REVIEW: Mature Skin by Gabrielle Fallen – Darebin Arts Speakeasy

I started getting eczema again recently. Scratching at the crook of my arm and on the back of my leg. It’s stress and exhaustion and it’s minor, really. Nothing like it was when I was in high school, when I’d scratch myself red raw, while trying every lotion and potion to calm the itch and various ways to suppress my skin scraping habit. Lighter blankets, different clothes and a new mattress. I even tried cotton gloves like the character of Paul does in Mature Skin, but to no avail.

Paul is a fragrance designer for a range of products that are sold in one particular brand of wellness shops that are dotted across the city. Jasmine works at the Melbourne Central store. They meet in a nightclub and sparks fly and things start to spiral out of control quickly, but they don't really care about the chaos. Neither is comfortable in their bodies and both feel out of place in the world, so why conform to society’s expectations?

The first complication is the age difference: Paul is in his early 40s and Jasmine claims to be 20. But she also says she was in year seven during the pandemic, so she might be just 18. They both work for the same company, so the People and Culture manager might frown upon it. Jasmine is trans, which Paul says he’s okay with, but we get the impression it might be a fetish. And when Jasmine discovers Paul has eczema, they start to reveal more and more about their passions, their desires, their kinks and bad habits.

I stopped my severe scratching after I left high school and discovered I was lactose intolerant. It was the terror of high school and my inability to digest dairy all along. Gabrielle Fallen’s new play brought some of that feeling back, though. The relief I’d get from scratching and the personal disgust I had when I was all scratched up.

Mature Skin has the beauty and wellness industry as a backdrop, but it’s more specifically about two queer characters' discomfort with their place in the world. Jasmine is saving up for gender-affirming surgery and Paul is plagued by self-loathing and together they are volatile, but neither of them are very stable alone, either.

What begins as a trope-filled tale of the politics of an older man and his sexual relationship with a much younger woman gets much knottier: the reveals ratchet up the tension and the squick factor pretty quickly. The show starts out as a messy comedy of modern fucking manners but soon curdles into the kind of story writer Fallen calls a "rom-vom".

Designer Harry Gill gives us an open cube bordered by LED lights with a long, marbled bench nestled in the centre, acting as a pedestal they put themselves on. It’s evocative of a cosmetics store, but it’s so imposing it also feels like an altar for slaughter.

Emma Lockhart-Wilson’s lighting design modulates smoothly between nightclub and penthouse apartment and the Melbourne Central cosmetics store, sometimes isolating the characters during their most intimate moments. Keeping Paul and Jasmine spotlit and separated when they are having sex tells us so much about how distanced they both are - from each other and from pleasure.

Fallen’s text asks a lot of actors Bailey Ackling Beecham and Peter Paltos, putting them through the wringer of heightened drama and biting comedy. Beecham and Paltos perform long, complicated monologues exposing Jasmine and Paul’s tortured souls and they are mesmerising. 

Dialling up the drama in more mundane ways – like the inevitable meeting with HR, feels like other plays like this. But Fallen has built in a number of other rug-pulls that reframe the relationship in surprising ways. It's so nice to be surprised after a set-up like this.

Director Justin Nott guides the two performers with a steady hand, helping them to hit each dramatic revelation and crescendo as it comes.

Mature Skin is dark and twisted and refreshing in how fully honest it is about queerness, transness and the eczematic urge to scratch that itch.

- Keith Gow, Theatre First

Mature Skin is running as part of Darebin Arts Speakeasy at Northcote Town Hall until March 22 

Photos: Gregory Lorenzutti