Devonport Theatre Company Presents Keeper - by Steven Snell

Devonport Theatre Company and The PumpHouse Theatre announce the New Zealand Premiere of Keeper – a play by Steven Snell.

In Steven Snell’s award-winning drama Kevin and Neil are on the run from the police after being at a party where someone has been killed. They visit Kevin’s brother Russel at the factory where he is working and ask him for help, yet they claim they are innocent. Russel is fresh out of jail and keen to stay on the straight and narrow but his loyalty to his brother has him torn.

Russel – Rob Owens

Kevin – Pete Coates

Neil – Tom Easden

When Russ finds out that Kevin and Neil are somehow mixed up in an earlier crime, the disappearance of a girl, the three find their ties to each other disintegrating. This tense one-act play examines the dark and disturbing places of the male psyche in the context of an all too familiar scenario – the sort of ugly societal reality that’s regularly reported on prime time news – played live on stage you can’t just change the channel.

Snell is a young Australian playwright and although Keeper is set in Melbourne, it could just as easily be transposed into any urban environment.

He was inspired to write Keeper after being haunted for years by an incident that happened when he was a teenager at high school. A couple of mates he knew got involved in a brawl at a party, during which another kid was killed, and they went on the run from the law. For Snell writing the play was therapy.

The story unfolds in real-time on a single set which allows the tension and sense of desperation to build within each of the three characters, challenging the cast to maintain its atmospheric momentum.

The dialogue is rooted in the vernacular particular to young men of a section of society that regularly feature in crime statistics - middle to lower socio-economic status, macho and aggressive who, when fuelled by alcohol sometimes make impulsive life-wrecking decisions that don’t just affect themselves.

Anyone who has watched recent TV series Underbelly will find themselves in familiar territory and female audience members may get an uncomfortable fly-on-the-wall insight into the casual misogynist manner that some ‘blokes’ discuss women when there are no women around to object.

For some, the play’s disturbing theme, language and characters who exhibit little or no conscience may seem too much like events that recently played out in a Dunedin courtroom. But, like Once Were Warriors it’s art imitating life. To paraphrase Sam Neill’s famous quote "it is theatre of unease’.

Steven Snell claims Keeper is not an attempt at making a social comment however that doesn’t prevent the audience from making one after the curtain falls.

Playwright Steven Snell will be attending the opening night premiere at The PumpHouse Theatre on Thursday August 6

R16 – content may offend some people

Devonport Theatre Company and The PumpHouse Theatre announce the New Zealand Premiere of Keeper – a play by Steven Snell.

– Winner of the inaugural George Fairfax Memorial Award 2005

Cast

August 5 – 15 at The PumpHouse Theatre, Takapuna

Directed by Andy Saker

Music by Jed Town