The Sleepover Review by Hannah Davidson-Lynch

The sleepover is classic story fodder for the modern horror genre – young girls, wide-eyed and wildly unsupervised, are easy pickings for your standard slasher or demon possession. The accompanying symbolism is also fairly trite. Teen girls in horror so often stand in for innocence or sexual depravity, and are so often slain in the name of making a point.

That might be the cultural context that The Sleepover- devised by HEAT PACK’s Fia Morrison, Georgia Condon, Alison Cooper, with filmmaker Jayden Rathsam Hua- stems from, but it is certainly not where it ends up. This play is instead a funny, bloody, and surprisingly touching interrogation of the existential horrors of girlhood.

The titular sleepover in HEAT PACK’s new show starts as a celebration of Fia’s 14th birthday, but from the jump there is an undeniable, unnerving tension that pulls you in. It’s not the sleepover of Fia’s dreams, and despite the Just Dance and charades and scary stories told in torchlight, Fia’s besties Al and G don’t seem engaged. To divulge all the secrets of this show would be to ruin the fun, but the raw awkwardness of The Sleepover is immediately arresting, tapping into a deep-rooted anxiety that many former teenage girls will recognise.

Once the show hits its stride, and the sleepover begins to go sideways, the horror emerges in full. The scares here are distinctly digital and rooted in the uncanny. Hua’s filmed segments are a highlight of this work, swinging widely between hilarious 2010’s teen girl camcorder cringe to genuinely spinechilling shocks of terror. The Sleepover was also remarkably well designed for the Esme Timbery Creative Practice Lab at UNSW, adding a physical layer to the complex horrors at play in this work.

The live cinema mode opens a new dimension to the terror, but HEAT PACK’s performances were equally enthralling. Fia’s besties, portrayed by Georgia Condon and Alison Cooper, beautifully embody both the joyful innocence and cunning of girlhood, but it is Fia Morrison’s performance as the birthday girl that teases out the pathos in this romp. Fia’s dedication to hosting the best sleepover party ever is funny and desperate, but as her special night begins to unravel, Morrison’s performance exposes a raw nerve of teenage pain. The trio’s dynamic is electric, side-splitting, and still leaves room for devastating emotion.

The Sleepover isn’t just a fun night for the girls – the audience are also special guests. But if audience participation usually makes you want to sink into your seat and avoid eye contact, you’re in luck here. HEAT PACK has taken careful steps to make sure this show never feels genuinely unsafe, despite the horror elements. But the unique content warning system and participation opt-out practices don’t just bring this work in line with modern understandings of emotional safety in the arts. By taking time to make us feel more comfortable, HEAT PACK draws the audience in closer. It’s easier to believe that these girls care about me as their bestie, when as theatremakers, they exhibited such care for me as an audience member. It is a clever way to use emotional wellbeing measures to support the work, and not drag us out of it.

The quirky, uncomfortable energy of The Sleepover, as well as its fascinating story, production, and performances, made for an exhilarating night of theatre. It is a form-bending journey into the depths of adolescent madness, tinged with a distinctly digital strangeness and glittery nostalgia. This reviewer lives in anticipation (and fear) of what kinds of madness HEAT PACK and Jayden Rathsam Hua will devise next.

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Hannah Davidson-Lynch attended The Sleepover at Studio One UNSW on Thursday 24 September.