THE CAT'S PAW Spotlight Theatre Company Holden Street Theatres Until 30 Jun 2012 Review by Emma Size On the highest level of two sets of raw scaffolds, a barefoot angel dressed in only a thin white dress and feathery wings cowers in the corner. As the audience trickle in to the studio of Holden Street Theatres, The Angel starts to walk around her perch with slight trepidation, and occasionally peers over the edge of her lookout to see the stage of St. Kilda bathed in purplish hues below. This is the promising opening for “The Cat’s Paw”, a show that valiantly tries to find something new and poignant to say about the sex industry, but comes up short. The cast are mostly competent and show a fair amount of potential, but on the opening night seemed to be holding back a few nerves and perhaps didn’t give their best performances. The monologues generally lack direction and purpose, therefore the most engaging scenes are those involving interaction within the ensemble. Damien White as the endearingly awkward Paul and Beau Anderson as confused Brigid are quite captivating together, and Maxine Grubel gives a commendable portrayal of ordinary Abigail, impressing the audience with her consistent and believable characterisation. Joanna Webb also has many good moments as the conniving Esther, displaying a solid range of emotions in contrast to some of her fellow cast member’s two dimensional performances. Shannon Gray’s (The Angel) Irish accent is quite impressive but frequently difficult to understand, and it is unclear why she even has the accent to begin with. The main issue is not with the cast, set design, or lighting. Indeed, Shannon Norfolk’s set design is practical, designed well to prevent errors in blocking and appropriately urban with its stripped back scaffolds and train tracks on the floor. Tony Moore’s lighting design excellently conveys the sordid nature of the play; however, his sound is overpowering and detracts from the performance. The song choice isn’t poor; however, playing music during every scene change seems excessive and does the show a disservice by not allowing thoughts and ideas from recently finished scenes to resonate. The biggest issue with the play however is the script. There is some interesting exploration of who is in control of a transaction in the sex industry, and whether the client or worker profits more, but overall there is not enough captivating dialogue to keep the show from dragging. Sex workers, seedy underworlds, and anything related to sex in general has been explored extensively in theatre, television and film, and unfortunately Christine Croyden has written a play which struggles to investigate anything new, and just provides a basic plot that struggles to move through the motions. There is potential within the cast and crew, and Kristin Telfer has put in a good effort in her directorial debut, however there are a few quite powerful elements which work against the success of this particular show.