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The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Trophy Boys review – gripping and entertaining play tackles urgent issues
An Australian playwright's debut work receiving international transfers to great acclaim and extended runs is extremely rare; that it's happened twice in 12 months, along with two other starry international productions of local works, is extraordinary. Right now, the Australian voice has an increased currency on international stages – and it's our stories of power, privilege, gender and identity that are making waves. First, there's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Kip Williams' dazzling Oscar Wilde adaptation, remounted for a Tony and Olivier award winning international run starring Sarah Snook. Then there's Prima Facie, Suzie Miller's searing one-hander about a cutthroat lawyer who experiences the justice system as a victim after a sexual assault, with an international production starring Jodie Comer that was also heavily awarded (a film adaptation is in the works, starring Cynthia Erivo). Then there's Counting and Cracking, S. Shakthidharan's breath-taking 2019 debut, a family epic that played at New York's Public Theater in 2024. Now, there's Trophy Boys. Written by actor and playwright Emmanuelle Mattana (Mustangs FC) when they were 21, the play debuted in 2022 at Melbourne's La Mama and has since had sell-out local seasons as well as a twice-extended off-Broadway run under the helm of Tony Award-winner Danya Taymor. This month, the original Australian production, directed by Marni Mount, returns for an east coast victory lap, starting at Sydney's Carriageworks. Jared (Fran Sweeney-Nash), David (Leigh Lule), Scott (Gaby Seow), and Owen (Myfanwy Hocking) are the Year 12 debating team at Imperium, an elite private school. When we meet them, their trophy-deciding bout is just an hour away, and they're already cocky about their success. They're up against their sister school and clearly don't consider them competition until the debate topic and position is revealed: that feminism has failed women; affirmative. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning The boys – played here and in every production by actors who are non-binary or women – are horrified. They're feminists, they proclaim. They love women. Arguing the point will get them cancelled and might even rule out any future chances of becoming prime minister. Owen, the one dreaming the hardest of Kirribilli House, even suggests that they forfeit – largely for the optics. But the boys' thirst for the win trumps their desire to be seen as good, so they start scheming. Could they say feminism has failed women because it isn't intersectional? Could they say that getting women into CEO roles hasn't done anything to address broader gender inequities? They brainstorm, they sweat, they spray a lot of Lynx Africa – and, at one point, they even perform an energetic dance break. Then the play pulls off a bait-and-switch: a new piece of information, that shouldn't be spoiled, reaches their closed-door prep session and gives all the rhetoric being flung around the room a sudden urgency. The play is a sprint at about 70 minutes, and after the twist, it takes off: you watch personal gain weighed against women's interests in real time, as the group uses its debate skills, subtly different stores of acquired power, and their awareness of larger social dynamics to reveal the gulf between all that box-ticking politically correct talk about feminism and how many men actually treat women. The show is adjusted to fit the region in which it's being performed: the boys off-Broadway are American, but here at Carriageworks, in local accent, they are instantly and identifiably Australian, of the same social cohort of male students who created and circulated graphic deepfake images of girls from their school, or ranked girls' looks for sport. The play is gripping and entertaining, but not as incisive as it might be. Early scenes run on necessary tonal shifts: it starts with camp choreography and quick laughs that lull us into a sense of comfort to be shattered later, but the narrative throughline isn't drawn tightly enough by Mattana, or facilitated clearly enough by Mount, to make the piece feel cohesive. The performances alternate between drag-king-satire and chilling realism in ways that aren't always clear. