Checklist for an armed robber

Fine theatre is not TV. Nor is it film. It is a more intense, playful, challenging experience.

The best theatre takes an audience on a journey of discovery, both of a story that unfolds in unpredictable ways, and a journey into themselves, where they are enticed into some kind of reaction, encouraged to identify with certain character, invited to think and feel unfamiliar feelings.

Checklist For An Armed Robber, written by Vanessa Bates and directed by Cameron Gray is the 2017 season opener for the multiaward winning Gippsland company, Off The Leash Theatre, and it is very fine theatre.

The four actors, Amy Moss, Todd Miller, Sarah Hartnell and Kyle Wright brilliantly take the audience into two violent incidents on different sides of the world, both of which ooze with moral ambiguity. Who are the good guys? What makes people desperate enough to resort to acts of violence? What would we do in the same situation?

Audiences will relish the challenge of following the multiple characters, and the many-voiced narratives woven between, and revealing, the action. The precision and skill of all actors, and the incisive direction by Cameron Gray are the glue that binds this riveting and resonant work.

What’s more it’s a contemporary Australian play with recognisable characters and the veracity of recent events underpinning each character’s motives and reactions.

A gritty work, Checklist For An Armed Robber centres around two acts of terror that occurred on the same day in October 2002 - a local, small-time theft and an international political crisis, both born of a similar futility and powerlessness. Unpleasant as the theme may be, it is the humanity of both situations that deliver the power of this work.

Checklist for An Armed Robber will be on Friday 5 May to Sunday 7 May at the Old Drouin Butter Factory, and Friday 12 May at the Traralgon VRI Hall. Book your tickets at offtheleashtheatre. com.au