Afterglow

13 Jul

It’s been a while since I’ve been invited to a Griffin show. Perhaps I’d been banned. Perhaps I’d been banned because I spoke Truth to Power. See how I’m creating a story, one in which I’m some sort of cultural hero. But that’s a story no-one needs (least of all me.)

We do need a story like the one told in Afterglow.

But need doesn’t quite express what I mean – but that’s something I’ll come back to.

Sheanna Parker Russon and Lillian M. Hearne’s Afterglow is a glorious celebration of sexual and gender diversity.

It’s a thoroughly enchanting rom-com with songs. The songs are in the style of barbershop quartet and contemporary music theatre. The barbershop is, of course, sung acapella and the contemporary is accompanied by Hearne on piano. The performance of both styles is an absolute delight.

Michael loves singing in a barbershop quartet, but he’s not quite sure who he is, and there’s good reason to believe that those who partake in the quaint artform may not be too accepting of where his journey of self-discovery may take him.

Afterglow shares with Strictly Ballroom the playful presentation of a rather antiquated artform to parody parochial insistence on conformity.

Performances are comic gold. Directors Cassie Hamilton and Lily Hayman know the sort of piece they have and make it sing. Clever lighting choices by Tyler Fitzpatrick add to the merriment.

The script hilariously targets the narrowness of some of the quartet. Playing characters who are bigoted and bumbling, Nat Jobe and Lincoln Elliott are excellent. Rarely have such bores been such fun.

The potential lovers are utter magic. Hamilton offers a superb portrait of a charming, confused vulnerability and Nic Prior gifts us a moving presentation of confidence and courage.

The script is not without provocations.

Can straight people really be reduced to middle class conventionality, to the kids, the house, the lawn? (It’s a reduction that presupposes the existence of some sort of contrasting cultural heroes. And I’ve told you already what I think about that.)

Does a cis heterosexual male really need to define his own moral growth using someone else’s language?

And there’s that word – need. As we leave behind a smaller, suffocating world, how prescriptive will we be? Can we only break old norms by introducing new ones? Or is there a wider vision of flourishing?

The absolute joy of this piece suggests the latter.

Paul Gilchrist

Afterglow by Sheanna Parker Russon & Lillian M. Hearne

presented by Griffin Theatre Company and Purple Tape Productions

at Downstairs Theatre, Belvoir, until 25 July

griffintheatre.com.au

Image by Lucy Parakhina

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Thirty-Six

11 Jul

According to an old wives’ tale, thirty-five is the life-expectancy of trans women. This figure is not supported by solid data; the myth gains currency from the fact that, in our small-spirited society, trans women continue to have it hard.

In one of its sharper moments, the show even suggests this life-expectancy myth is perpetuated by those who wish it true.

Written by Jo Clifford and Bayley Turner, and performed by Turner, Thirty-Six is life-affirming. Though bearing witness to the challenges faced by trans women, it celebrates survival and community.

Turner makes clear she’s deeply grateful for her friendship with Clifford. Having passed the thirty-five hoodoo, Clifford is valued for resilience, wisdom and hope.

Through the use of projection, voice over, amplification, music, and some poignant props, director Kitan Petkovski creates a show of theatrical richness.

Turner has a terrific stage presence and great comic timing. Her wonderfully warm delivery infuses the performance with a deeply affecting honesty.

Regardless of the veracity of the life-expectancy myth, Life’s opposite awaits us all. It’s rare for theatre to look clear-eyed in this direction. (This piece even offers an eschatology – though perhaps the offer is merely playful.)

In referring to us all, I’m not trying to so universalise Thirty-Six that it loses its vital focus on the particular: the experience of trans women. I’m simply expressing its spirit: that the Truth is for us all.

Paul Gilchrist

Thirty-Six by Jo Clifford and Bayley Turner

presented by Aperture Productions,

at The Loading Dock Theatre, QTopia, until July 18

qtopiasydney.com.au

Image by Andrew Kim

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The Dapto Chaser

4 Jul

This is brilliantly funny.

It tells the tale of a family of grifters, in love with the mad possibilities of the dog track. Playwright Mary Rachel Brown has a terrific ear for dialogue, and the script sparkles with hilarious one-liners.

Under the direction of Anna Houston, the cast present magical comic performances.