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion In scenes where the boys race to construct their debate arguments, the dialogue is more didactic than character-driven; a little more workshopping would probably see those talking points tied more deeply to character and to the group's interesting and occasionally under-tapped personal dynamics. For example, there's a fascinating social hierarchy in the group that only gets a glancing look-in before the plot twist; if we knew the group dynamics better in the first half, the second would be even more powerful. But it's an exciting play: bursting with urgency, laced with keenly observed behaviours filtered through a queer lens, it speaks directly to issues that are choking schools, universities and social groups right now. While its dramaturgical build isn't as sharp as its dialogue, it's the kind of play that has you leaning forward in your seat. I attended a Friday night performance, sitting among a diverse audience that skewed young, and felt a current of close attention. Leaving the venue, I overheard lively, thoughtful conversation about the play. Trophy Boys starts a conversation; the audience was continuing it. That's a valuable export. Trophy Boys is playing at Carriageworks, Sydney, until 3 August; Riverside, Parramatta (6-9 August); Arts Centre Melbourne (12-24 August); Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane (25-30 August)
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Rosamund Pike looks quirky in a pair of hot pink leather gloves at the press night of her new play Inter Alia
Rosamund Pike put on a quirky display as she celebrated her performance in Inter Alia at a press night after party at The National Theatre in London on Wednesday. The actress, 46, who stars as a High Court judge in the play, wore a floral two piece set consisting of a crop top and midi skirt. She teamed her outfit with a pair of black stiletto heels and opted for a subtle makeup look. Inter Alia, by Australian writer Suzie Miller, comes from the team behind Prima Facie, which starred Jodie Comer. It follows Rosamund's character Jessica Wheatle who is working to change the legal system while juggling her home life as a wife and a mother. Her husband Michael is portrayed by Jamie Glover while Jasper Talbot stars as their son Harry. It comes after revealed she was punched in the face and had her mobile phone snatched violently out of her hand by a 'mugger' on a bicycle. The Gone Girl star spoke of her '15 minutes' of hell when she was targeted by the thief in 2006 as she spoke to her mother while walking down the street. She said she screamed in terror and her mum, Caroline Friend, was left fearing the worst until she was able to call her back on another phone. Rosamund, who starred with Piers Brosnan in Die Another Day (2002), told Magic Radio: 'I was on the phone to my mother — on a mobile phone walking along a road — and I was mugged. 'The phone was snatched so all she heard was me scream and a thud and the phone went dead.' She said the 'mugger' was a kid who sped past her on a bicycle and punched her down the side of her cheek. Rosamund, who was born in London, said the thief took her mobile phone and left her with a bruise on her face. The actress is one of a number of celebs who have fallen victim to the terrifying trend of phone snatching that is sweeping London. Former tennis star Annabel Croft said her mobile was stolen 'clean out of her hands' while she waited for a taxi outside London King's Cross station in June last year. Ms Croft wrote on Instagram: 'I just wanted to warn people who are on their own in London. I just got mugged waiting for a taxi outside King's Cross St Pancreas. 'The man was riding a bike and wearing a black balaclava. He rode straight at me and took my phone clean out of my hands. 'He rode away with it but luckily dropped my phone so I got it back. Terrifying!'
Telegraph
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Rosamund Pike is riveting in theatre's spin on Adolescence
Boasting the triumphant return of Rosamund Pike to the stage after 15 screen-dominated years away, Inter Alia is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Prima Facie from Australian lawyer-turned-playwright Suzie Miller. That phenomenal one-woman play about sexual assault, consent and the failings of the criminal justice system was an award-winning tour de force for Jodie Comer in the West End in 2022 and then on Broadway. Inter Alia has a lot in common with its agenda-setting predecessor: aside from its title being another Latin legal term and Justin Martin directing again, the play revisits the emotive subject of sexual offences and how the law works, only this time involving teenagers. It grips, too, and is gut-wrenching, but in comparison feels sketchier. Comer played a top-flight barrister whose confidence in herself and the law takes a battering following a sexual assault that finds her experiencing the legal system from the other side. Here, Pike plays Jessica, a high-powered Crown Court judge whose desire to see better treatment and outcomes for female sexual assault victims runs up against the mother of all agonised upsets on the home-front, when her own 18-year-old son stands accused of rape following a boozy party. Once again, the piece calls for a transfixing, shape-shifting performance from its star, and the hurtling 105-minute action showcases Pike's theatrical bravura. She can hold a stage as vast as the Lyttelton with immaculate assurance. But where Prima Facie was a full-on monologue, here we also see the characters closest to Jessica – her husband Michael (Jamie Glover), a successful, competitive silk himself, and shy, troubled son Harry (Jasper Talbot). That enlargement of scope is a mixed blessing. Where the comparable Netflix hit Adolescence got under the skin of 'toxic masculinity', what comes across here is a palpable sense of maternal helplessness but also a lack of insight into what's really going on with her child. When we first see Pike's heroine, she rises up on a platform in wig and gowns, with a mic in hand, striking the attitude of a rock star, the swaggering, tongue-in-cheek touch augmented by accompaniment on guitar and drums (a skulking Glover and Talbot). That poise – evidence of her courtroom command – comes under pressure from her multi-tasking requirements as a mother. Diving in and out of different clothes, Pike is coolly efficient, wryly confiding and forever pulled in different directions (Miriam Buether's set conjuring legal realm, affluent kitchen and darker hinterlands). Her hurried lifestyle – with darting evocations of Harry's childhood too as she broods over past parenting – can seem entertainingly frenetic but the overload has had a cost; the online world has become Harry's surrogate shaping influence. Glover and Talbot bring a brusque reticence and contrasting despair to their roles but the script positions them almost as peripheral. As more information is revealed, our sympathies shift – and that takes in Jessica herself; caught between knowing how the legal system works, how it should work, and her own protective instincts as a mother. She's sent into a freefall, anguish and self-recrimination memorably etched on Pike's face. I suspect a lot of parents will identify with the scenario: the peril of complacency, the dread of catastrophe. And if the evening stirs debate about how one generation guides the next, how men should behave and how the culture can foster respect, safety and justice for women, it's all to the good. Whether it will have the same impact of Prima Facie is open to question. Until Sept 13. Tickets:
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Inter Alia review – Rosamund Pike rules in searing legal drama from Prima Facie team
Three years ago, playwright Suzie Miller gave Jodie Comer a career-defining role with her West End debut in Prima Facie. Rosamund Pike's stage CV already has plenty of highs, from Hitchcock Blonde to Hedda Gabler, but her performance in Miller's follow-up play has been keenly anticipated, given that it reunites some of the team that made Prima Facie a smash hit. This is an almost deliberate counterpoint to Prima Facie, in which a defence lawyer, expert at playing the system to demolish rape charges against her clients, is undone by her own experience of sexual assault. Miller wanted to highlight how poorly the law serves victims, and Inter Alia presents the same issue from the flipside with a female judge, determined to make the system more just, whose world is upended by an accusation close to home. Jessica Parks (Pike) is the kind of multi-skilled woman you just know the legal system needs more of. She brings humanity and compassion to her courtroom, employing her soft skills to protect vulnerable witnesses while cutting down cocky male counsel with a tone that can 'cut through tendons and bone'. But she's not just a crown court judge, she's also an expert juggler, in the way that high-achieving women so often need to be. Her career exists 'inter alia' – as Miller puts it, in the cracks of everyone else's lives. All the hallmarks of Justin Martin's pulsating direction are here, from the onstage guitar and drums ratcheting up the tension to Pike's physical, occasionally anarchic performance. She is in constant motion, wearing many different outfits – karaoke queen, sexy wife, Marigold-clad dishwasher and laundrywoman – and Miriam Buether's set combines with Natasha Chivers' lighting to capture the dissolution of boundaries between the courtroom and home. 