Review: How to Kill Your Hamster by Ladylike Theatre Collective

The latest work from Annabel Matheson and playwright Eliza Oliver is a black tragicomedy that does not shy away from the dangers of overestimation, misinformation and misplaced trust.

How to Kill Your Hamster by Ladylike Theatre Collective. Picture: Supplied

Ladylike Theatre Collective, the brainchild of actor and theatre maker Annabel Matheson and actor and playwright Eliza Oliver, are presenting Oliver’s latest piece How to Kill Your Hamster, a black tragicomedy if ever there was.

The Hamster in question lives in a shoebox under the bed of his owner.

Ham – a delicious performance from Eddie Morrison – has found his way about the house. He is an eyewitness to the many goings on – commonplace and remarkable, moral and immoral, sexual and sex-starved, happy and sad, and (for such is life) peaceful and violent – of the four women who share the place.

Ham views the good and the bad with equanimity, until the vivacious and very pettable rescue dog Fran (a scene-stealing Ashton Malcolm) astonishes, and then beguiles him.

He will do anything to gain her favour – by force, if necessary, though that’s a pretty stupid thing for a hamster to do when confronted by a dog.

How to Kill Your Hamster by Ladylike Theatre Collective. Picture: Jamie Hornsby, supplied

Instinct and impulse run strongly through the animal and human characters alike. The women are of a type, a closet romantic, a big, bubbly girl whose outward happiness disguises inner shame, a new-age nitwit brewing her own kombucha, and a super-sexed party girl.

Oh, and an 11-year-old younger sister who looks on with admiration tinged with awe.

The choices of these four Millennials are overwhelmingly driven by ethics, values and principles, even if they’re often wide of the mark, or patently ill-informed. The play does not shy away from the dangers of overestimation, misinformation, and misplaced trust.

How to Kill Your Hamster runs for 100 minutes and, while it didn’t drag, it might benefit from fewer issues being quite so thoroughly canvassed.

That said, it’s worth the price of the ticket for I’ll Make a Man Out of You from Mulan, a hysterical duet by Rebecca Mayo and Arran Beattie.

How to Kill Your Hamster

Rumpus Theatre, Bowden

November 12-22