Sex, drugs and adolescence - a dream role for Hannah Tolich

Hannah Tolich

You know that, like, new play Hannah Tolich is in? It's, like, totally, like, heavy. I mean totally heavy.

We are totally lucky the 22-year-old actress doesn't speak like that normally. Although Tolich has had to perfect her Americanisms for the part of rich little party girl Jessica in This Is Our Youth.

The play, written by Kenneth Lonergan in 1998, is the latest production at Silo Theatre and revolves around three rich-kid slackers - Dennis the drug dealer, his friend Warren, who's just nicked $15,000 from his dad, and Jessica.

Set in 80s New York, there's a steady diet of pot and cocaine for the kids to devour, but getting laid, heroin and speedballs are also a temptation.

"Everything Americans do in general is bigger - they talk louder, they cut each other off," says Tolich. "I mean, Kiwis are polite. So we all had to get into that energy of being young, rich, ignorant kids from New York. We made sure we thought about that and got into their world."

In real life Tolich may not have partied in the 80s like Jessica does, but she has an affinity with her character.

"Being a teenager is universal no matter where you're born. The awkwardness, the feelings and the difficultness is something everyone can relate to. You kind of feel like an adult but you have no idea who you are. I felt that feeling of, 'Where do I fit in?' And that's what Jessica is going through."

In the small 100-seat Silo Theatre you are close to the action. To get to your seat you have to clamber through the lounge-room set. You see the tears, you smell the pot, and you almost feel a little too close to the action when Warren and Jessica are clumsily getting it on on the couch.

"The style of the play is very much fly-on-the wall. The audience are basically the walls to the apartment," she says.

Tolich started acting at Northcote College on Auckland's North Shore. When she was 17 she got a scholarship to London - along with Charlie McDermott, who plays Warren in This Is Our Youth - and performed at the Globe Theatre in productions of Macbeth and King Lear.

She has had parts on local TV shows Being Eve, Mercy Peak and Shortland Street and in November she starred in Silo Theatre's The Women, directed by Katie Wolfe.

Her role in This Is Our Youth was a part she wanted so badly that she practised her accent with an American friend to get it spot on.

But you totally won't hear her speaking American for real. Scott Kara

* This Is Our Youth is on until April 30 at the Silo Theatre, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland.