A FANTASTIC CAST AND IMPRESSIVE SET, BUT ULTIMATELY A PLAY THAT NEVER QUITE REACHES ITS PEAK

By Katie Shaw | @katieeshaaw ⭐⭐⭐ | Press Invite

Writer and director Andy Sandberg’s new play Affluenza is a walking, talking social commentary on privilege, wealth, morals, and the grim underworld of the high and mighty. Boasting a brilliant cast but a peculiar timeline, it follows Dylan Marcus, a 16 year-old born from privilege who learns the hard way that actions have consequences. After drinking two times the legal limit, Dylan crashes his car, instantly killing two innocent people and leaving the lives of four others hanging in the balance. Sandberg explores the far reaching impact that this has on everyone affected, from Dylan and his parents, his friends and future, to the victims’ families and the lawyers who represent them.

In Act I, the opening scene introduces us to Dylan, his parents, and their proposed lawyer, Brad. Mrs Marcus swans around her kitchen with a glass of wine in one hand, reflecting on Dylan’s innocent childhood antics, as Brad attempts to steer the attention back to the business at hand; Dylan’s legal options. Mr Marcus insists that Dylan is a good boy – a statement Dylan immediately contradicts when he appears in the kitchen. Storming down from his bedroom and shouting at his parents, without a care in the world about his actions, Sandberg establishes the type of kid he is: a privileged arse. His parents aren’t concerned with what they call ‘the accident’, but are deeply concerned with the optics for the family; the impact it will have on their pride and reputation. This opening scene certainly sets the tone for what to expect as the story develops, but unfortunately it doesn’t develop much further for these characters. This is the first and last time we meet Mr and Mrs Marcus, and Dylan for that matter (as a 16-year old, anyway).

The next scene feels promising: we meet Brad at home with his psychiatrist wife, Anna. Brad seems to have changed his tune since meeting with the Marcus’s, arguing that Dylan is in fact a victim himself. He insists that the winning angle is to frame Dylan as a victim of parents who never taught him right or wrong, and overindulged him. Anna takes a different view, questioning how her husband might feel if his own child had been a victim of Dylan’s actions. Presumably, these two scenes occur on the same day, but the timeline stumbles from here. We jump to hearing from the father of a girl left paralysed by the accident. It’s an emotional scene, but then the story jumps to another piece of this layered puzzle, and we quickly forget about this father and his woes.

The scenes in Act I tie the narrative together with a rather loose thread. Aside from the first two scenes, there is no consecutive timeline, and eventually you realise that there are quite large chunks of context missing between the scenes. A civil trial is implied, as is Brad and Dylan’s victory, but Sandberg doesn’t allow us to see this play out. Due to the unspecified time between the scenes, as well as only meeting the characters once (bar Brad and Anna, who appear twice) the story feels clanky and lacks depth. It’s difficult to follow and trust a storyline when we don’t understand the characters or the full context. As a result, the emotional impact that a story like this should have doesn’t quite land.

Act II is bizarre. It opens with Dylan, an unspecified amount of time later, but with a 17 year old son, Todd, a divorce, and a reality TV show on his hands. Given what we know – or what we think we know – about the aftermath of Dylan’s ‘accident’, older Dylan seems to be doing ok. If ok is living in his family’s second home in a pigsty condition with a highly strung girlfriend, Crystal, and a superficial relationship with his son. What this second Act offers is an interesting commentary about the modern celebrity social world – anyone these days can be famous simply for being famous, even if that ‘fame’ came off the back of killing people. As Mr Marcus insists in Act I, ‘death happens to everyone’ eventually. Fair point. I’m sure Brad used this in his defence – not that we would know.

Todd seems to represent redemption for Dylan. He pushes back against the superficial, twisted nature of his dad’s ‘fame’, commenting on how frustrating it is being the son of Dylan Marcus. Todd can’t tell if his relationships are surface level or real, finds it infuriating getting pictured in his boxers, and finds the presence of cameras rolling 24/7 pretentious. He offers a fresh perspective – to discuss issues that present a real threat like greenhouse gases, rather than deciding what Dylan and Chrissy will eat for dinner that night. Todd’s presence provides an authentic, tender sentiment in a world that feels all too driven by wealth and surface level connections. Just when you hope that Dylan’s search for redemption through his son reaches a powerful climax, the scene falls into quite a ridiculous and unimpressive territory. There are only two moments in this play where you truly feel the impact of Dylan’s actions as a kid, though these are fleeting.

Despite this, the play boasts a brilliant cast who rally around this story with warmth and humour. Noah Schnapp is wonderful on stage, offering a performance with raw emotional range that rivals the rest of the casts. Rupert Young, Wallis Currie-Wood, Juliet Cowan, Donald Sage-Mackay and Janette Manrara are impressive in their rotating roles, adding quiet humour to this production.

Charlie Cocoran’s set is fantastic, and this, alongside Jack Weir’s lighting design and Emily Drohan’s sound design, work together to shape and evolve Sandberg’s story. The aforementioned two impactful moments feel so due in large part to the lighting and sound choices. These shape the mood of the scenes, and do so particularly beautifully in these two moments.

Despite its promise with a fantastic cast and impressive set, Affluenza is ultimately a play that never quite reaches its peak. 

Affluenza is running at Riverside Studios until Saturday 21 November.

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Photo Credit: Danny Kaan