Review: S-27 by Sarah Grochala

Inspired by the horrific atrocities committed in Cambodia’s S-21 prison, Feet First Collective’s S-27 by Sarah Grochala has you in the brutal depths of a tyrannical regime before you’ve found a seat in the theatre.

Guards aggressively ‘process’ each audience member before herding everyone into a dark rectangular room. May (Gabriella Munro), a young photographer, is charged with taking photos of dissenters, rebelling against the organisation, as they are directed towards a door, and their impending doom. 

What ensues is a tour-de-force about the adaptability of human beings within an authoritarian dictatorship and the consequences of those adaptations. It's a play that asks: just how far would you go to save yourself? Would you abandon a baby, kill your sister, sell your body?

The answers to these questions, and the complexities of the sacrifices being made, are shown through gut-wrenching vignettes throughout. These snippets are broken up by musical interludes with choreographed, repetitive body movements, allowing you further into these atrocities. 

At times, the dialogue leans towards cliché, but this doesn't detract from an incredible performance from the entire cast. Lauren Beeton and Sally Clune give are particularly transfixing performances that delve into sheer fear, hopelessness and the intoxication of power. S-27 is a full submersion into a disturbing reality that leans a little too closely into our own.