Review: BABY ZOOMERS at Online

By: May. 19, 2020
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Review: BABY ZOOMERS at Online Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Tuesday 19th May 2020.

Baby Zoomers, a new 7 part Twitter series, is written by David Visick, who wrote Waiting for Hamlet, which I reviewed recently. This series of short monologues, like that previous production, features Adelaide Fringe favourites, Nicholas Collett, and Tim Marriot (The Brittas Empire), as well as Rita May (Trollied), Tony Award winner, Daisy Eagan, and Ross Marshall. The theatres may be closed, but innovative people are finding ways to continue their careers.

This work is a fundraiser for St Christopher's Hospice, and you are asked to give generously. You can read about the hospice and donate here.

These artists, like so many others, saw all of their planned work for the foreseeable future suddenly disappear with the closure of theatres, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than seeing self-isolation as an end to his work, the very inventive David Visick saw it as a start of a new project. He draws on the current situation in a series of monologues as individual members of a family communicate with one another by telephone and the internet.

Visick's scripts are very funny, but there is much more below the surface. We see the effects that isolation is having on the family members, some awkward relationships are exposed and discussed, and there are numerous moments of considerable poignancy. There is a great deal to discover in this intricate series of monologues.

None of that, of course, would mean quite as much without the marvellous performers who create the characters and breathe life into the words. Visick has a remarkable group of artists at his command and they find every nuance in his cleverly concise writing, under the direction of Tim Marriott. Their characterisations are nothing short of superb. These characters are genuine, authentic, and believable, and it is easy to imagine them as a real family whose conversations we have accidentally discovered while passing the time on the internet.

It is all the more remarkable that this has been done by the performers in isolation, without access to anything in the way of technical equipment that is any more elaborate than you might find in your own home.

You are sure to find moments that remind you of people whom you know or, perhaps, even yourself, and as their enforced isolation is being shared by most of us, worldwide, you are sure to relate to much that you watch here.

Log in and enjoy the performances and, please do, give very generously to this wonderful cause.



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