What I liked
Please read above.
What I didn't like
Please read above.
My overall impression
What is the right answer?
In a Pavlov-ian exploration of the modern world, Start Swimming asks the question, “Why?” and then attempts to explore all of the answers. In a play that James Fritz (the author) describes as, “something that would articulate how our cast felt about growing up marginalised in a major city during a time of incredible political upheaval” (Introduction, Start Swimming) this is not a resolution to the revolution. It is reason behind it. It is the story of our own minds, our hearts, and how we got to where we are now.
The director, Alexandra Fiallos, has taken the text of what could be an abstract exercise in repetition on paper and delivered context in a way that only theatre may provide. It is a theatrical experience tailor-made for the Millennial, and yet the ideas are older than we sometimes acknowledge. In the age of spin, we are gas lit into thinking that these revolutions, the ones that are enacted, instigated, and then summarily quashed onstage at The Broadwater Mainstage for the Hollywood Fringe Festival, will never work. Yet they do. They have. The questions and answers that Start Swimming provides are not new, but they are all that we have asked and answered so far in our lives. It is a precious moment to have them all lain out, and to know that there are still more, and that we are not done yet. Not by a long shot.
See this play. Only then can you start asking the questions that matter.
