It’s always interesting to see how the vision of an artist translates from one medium to another. In The Boy Castaways, Australian theatre gem Michael Kantor has taken his strong theatrical vision from the stage to screen, but the stage is fully present – literally and figuratively – in the first trailer for the movie. Kantor has gathered a cast of performers – including Tim Rogers, award-winning cabaret luminary Paul Capsis, Megan Washington, Marco Chiappi and Mark Leonard Winter – who are very much at home on stage, for a metaphysical thriller set in the depths of an inner city playhouse.
The synopsis reads: Four drifters find themselves lured into a vast playhouse, deep in the heart of the city. Taken in hand by the enigmatic leading lady (Washington), the men are plunged ever deeper into a labyrinth of jealousy, betrayal, violence and sex, dissolving the lines between desire and death.
This work includes musical reinterpretations of familiar rock songs like “Giving It All Away” by Roger Daltrey and Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop”, and those on stage performances provide the highlight of the trailer, particularly compared with a few snippets of dramatic dialogue which does expose a couple of the performers’ lack of acting experience. I am intrigued about the kind of audience The Boy Castaways will be marketed to, but it’s clearly Kantor’s vision brought to life as a labour of love and selling movie tickets was unlikely to ever have been a motivation.
