Contest

Anna Sokolova
Mar 20
3 min read

Flight Path Theatre 17-28 March 2026

Presented by @spacejumptheatre

The review

There are several great paragraphs describing the show comprehensively, giving a detailed overview of the story, so it is known in advance.

So, what is on the stage then? The court. The training. The drills. The passes. The game.

I was expecting - guilty of this cliche - to see the netball team of teenages, but instead here is a team of five ladies of all ages of at least over thirty.

They are real, alive, raw women. Five personalities and what is bursting through them - their emotions. Set up on a netball court, framed as a prep and then a game, exquisitely choreographed. Their moves are inspired by the matches, but not copying them all precisely. Rather, they are composing the moments from passes, push, reach, performed in slow mode and stopped as sculptures as a frame for an episode played in the foreground.

They are all different shapes and forms. Thin and a bit fuller. Moving freely or masterfully driving a wheelchair. They don’t have names; even in the program, they are called by their positions.

They momentarily react to each other’s comments with sharp replies. Each has their time for some hilarious throwbacks. There is no shortage of a free language there, real, lively, juicy, unapologetic. And there is another, deeper layer in each of them, which is never fully revealed, only spit out, only a tip never spoken in detail, synchronised with collisions in the game.

There is an age, a firmly presenting ghostly character. A b*tch responsible for what they have. Bodies they have to deal with. Changes which they witness but cannot reverse. They know a big part of their path is already behind them. There is no nostalgia - those ladies are not sentimental. They are gripping to the present. They deal with life as a tribe - they are a team, whose haul, if they would have one, would sounds like “f* off!” to everyone what scares them, to all heavy memories, to anything that uninvited ghost is pushing on them.

New lady - WA (Lana Morgan) - a stranger, a quiet, not willing to connect, rejecting any offer of a friendship and ignoring the pokes, coming in like a wave breaker in a powerful swell. The team crashes like waves on her - and pull back without success of penetrating through. Humble C (Suz Mawer) is all around WA. Always on alert, always moving, pushing in to help like it is her own remedy for something, she translates through space so fast that one cannot register her shape. Pretending to be confident, but lonely and fragile, hurt in the past but worth so much more than she allows herself to be, GS (Melissa Jones) is throwing the looks that can burn through. Strong, no-nonsense, opinionated, loud, but caring and sensitive, trying not to show it, GA (Willa King) is both - rejecting by looking close, very close. Resilient, always with defence up, playful and fun behind her guards, GD (Emma Monk) is the one minding her own business in this new arrangement.

WA is accepted into the game. This is a pearl of the play, in terms of meaningfully mixed tones, tempo, and language. While an intense game unrols, with girls fight hard, speak sharply, swear, command each other, dying for a win, WA falls into another dimension, in a dream. She speaks in a poetical metaphoric flow of pain of maybe worse, freezing amongst the angry team. That wave breaker is doing its job - to calm the swell down. Exhausted, WA dizzily losing herself in her vision and words, somnambulistically lowering herself on the court. Suddenly, interrupting the intense game, GA, sensing something calm, deep, is responding to it, sitting down on the ground too. All follow. The game suddenly became unimportant. A profound connection without words, like a fog, spread itself around, submerging them into another level of reflection. What is there for them - no one can know.

Except for one thing for certain: those women will be out there, loud and strong, together or alone, but continue to fight.