Theatre Review Written By: Tony McMahon

Position: Arts Journalist

Program: Inpress

Dated: 21st September 2005

Melbourne playwrights Darren Brealey and Stuart Pursell have conceived a deliciously witty and physical comedy, Comfort Zone portraying their view of Melbourne’s theatre scene.

Where did Comfort Zone come from? It started as they sat in darkened theatres, watching emerging playwrights tell their stories with minimal sets and props about talking chickens and displaced farm-wives or the arrested drunk and disorderly gentlefolk of the Northern Territory. These two playwrights couldn’t understand why the rhetoric being performed in front of them made it – on stage.

The audience lapped up this diatribe of tasteless wooing and strutting, without an ounce of understanding of what they were watching, but they loved it – it was new theatre, so it must’ve been good.

Darren and Stuart decided their work made more sense, held powerful emotion and told a story the old fashioned way – beginning, middle and end. Yet, they couldn’t get produced. One night after another disappointing night at the theatre, they decided to purposely write a well crafted play, with a plot whose characters lives ironically disintegrate into the same type of bad play theatre companies produce ...more