Red Stitch Actors Theatre

Decked in a blue Puma tracksuit top and floral-print baggy jeans, Angelique (Lucy Ansell) strikes a sure and steady figure in London playwright Emma Dennis-Edwards’ Scotsman Fringe First Award-winning play, Funeral Flowers. Exuding natural charm and abundant confidence, Angelique’s level-headed for a 17-year-old. There’s poetry to the way she talks and swagger to the way she walks. She’s focused on turning a course in floral arrangement into a small business career. But looks can be, if not deceiving, then certainly misleading in this Australian premiere of Dennis-Edwards’ dazzling show, produced by Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre and directed by the powerhouse Candy Bowers. What do you mean? As Angelique holds court on a playground slide, the bric-a-brac of childhood’s primary colours toys mingle with the empty bottles of booze littering the grass that clings to its stepped stone frame. Funeral Flowers’ subtle but striking signals, captured precisely by set and costume designer Bianca Pardo’s pointed work, remind us that 17 isn’t all that far from childhood. That we still need solid support from the so-called grown-ups in our lives at that age. Support that hasn’t always been there for Angelique, with an absentee father and a mother whose dreams of visiting Paris have been rudely interrupted by a spell inside.  Luckily, Angelique has a newfound rock in Sam. Her proudly queer foster carer supports her goals while insisting the younger woman plays by her house rules of mutual...