Sugar, Spice & Everything Nice
✮✮✮ 1/2
Hannah Cox and Caitlin West's Tammy & Kite
Sydney Fringe Festival | Sydney
devised and performed by Hannah Cox and Caitlin West
We are at home with two very funny sisters. Kite is in year three, and although Tammy is seven years older, the siblings are extremely close, spending almost all of their stage time making each other, and their audience, laugh with joyful glee. We watch the playful pair weather thick and thin, and when things get rough, Tammy & Kite shows us that life can be cruel even for the very young. Hannah Cox and Caitlin West’s play is remarkably sensitive in its portrayal of childhood and innocence, with an impressive authenticity that lets any person, of any age or background, relate to its characters and all its situations. Their feelings are real, and we cannot help but share in them, happy or sad.
Our protagonists find it difficult to express their emotions through words, but the play accurately depicts their inner world through imaginative means. The show’s creators assemble precise and powerful manipulations of atmosphere to communicate through signs and symbols, helped by excellent work from lighting designer Saro Lusty-Cavallari and sound designers Josephine Gibson and Alexis Weaver. The audience’s instincts are called upon to find an understanding of the sisters’ story beyond what is being said to one another. In Tammy & Kite, important information is conveyed through everything that happens in the room, not just the words that manage to find their way out of the girls’ mouths.
Some things you can never be prepared for, no matter how old you may be. Nevertheless, to witness children deal with deep losses is truly heartbreaking. It must be noted that the production makes it a point not to wallow in the story’s dark sides, and the delicate glimpses of sorrow it does provide are very moving indeed. We discover a love in Tammy & Kite that is wonderfully pure, uplifting and life-affirming. The special moments of togetherness enacted by Cox and West, are a reminder of the most important kind, also the very simplest; to cherish and to hold, everything else can wait.
photo | ©Zaina Ahmed
