REVIEW: SAVIOR
- Lola Kate Carlton
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
In 2013, one of history’s strongest cyclones devastated massive portions of the Philippines, particularly the Visayas - leaving 11 million people affected and almost 7000 people dead. This, upon first glance, would be an unusual choice for the background of a comedy. But underneath the tragedy of Hurricane Yolanda, was a quieter, more human evil. Across the Western World, hundreds of “heroic” NGO volunteer workers and disaster response teams cuddled up with corporate sponsorships and local corruption, to use the catastrophe as an opportunity to soothe their white saviour complexes, or fulfill their own needs for PR.
Happy Feraren, the writer of Griffin Theatre Company's new show SAVIOR, originally used the play as an opportunity to satirize just that - for every white guy who “believes in listening more than talking” there was a not-so-hidden Tinder account lurking underneath. But out of her own life’s experiences, the heart of the text began to emerge. Underneath the tech oligarchies and the “just here to help” speeches are real people whose lives have been disastrously affected, set against a world stage who refuses to see their experiences as expert or legitimate.
Thus, we leap into the true question of the night. How do you create a play that not only indulges in the comedy of the ridiculousness of a Western World so desperate to soothe their own guilt (and blue balls) that they’ll say anything, whilst also reminding the audience of the true underlying horror of a whole class people who get forgotten when the camera turns off? SAVIOR flawlessly answers it in a mere 85 minutes.
The play leaps into action that it comfortably sustains with its brilliant cast. It is always a joy to see a full ensemble where everyone is on their A-Game, and SAVIOR has certainly lent Sydney its best and brightest for this show. A full ensemble of comedic powerhouses that never let you get too comfortable without confronting you. Chaye Mogg and Chrissy Mae Valentine who open the show are a formidable duo, with whip-sharp comedic timing and performances that felt warm, full and exciting without treading over the blurry line of overperformed. Their use of tempo kept us constantly engaged, while still allowing moments to breathe and stretch. Both were incredibly charismatic performers, and even in moments of conflict, you never felt compelled to hate them.
The two men of the cast, Mark Paguio and Micheal Whalley don’t fall behind either. Mark Paguio gives us perhaps one of the most complex performances on stage; his character representing the actual affected survivors of Yolanda. Ever-balancing playing the corporate game and the emotional exhaustion of dealing with that game and the people who never stop playing it. His emotional work towards the end was breathtaking, and held a truly disquieting mirror up to every white audience member in the room - myself included. Whalley, in many ways, represented most of the audience in that theatre. A caricature of the American tech-bro “humanitarian”, he was both hilarious to laugh at, and a very clever way for most of us to be laughed at. Hating him meant leaving and going, “oh God I think I’ve said that before though.” Even if they were presented with a mediocre script, I have no doubt this ensemble of A-Class actors could’ve handled it. With a script like SAVIOR, there was no way they weren’t going to succeed.
And the script was fantastic. With a comedy, it’s very easy to let your audience get comfortable. But by the end of SAVIOR, I had genuinely felt my skin crawl multiple times. Climate disaster scripts tend to be incredibly on the nose, which allows a certain amount of “getting away with it” for your average recycle-bin-using climate-change-protest-going theatre audience. SAVIOR, I felt, did not fall into that trap. Without the comedy, the level of nuance the script portrayed would’ve only come across as effectively in an analytical essay, but with Feraren and Moraleda at the head, we got all of the complexity without being stuck in a theatrical TED-Talk. On a design level, SAVIOR's use of space, tech, and costuming were very impressive. Downstairs Belvoir can be a complicated theatre to direct for, with its slightly odd shape that will always mean at one point an audience member won’t see something. But the design and tech team for SAVIOR meant even if we couldn’t see someone’s face, we knew what was happening. The bright white light of corporate aid charities that doesn’t feel human, the stage that literally began to break into pieces, and the thousand hidden jokes inside props and costuming told a story all by themselves.
In a political moment where climate change is the last thing on the Western World’s minds, while communities of people are still struck with disasters most white Australians, Americans and Europeans couldn’t begin to fathom, stories like SAVIOR are incredibly topical. Balancing conversations of sex, technology, colonialism, privacy and the creeping horror of AI, all whilst being genuinely entertaining is a mammoth task that the team of SAVIOR have not just completed, they’ve succeeded above and beyond in. In just 85 minutes, the team of SAVIOR have delivered a message I certainly haven’t heard in climate theatre delivered in a long time, and certainly not as well - if you genuinely cared about us, you would shut up, turn the cameras off, and help.
You can catch SAVIOR playing at Downstairs Theatre at Belvoir St Theatre until the 14th of June