Peter Carroll is perfect as Errol, the ailing patriarch of the Sinclair family, physically suffering but still linguistically exuberant and psychologically domineering. There’s utter hilarity in his certitude, not necessarily in its falsity, but in its breathtaking smallness.

As his eldest son, Cess, Justin Rosniak radiates an extraordinary energy, creating all the more laughter – and all the more pathos.

Errol’s younger son, Jimmy, is less sure of his father’s “creative” ways, and has taken a real job; he operates the electric hare at the track. And there’s something of the bunny in his character, more gentle than his brother and woefully innocent. André de Vanny’s portrayal of Jimmy is both mirth-making and heart-breaking.

And Marco Chiappi as the track manager is superb in his shallow, glib self-importance.

Is The Dapto Chaser satire? Certainly not Juvenalian: the targets are too small. The Ensemble marketing has gone for the term black comedy, which considering one life-altering plot point it most certainly is.

But in some ways, what’s happening is that we’re being invited to share the laughter of regret. It’s an invitation made even more beguiling by the fact that, since 2011 when this historical comedy was originally produced, the Dapto Dogs track has finally closed down. The Dapto Chaser invites regret for the disappearance of this sadly parochial world, and regret that anyone ever had to experience it.

But there’s also an invitation to joy, a celebration of a wild, reckless vitality; a vitality perhaps not on the side of wisdom, but indubitably on the side of Life.

Paul Gilchrist

The Dapto Chaser by Mary Rachel Brown  

at Ensemble Theatre until 25 July

ensemble.com.au

Image by Prudence Upton

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First Do No Harm

3 Jul

I’m standing in the dark, outside Café Kooks.

It’s intermission of Grace Malouf’s play First Do No Harm and I’m thinking I’ve just witnessed an absolutely brilliant first act.

Directed by Charley Allanah and Malouf, the performances are magnificent; nuanced and genuine. Kate Bookallil, Richard Hilliar, Josh Merten, Shan-Ree Tan and Barry French are a dream ensemble.

And the script is superb.

I’d give my right arm to have written that first act.

But that’s an old-fashioned expression.

The world moves on.

And it’s the examination of this phenomenon of change which makes Malouf’s play so exciting.

It centres on the ethics of a surgical procedure for Alexei, a young Olympic hopeful (played by Merten with utter believability.)

We witness a hilarious and provocative discussion between two medical experts (Bookallil & Tan) asking whether their profession leads ethical change or if they simply follow society?

The tacit assumption is that ethics do, indeed, develop.

It’s a phenomenon exemplified over the last 60 years, as the rights of previously marginalised groups have been increasingly acknowledged. But only Innocence will assume that change in societal values is always for the better. In the same six decades, I’ve seen the 1960’s and 70’s dream of social equality sidelined by the 80’s fixation on gaudy, material success. And more recently – and with horror – I’ve witnessed the valorisation of anger, coupled with the deeply unhelpful assertion that rage alone signifies a genuine commitment to justice.

It could all leave you with the soul-disturbing sense that our ethical values are merely arbitrary, like fashion. And, seriously, who can care that much about fashion?

Alexei succinctly expresses the issue of arbitrariness, bitterly complaining that a perception is dismissed as a delusion when held by only a few people but, when held by everyone, is readily embraced as reality.

I think it’s because the play approaches this frightening aspect of our ethical lives so entertainingly, so boldly, that I fell in love with its first act.

It’s a hard act to follow.

Perhaps a falling off is inevitable, if you value the first act as I do: as an extraordinarily powerful representation of one of the great tensions running through the human experience. We want to live for our morals – not by them, but for them – yet one of those moral values – our dedication to Truth – threatens to strip us of the certainty that helps us to live for any of them. For a serious person, that’s a frightening tension to confront. (But more on that later.)

So, the second act. It has one scene that seems unstageable. It also privileges shouting and anger. Perhaps a richer choice might have been to present a little more honest bewilderment.

Having set up the ethical issue – can Alexei have a particular body modifying surgery? – the playwright seems understandably reluctant to give a simplistic answer. Instead focus moves to other ethical decisions made by the surrounding characters. It feels somewhat diluting (akin to adding scenes to Macbeth in which Macduff and Lady Macduff argue about who has dedicated more time to the rearing of their children.)