'You live like you work, everything done at speed,' a friend tells Jessica: it may sound like a badge of honour, but it's also an indictment of the society that requires it of her. The term 'emotional labour' is never used but is certainly present: while Jessica prepares a dinner party for 16, her husband Michael's only responsibility is the cheese. He has it delivered. This is not a solo show: Jamie Glover provides the marital tension as Michael, who has been beaten by his wife to both KC and the bench. Harry, their 18-year-old son, mooches about almost silently, alternating, in Jasper Talbot's portrayal, between sensitive, sulky and comically drunk. But what begin as peripheral figures – to be organised, loved and cared for – are given vital voices of their own as the narrative progresses. Jessica remains the moral and emotional centre: her tragedy unfolds like that of an Ibsen protagonist failed by those around them. As a mother she has done the best she can, both to shield her child from bullies and to raise him true to her feminist beliefs (there's a very funny scene where they have the porn talk). But she can't protect him from social media, or peer pressure or, in the end, himself. As a lawyer turned playwright, Miller's work has an ingrained advocacy – for years, she has used it to argue for social and legal justice. And one of the rare objections to Prima Facie's script – the way its didactic dialogue impinged on the drama – could be upheld here. Determined to give every issue and angle a fair hearing, Inter Alia sheds its nimbleness and wit as it grapples with the serious stuff in its later stages, meaning the pace slows even as the confrontations become more heightened. As the set darkens and Jessica becomes literally lost in the woods, there's a sense that we're all groping, a little blindly, towards an ending, even Pike. But the production remains a searing commentary on the justice system and a purposefully uncomfortable insight into contemporary parenting. Prima Facie remains as relevant as it was three years ago – a UK tour, with a returning Comer, has been announced for 2026 – and this is an ideal companion piece. At the Lyttelton theatre, National Theatre, London, until 13 September. In cinemas from 4 September.
Forbes
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Horror Thriller '28 Years Later' Gets Streaming Date, Report Says
"28 Years Later" partial poster featuring Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes. Danny Boyle's horror thriller 28 Years Later, starring Ralph Fiennes, Jodi Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is reportedly coming soon to digital streaming. Directed by Boyle and written by the filmmaker's original 28 Days Later screenwriter Alex Garland, 28 Years Later was released in theaters on June 20. The official summary for 28 Years Later reads, 'It's been almost three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory, and now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway. 'When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well.' Rated R, 28 Years Later is expected to debut on digital streaming via premium video on demand on Tuesday, July 29, according to When to Stream. While the streaming tracker is typically accurate with its PVOD reports, When to Stream noted that the film's studio, Sony Pictures Entertainment, has not announced or confirmed the release date and it is subject to change. When 28 Years Later arrives on PVOD, it will be available to purchase for $24.99, according to a pre-order listing on Prime Video. Since PVOD rentals are typically $5 less than purchase prices, viewers can expect to rent 28 Years Later for $19.99 for 48 hours. In addition to Prime Video, 28 Years Later will be available for purchase or rent on a variety of digital platforms, including Apple TV, Fandango at Home and YouTube. How Was '28 Years Later' Received By Audiences And Critics? As of Wednesday, 28 Years Later has earned $69.1 million domestically and $76.5 million internationally for a worldwide box office tally of $145.6 million. The film had a production budget of $60 million before prints and advertising costs, according to The Numbers. The horror thriller earned an 88% 'fresh' rating from Rotten Tomatoes critics based on 360 reviews. The RT Critics Consensus for the film reads, '28 Years Later taps into contemporary anxieties with the ferocious urgency of someone infected with Rage Virus, delivering a haunting and visceral thrill ride that defies expectations.' Also, 28 Years Later had a 63% 'fresh' score on RT's Popcornmeter based on 5,000-plus verified user ratings. The audience summary for the film on RT reads, 'An undeniably ambitious installment, 28 Years Later may disappoint fans seeking the original's iconic raw horror, but most will be moved by the emotional depth brought to life by its talented cast.' Executive produced by 28 Days Later star Cillian Murphy and also starring Alfie Williams and Jack O'Connell, 28 Years Later is expected to arrive on PVOD on July 29.
