From the moment Sarah Kendall walked on stage I was absorbed. Her tale of high school woes based around her teenage years in New South Wales, Australia is a beautifully blended piece of storytelling and comedy.
She explains to the audience from the outset that she prefers stories to real life as she maintains “you get to play god”, an expert storyteller with a barrage of finely crafted material I must say this is indeed a divine hour. Kendall skillfully describes life as a self confessed dorky adolescent trying to navigate the world as she strikes up an unlikely secret friendship with the most bullied boy in school, George Peach.
The events that are explored within the hour are both funny and tragic as she concentrates on a school camping trip of a day in October which changed her world forever. Her descriptions of the people that surrounded her bring the story to life and engulf the audience into her world. The bitchy schoolgirls and the ineffective drunk teachers are characters which we all know but Kendall makes an effort to go beyond these basic archetypes as she describes them vividly with great wit and detail.
This show transcends the need for constant jokes, it is about something more than simply making the audience member laugh. It is a small novel packed into a delightful hour long set, thought provoking and emotional at times. I must admit I shed a tear in the toilet cubicle after the show and thought about the masterful storytelling I had just witnessed. If that doesn’t qualify as an endorsement, I am not sure what does.
