“What do I want to happen to him? It’s not like he can be cancelled or anything. He’s just some guy!”
You’re Killing Me deftly balances dark humour with sincerity, heightened fiction with realism, to create a tender and deeply engaging piece of theatre. The show centres around Harper, a university student, as she writes and directs a play inspired by her own experience of sexual assault. As such, the show is tense, raw, at times uncomfortable — and surprising in its humour, relatability, and Heathers-like campy ending.
The play opens with an empty bed. Scout McWhinney’s set design is reminiscent of Tracey Emin’s famous work My Bed (1998) where Emin exhibited the bed she lived in during a depressive episode. We sit with this bed as the content warnings are read out, as we are given time to process the warnings. This bed is at first glance childish — kids patterned sheets and a teddy bear — but looking closer, we recognise the symbols of young adulthood. Heels and Pepsi Max cans are strewn around. Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton. Photos of friends. An ashtray. The bed stays on stage, bearing silent witness to each scene.
You’re Killing Me plays with the idea of theatre, specifically student theatre, dipping in and out of narrative and embedded narrative. A melancholy guitar theme signals the transitions between storylines. Alex Butler as Harper begins the play with a short spiel about what writing this play meant to her. Toby Eastway as Ben shouts from the audience: “I didn’t do it!” And the play begins. This choice was uniquely well-suited to the intimate atmosphere of the Cellar Theatre, and the preconceptions an audience has going to see a SUDS show. The rehearsal and writing process scenes felt very real. I’m sure many people in the audience truly believed Alex, not Rose Cooke and Aqsa Suryana, wrote the show.
This show is full of awkward silences, fumbling with one’s words, wishing to erase, wishing to start over. “Can I say that?” Characters apologise, look away, give in to humour, give up on trying to express what cannot be expressed with words. You’re Killing Me meditates on how our society has no vocabulary for conversations about sexual assault. In one particularly poignant scene, Harper wrestles with the difficulty of even speaking the words, of knowing what a person is “supposed” to do. The play explores how women are socialised that what they are supposed to do is to doubt themselves, to apologise when they are not in the wrong.
“I text my friends when I get home safe. I go to my 9am tutorials – sometimes… I do everything I did, like it’s nothing… Maybe it was nothing.” – Harper.
There is an intriguing interplay between reality and fiction. The play is explicitly based on true events, and as the show-within-the-show unfolds, its central plot is mirrored in the lives of the actors in it. This is particularly impactful as we see Harper struggle with affirming the reality of her lived experience. Many scenes involve repetition and mirroring, giving the audience time to think about the things not being said, and about one’s own relationship to sexual assault.
Alex Butler as Harper and Callum Stout as Hamish/Oscar were standout performers, with many scenes hinging on their emotionality, depth, and comic talent. Butler was able to command the stage in her solo scenes, filling the room with tension and alleviating it just as easily. In particular, she was able to convey that specific feeling of discomfort that comes from trauma; when you’re safe, actually, but your mind is telling you something else. Stout electrified the stage with an embodied and somewhat intimidating monologue, and was such a good asshole to the female characters I felt conflicted about congratulating him after the show. The final scene, in its campy revelry, wouldn’t work if Stout had not been such a fully committed and convincing performer.
The ensemble cast was phenomenal. Kaitlyn Nguyen as Kamila/Molly provided an amazingly sardonic opening monologue, and crafted a vulnerable, realistic character that inspired empathy. Georgina Saad as Tess was beautifully tender in her portrayal of Harper’s best friend, and particularly satisfying in a key scene where she yells at Toby Eastway’s Ben. Eastway’s performance is perfectly understated, giving credence to the show’s repetition that he is “just some guy.” Sydney Hure as Riley/Dylan gave a naïve character astounding depth.
You’re Killing Me is painfully realistic, showing the cruelty of the everyday, the violence of ‘keeping going.’ The play’s comedy and tragedy is true to life: we do live in a world where you can run into your rapist at the bus stop and have to make small talk.
You’re Killing Me runs 11–14 September, and 18–21 September, at the Cellar Theatre. Tickets can be found here.
