Playthings is a darkly comic, thought-provoking and enthralling new play from local playwright Scott McArdle. Exploring the territory of trauma and the ways it can be expressed in adolescence is delicate terrain, and Scott handles this with the sensitivity required. The young actors play their roles to perfection – in particular, Courtney Henris’ embodiment of 13-year-old Lucy is a joy to witness. She is joined by Daniel Buckle as Arnold, Blue Room regular St John Cowcher as Lucys’ bumbling stepdad and Siobhan Dow-Hall in a standout role as sarcastic English teacher Miss Richards. The four actors have an undeniable chemistry together which works to bring McArdles’ vision to life for the audience.

Arnold and Lucy are two suburban teens – not exactly at the bottom of the social ladder, but certainly not at the top of it either. We first meet them as Lucy leads Arnold through the bush at the fringes of their suburb to see a dying kangaroo. Her morbid fascination as she wills the animal to die is a strong contrast to Arnolds’ concerned anxiety. We immediately realise that Lucy is struggling with something dark, but as her fascination with death and violence grows she pushes away the people that can offer her the help she needs. Arnold also struggles, but his anxieties – expressed through a heart-wrenching homework assignment – are much more palatable to his caring English teacher.

The staging – designed by Sara Nives Chirichilli – is wonderful. The home serves as two houses in one, with scenes overlapping each other as the two move from laminate kitchen to ugly couch and back again, Lucy fighting with her despised stepdad or Arnold microwaving leftovers from his absent mother. The teen movie trope of a rooftop hideaway (most effectively used, in my opinion, in the Jackie Chan vehicle The Spy Next Door – but that’s a whole other review) is a sensible solution to Arnolds’ growing need for independence while also giving the play needed room to breath.

The two reveals at the end of the play (one you will see coming from the first scene, the second I won’t spoil for you here) could have been paced a little differently – coming almost on top of each other the audience has little space to absorb the import of the second as a sign of Lucys’ trauma before the play is over.

Far from the erudite Dawsons Creek-esque teens we’ve become used to bearing witness to, Lucy and Arnold swear at each other and give their parents the finger and wanking signs frequently – but this is actually how suburban teens communicate. Because how can you tell someone how hard it is to hold those feelings inside you when you haven't even figured out what those feelings are yet?

This I think is the genius in McArdles’ writing – the teens are learning to communicate their trauma, whether it be grief, absent parents, loneliness or the much darker and repressed pain of parental betrayal. Witnessing Lucy and Arnold grow through this process gives us the opportunity to reflect on the ways we express our own pain and ask whether we can be better.