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Going Out West

 
Amber Segal Review by Amber Segal 5 Published: 24 Aug 2014 Just the Tonic at The Mash House Show Dates: 31 Jul 2014-24 Aug 2014

Four men and a duck make up AsaNisiMasa’s Going Out West. These four men are Gabriel Farnese, Alan Grant, Eamonn Hearns and Jake Sharp. This production is a tour de force of play-fighting and philosophy. The original writing, spattered with cultural references and baked beans, is a captivating look at what masculinity entails without ever veering into cliché.

Going Out West is an extremely strange and energetic performance that manages to be both hilarious and moving.

The floor of the Mash House’s Cask Room is strewn with dead leaves and Pokémon cards and chewing gum, just one aspect of the exact chaos that makes up this performance. Onto this floor tumble Sharp, Grant, Farnese and Hearn, firing imaginary guns. Beginning as children, they use human sound effects, expert choreography and a rough physicality to create scenes of play: boys being boys. Gradually, as the show progresses, the boys become men through stops and starts and diversions into dark flights of fancy.

All the while, it never loses the sense of playfulness with which it opens. We’ve seen men who won’t grow up in hundreds of American slacker comedies, but in the face of those, this examination of maleness is a breath of fresh air. Going Out West shows characters willing to take responsibility and trying do the right thing, all the while demonstrating the interplay between fragility and boisterousness. A little flame of childhood is still burning in the adult men we see eventually chucking beers at each other.

Covering the future, romance, bosses and fathers and ninja turtles, the dialogue is engaging and witty. The performances are strong throughout and are very much collaborative, although individual personalities shine through the ensemble. A dark moment between Sharp and Farnese is particularly haunting. Going Out West is an extremely strange and energetic performance that manages to be both hilarious and moving.

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The Blurb:

Thrusts you into an all guns blazing, swashbuckling, pint sipping (downing) adventure, following four should-be men on their twisted journey through time, space and adolescence. In a world where boys face infinite contradictions about what they should be, our lost boys embark on an extraordinary quest to seek answers: What defines a real man? Is it even possible to be one? Are pirates better than ninjas? Does strawberry cider really make your cock taste like strawberries? Step into AsaNisiMasa's comic, kick-ass, coming of age ritual - an heroic attempt to reach the utopian realm of manhood.