The Places You’ll Go
What: The Places You’ll Go by Hila Ben Gera
Where: The Garage International, Adelaide Town Hall
When: Daily until 17th March
How Much: Full Price $25, Concession $20, BankSA Customer $20, Fringe Member $20, Cheap Tuesday $20
I worry about a lot of things. Jobs, futures, meetings, tasks, goals, energies, futures, loves. I overthink, overanalyse, and stress out about things I can’t control. Currently, I’m worrying about what I eat. If I turn vegan, will that save the planet and also make me finish my book? Maybe it doesn’t matter as long as I start running. What do I need to do to make myself, my life, and the whole world better?
A friend told me she used to worry about these things too. But now that she’s older with a degree, a job, a marriage and a dog, she worries about the lines on her face. What time is doing to her body.
‘What if I become invisible one day? No one notices me. No one validates.’
She told me I will always worry about things, just like she does. It’s just a matter of these things vs. those things. But, there will always be ‘things.’
In Hila Ben Gera’s The Places You’ll Go, two postmen’s worry about ‘things’ is the beginning of a search mission. How to change their fortune, where to find wealth and how to start getting invited to “those parties”. The search becomes an obsession with anything and everything that could lead to abstract success. Obsession with shiny business cards, having a wife and a kid and a picture of them in their wallets next to the stiff, stiff credit cards. But where will it all go, how much would they sacrifice to get there, and are these places worth the trip?
Surprisingly, The Places You’ll Go is about much more than satisfaction, happiness or material things. It’s a close look at how we define and measure success, and how our definition is taking us downhill. This dark comedy is unpredictable, intelligent and captivating.
For every person in the audience, this show will be like taking a look in the mirror. It’s unlikely you’ll stop worrying about things by the end of it, but you’ll at least learn to laugh at yourself in the process.
4 1/5 out of 5 stars
– Lur Alghurabi
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