Sydney Reviews

A small miracle of a play, Happy Feraren’s Savior is a sharp and sweeping satire on the sometimes-self-serving ignobility of sleek American NGOs.

Savior begins with a breaking news montage of Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines. Processing the information and keeping tabs on the typhoon is Michelle, a Manila based project officer for international NGO, Savior – Saving Asia Via Important Operations and Relief.

Distracting Michelle from her due diligence of the deluge is her bestie, Janna, more interested in the flood of white dudes inundating her Tinder account. And the Tinder tide is a tsunami of aid workers, one of them, Joe Logges, the NGO’s Jesus – Joint Emergency Systems and Uplift Strategist.

Michelle is smitten with this self-proclaimed Digital Humanitarian whose forte is crisis mapping, an alpha in this planet of the apps, answerable only to Belinda Saunders, Our Lord – Lead Officer for Revenue Development.

Happy Feraren’s script presents this NGO as a cult with Messianic aspiration and delusions of grandeur, with as much emphasis on fund raising as field work.

Director Kenneth Moraleda and his cast and crew deliver theatrical thaumaturgy with this production, an amusing amalgam of allusion and acronym targeting the unsavoury saviourism mindset of post colonial whites.

Chrissy Mae Valentine as Michelle and Chaye Mogg as Janna, are a formidable pair creating a combustible chemistry mixing verbal jousting with sharp comic timing.

Mark Paguio is a joy as Jobert, the field officer undermined, underpaid and overwhelmed as he deals with work demands and lived experience devastation, the real saint of the piece, appropriated as poster boy for the media manipulating aid agency. Michael Whalley as Joe, effortlessly deploying charm offensive with a self assured walk on water confidence, the beatification of aggrandisement.

Hailley Hunt’s set design is a marvellous conjuring, transfiguring from office interiors to poolside exterior, from luxury to rubble in a feat of stage prestidigitation. Let there be light and there it is, radiant glory by super luminary Brockman, a marvel and revelation of shade and shadow and ambient hue.

There’s plenty to savour in Savior, plenty of pluck and seriously funny, all presented with a certain savoir faire.