Between Friends

Undie acting, hilarious one-liners, friendship, sex and the places in between: Red Stitch's play Straight has it all. Billed as 'a hilarious romp' that will cause you to 'never look at your best friend in the same way again', the play is the story of Morgan (Rosie Lockhart) and Lewis (Ryan Gibson), a normal, happy couple in their late 20s. Their life is on track, they have a nice, little flat, and they are planning a baby. Their future path is set.

Then along comes Lewis's old mate Waldorf (Ben Prendergast) and Morgan and Lewis's whole little world is turned upside down. Something happens between the two old friends on a drunken night out that sows the seeds of doubt in Lewis's mind about the conservative life path he has taken. “The two guys agree on a dare to... um... how do I say this without giving it away?” laughs Lockhart. “They do something that involves blurring the lines of their sexual orientation. And it's something that Lewis agrees to do because he's really straight, he maybe thinks he's a bit boring and he does things because that's what you're supposed to do rather than actually questioning what he wants to do with his life.” And so this one, drunken dare between Lewis and Waldorf, leads to Lewis questioning of what is normal, “Providing Lewis with an alternative situation that could perhaps blow his world apart, no pun intended, and forces him to look at everything from a different perspective,” says Lockhart, whose unintended pun may or may not give some clue as to what happens between the two men. In any case, the big theme of the play, “is about stability and breaking out of our comfort zones in order to be able to find something or experience something”.

Based on Lynn Shelton's 2009 feature film Humpday, at its heart, the play is a comedy. “We needed to put a few laughs in the season and this definitely satisfied that brief,” says Lockhart. “Even when we're rehearsing in the space, we're like, 'This is hilarious! The writing is very snappy, very punchy, and it moves very quickly. And it's also quite conversational. It's very contemporary in that sense in terms of the language.”

There is bromance and there is romping, and, “There is a little bit of undie acting,” says Lockhart. “These two men obviously have an interesting history. During university years there's a lot of partying, there's a lot of exploration and they were great mates but Lewis took the steady path and got the job and got the wife and now they're considering kids. Waldorf went the other way and left the country and went travelling, and experienced all these other sorts of things that for Lewis are completely outside of his world. He's envious of that and starts to question the decisions he's made. And so that's kind of where it starts, and then it escalates as the play progresses in terms of that friendship. And the great thing about it is that Ben and Ryan – the two actors playing the roles – are actually really good, old friends. So they've known each other for years and years so a lot of that tendency is already there, so that's really cool. “