Play Review: Hello Again by USyd Graduates' Hat Trick Productions

Rae Acevedo

On the last Thursday in February, I was able to see Hat Trick Productions’ stage musical, Hello Again. I arrived at the Factory Theatre in Marrickville where it was performed with little to no expectations, yet I found myself both surprised and enthralled by the production. For a rather new production company – Hat Trick was founded in 2019 – and a directorial debut from Jerome Studdy, the show was captivating and well directed. 

Hello Again is a musical composed entirely of little vignettes. These vignettes explore characters with different world views and values, and how these can mismatch and interact to create relationships. I was surprised at how quickly the narratives changed from one set of characters to another, from the 70s to the 20s to the 40s. 

“Don’t get too attached to one storyline,” Anna Natlacen, one of the show’s producers, warned me. A recent University of Sydney graduate, Natlacen co-founded Hat Trick productions with fellow USyd graduate Jack Andrew Kabilafkas (producer) and Jeremy Kindl (music director). Despite Natlacen’s warning before the show, I found myself getting attached to the short storylines, and felt disappointed when they ended without resolve. 

While the vignettes lacked satisfying endings, the storyline of Hello Again served to prove a point. It managed to “express how truly complicated and often painful the sexual relationship between two people can be” according to the director’s notes. 

The show dealt heavily with emotion, which is fitting since I tend to judge a play based on whether it made me feel something. Hello Again succeeded at that. With some vignettes I was frustrated, with others I felt alienated, while others again made me laugh. 

“You as the audience are not expected to love these characters…yet somehow, what these characters are searching for is something we all feel” and what that feeling can drive us to do. This held true for me; I did not fall in love with the characters, but I was intrigued by them. At times I saw myself reflected in the characters, and in that way, Hello Again was relatable to each person in the crowd. 

In my discussion with Natlacen after the show, I realised Hello Again also portrays an interesting depiction of gender and social class. Apparently, in the original version of the play, the intention was to portray the ways in which humans are horrible to one another and how relationships can play out poorly regardless of social class or time period. Hat Trick Productions expanded this to gender and sexuality in later adaptations of the script, ultimately putting up a show with four same-sex relationships and six heterosexual relationships. One of the characters, The Young Thing, was written so it could be played by any gender. In the production I saw, they were played by a man. Hat Trick productions further “queered the script” by having The Senator played by a woman. In the casting of the play, they were also open to any gender playing the character of The Whore, but it ended up being a played by a female . 

According to Andrew-Kabilafkas, it was important to Hat Trick to make the show even queerer, not just because the show was performed as a part of the wider Mardi Gras theatre, but especially because they had a significant queer presence in the cast and crew. He also commented that Hat Trick productions had a difficult time finding a play that included queer characters and put them on the same playing field as heterosexual characters. 

I really appreciated this aspect of the play. I’ve found it’s rare for plays to include queer relationships, and even rarer for them to represent them in a way that does not paint queerness  as the cause of dysfunction in the relationship. 

The technical aspects of the play also stood out to me. Each scene had designated lights from different angles when the characters shifted which helped each vignette feel unique and stopped the characters blending together, even when they were played by the same actors. For each relationship vignette, there was also at least one set piece specific to them. These  pieces didn’t hinder the rest of the show; instead with the choreography and lighting, it was easy to forget about them causing them to become natural parts of the set and scenes.

Sadly, Hello Again was confined by the space it was given. The Factory Theater is a lovely location, and while the close audience seating made it feel more intimate, it was difficult to see the characters at times. The angles of the theater also meant I had to peer over fellow audience members’ heads for a clearer view. The music was at times louder than the actors, which Natlacen addressed after the show, saying the 12 part band that the show called for was not very suited to the small space and ensemble. Nonetheless, the actors shone through, with the performances of Grace Driscoll and Lydndon Carney as the characters of The Wife and The Writer being the ones that stuck with me after the curtain fell. 

Hat Trick created a play specific enough for the audience and space while maintaining universality. And it did so in a beautiful way. The script did not speak to me in ways other plays have, but the technical aspects, choreography, and effort put into the production made my experience all the more enjoyable. I look forward to seeing what Hat Trick puts on next. 

Overall Rating: 3.5/5