yeah right.

Further intercut with ‘Tomorrow’s News Today’ news-breaks (Newsreader, Oscar Shaw), on the spot reportage (Alice Pearce ) and a range of interviews (variously performed by Hannah Hollamey, Adam Goodall and Shaw) the story whips along at a cracking pace, negotiating well-wrought obstacles to reach an outcome that offers a small gleam of hope for humanity.

The most fanciful part, even accepting the legitimate excesses of sci-fi satire, is that something so universally addictive as Future Gain has somehow been controlled, and its sudden and successful removal from all food has not caused massive socio-health problems world-wide. But that’s a dimension to be explored in the multinational feature film or TV miniseries into which the premise deserves to evolve, its central question being: does the human species deserve to survive at all, and if so, according to what value systems?  

Antonia Bale and Ban Abdul’s Sick! – directed by Paul McLaughlin – dramatises the bitchiness and bullying that rules the lives of five senior high school students. In the quest for power, status or simple acceptance, sex-related banter is a key weapon of verbal and emotional abuse.

Supposedly ‘experienced’ Hannah (Alice Varcoe) queens it over rapping, tagging ‘T’ (Acushla-Tara Sutton) and wannabe model Fleur (Emma Haywood), and all three prey on “Nit Girl” Nalini (Anisha Parshottam), who feels her best defence will be to be accepted into their clique. 

An alternative appears in the person of new girl Kilmineny (Lauren Gibson), who plays cello, is apparently from England and is more than equal to the tormenting triumvirate.

All builds towards Hannah’s Halloween party, to which Kilmineny wins entry for herself and a mysterious friend by beating T at chess. En-route Kilmineny ingratiates herself with Nalini’s mother – impressively doubled by Sutton – and acquires some valuable information.

Amid the unrelenting pressure, the flipside glimpses we get as to why each girl behaves as she does, are the payoff for having to endure this frighteningly true evocation of such bullying. But they are objective insights and have yet to be delivered in moments that generate empathy.

The ending leaves us with something good to chew on: do we cheer at the hurters getting hurt or despair at the reality that like is fought with like and the cycle is self-perpetuating?

In the relatively lyrical, gentle and pastoral Thinning by Eli Kent, directed by Rachel Lenart, half a dozen school leavers – three guys; three girls – go apple-picking in Nelson as they face radical changes in their lives. The play is named for the practice of removing smaller apples to allow the larger ones to grow to their full potential.

Boxes, slatted panels and dangling apples allow the action to move fluidly from minibus to boys’ and girls’ quarters then out to the orchard and on to the road. And shadow play on the translucent back-hangings (there for all three plays) suggests further action peripheral to the interactions we are witness to.  

Lily (Clare Wilson) is planning to broaden her horizons overseas, alone, to the quiet dismay of Adam (Lewis McLeod) who has known her since they were five, doesn’t respond well to change and is not ready to fulfil his well-off parents’ assumption he’ll go to uni, so he’ll probably do a ‘gap year’ by default.

Troy (Oliver MacIndoe) has responded to pressure from his parents to ensure his life has direction by signing up to an eight-year plan with the army that will see him through university too. Both he and fun-loving Billie (Zoe Towers) regard their passionate encounter at a recent party as a drunken mistake but it’s not as simple as that. But Billie, who likes to dance, has all sorts of things on her ‘to do’ list. Besides, Troy has ‘wanted’ Lily since third form.

Isaac (Jack Shadbolt) has no direction and deflects attention by sending up those who do. His joking about also harbours a deep fear he has in relation to his father … He’s the one with the guitar too, and a good singing voice (for ‘Dead Flowers’ by Jagger and Richards). And they all do a fine choral rendition of ‘Pick a Bale of Cotton’.

It’s Fraggle (Nicola Morine) – real name, Diana (of the golden apples?) – who strikes up a friendship with Mel (Stevie Wildewood), their 26 year-old supervisor with a degree in horticulture, who is also moving on. And this relationship epitomes the many subtle subtextual insights Kent threads through the weft and warp of his beautifully woven tale.

Especially impressive is the confidence Lenart and her cast show in allowing silence and stillness to play a significant role in drawing us into these unremarkable yet very true and intensely felt lives at their significant turning points.

All the design and technical elements are impressively delivered under the guidance of professional mentors (click on the title above for the full credit listings).

The standard in every department seems especially high this year with some familiar faces consolidating their craft alongside the new young talents having a go. Whatever they go on to do in their own lives, we are all the richer for this experience.

I heartily recommend them all.
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Note: Unlike last year, when the same three plays were differently produced in Wellington and Auckland, this year there is only one play – Thinning – common to both Young & Hungry seasons. The Auckland season is reviewed here. 

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