Girl Asleep review: Witty and arresting production with universal appeal

GIRL ASLEEP
Belvoir, December 4. Until December 24
★★★½

Belvoir ends its 2016 season on a family-friendly high with Windmill Theatre Co's production of Matthew Whittet's trippy rites-of-passage story.

About to turn 15, Greta (played by Ellen Steele) stands at the threshold of adulthood. Feeling like she is being pushed and pulled out of her childhood, all she can do is remain still and present the smallest possible target.

Mum Janet (Amber McMahon) and dad Conrad (Whittet) can't help. They have their own issues. Older sister Genevieve (Sheridan Harbridge) lives in the same house but has fenced herself off from the family with help from French pop icon Serge Gainsbourg.

School is a nightmare, though there is a ray of hope in the form of Elliott (Dylan Young), a guileless outlier whose upbeat personality stands in stark contrast to schoolyard alpha-babe Jade and her silent clone Umber.

All comes to a hallucinatory head at Greta's 15th birthday party, the stresses of which force open a gateway into a dream landscape of dark forests prowled by ravenous dogs, an abject monster made of spit and a fearsome Ice Queen.

Directed by Rosemary Myers, Girl Asleep is witty and arresting theatre with Windmill's brand of collaborative synaesthesia much in evidence.

Jonathon Oxlade's carpeted and wallpapered set turns spooky in a blink under Richard Vabre's lights. Luke Smiles' sound cues can make your flesh creep while his mixtape of party music mercilessly tickles Gen X soft spots for ELO and Supertramp. The acting is heightened, agile and humorously self-aware.

The nostalgia for the fading Australian Dream is thick enough to make you wonder what younger, digital-native members in the audience make of the world Windmill presents here but most, I think, will be seduced by the deftness of its making. Girl Asleep is aimed at a teenaged audience but the appeal of this eccentrically funny, unsettling and optimistic tale is pretty much universal. And even if you've seen the film, it is fascinating to see what is lost and gained in a tale's translation from stage to screen.