But, I acknowledge that what I’m calling dilution (admittedly, in this case, dilution with acid) is actually the creation of multiple complex characters – and that too reflects crucial aspects of our ethical experience.

Firstly, few moral decisions are made in social isolation; our decisions impact others, and will be judged by others.

And Secondly, every individual’s moral life is of equal importance (regardless of passing fashions.)

And Thirdly, that frightening tension I refer to above can probably only be faced by embracing a compassionate humility – and, in terms of drama, that required courage and openness is perhaps best epitomised in the creation of such fully fleshed-out characters as this production offers.   

First Do No Harm is thrilling, vital theatre.

Paul Gilchrist

First Do No Harm by Grace Malouf

Presented by NIDA in association with bAKEHOUSE theatre and Talia M-K

At KXT on Broadway until July 4

kingsxtheatre.com

Image by Laura Elaine

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The Art of Storm-Whistling

29 Jun

Written and performed by Tom Robins, this is a wonderful little fringe show – ambitious, evocative and magical. 

The protagonist, John, tells of his maritime journey to find out what has happened to his favourite uncle, Max.

John and Max had been close, the black sheep in the family, the two individuals who didn’t fit into the small, ordered lives of the rest. Max had told John some extraordinary stories about his sea journeys. He’d asked John if he believed them – and the answer had been a resounding Yes!

Many of Max’s stories are sourced from maritime legend. In fact, Max has left, as a sort of guide, a book of such tales. In the tales told by Max to John – and by John to us – are sirens, selkies, kelpies – and the Lighthouse. Max has found the Lighthouse, and John feels he is called to follow. Like all great myths, the Lighthouse is ambiguous, inviting multiple interpretations. Is it Death? Is it the place of Enlightenment? Is it where all our many stories converge? Or is it the place from which all our stories derive?

Simply and beautifully staged, the piece is a thrilling invitation to embrace the power of story.

Its intriguing and provocative energy derives from two tensions.

Firstly, stories are everywhere. They’re the sea in which we swim; without them, we’d be as fish thrown upon the sand. Stories are this rich, life-giving medium because they forever mix, in a surging ocean of ideas. Stories inform each other. There are no entirely original tales – and that binds us all together. But – and this is the tension – each of us must find our own stories. The fish might be in the sea, it might be of the sea, but it is not the sea. To have Life is to have movement of your own, not to be at the mercy of every tide, every current. (This extended metaphor is mine, not Robins’. I hope, that by being inspired by someone else to make its own way, it exemplifies the generously wise vision his piece shares with us.)

The second tension is that between story and reality. Some people might argue that what we call reality is just one more story. But Robins’ story features a hagstone: that is, a stone with a naturally occurring hole, one which – when peered through – enables the viewer to see beyond all disguises and illusions…to reality. This tension between story and reality runs through the entire piece, just as it runs through the entirety of postmodernity. In the world in which we live, we know that any desire to reduce the human experience to mere facts is dehumanising, counter to a flourishing diversity. But at the same time, we suspect that the utter denial of facts can pave the way to atrocities, of both the figurative and literal kinds.

Robins presents John’s story in an easy, utterly watchable manner. Occasionally, I felt a clash between the character’s casual colloquialism and the grand, poetic vision of the piece – but I can’t deny that The Art of Storm-Whistling is a joyous gift.

Paul Gilchrist

The Art of Storm-Whistling by Tom Robins

Presented by Curious Roach Collective, as part of Pride Fest

At The Loading Dock, Qtopia, until 30 June

qtopiasydney.com.au

Image by Photos By Jamois

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An Intervention

28 Jun

The “An” in the title is misleading. There are actually three interventions in Mike Bartlett’s very funny, mischievous play.

A and B are good friends. B intervenes in A’s life regarding her drinking. A intervenes in B’s life regarding his choice of partner. And, somewhere offstage, their nation is intervening in another nation’s civil war.

It’s a brilliant device for exploring both one of our culture’s current peccadilloes, and a more universal aspect of the human condition.

Contemporary culture is very keen that we tell each other what to do. The standard you walk by is the standard you accept is a popular mantra, and one that valorises ethical imperialism. It holds that when the world behaves as you think it should, then and only then, can you be morally at ease. Of course, the intention behind such an attitude is usually/often/sometimes/occasionally/perhaps praiseworthy. (Yes, I’m offering a sort of Choose Your Own Ethical Adventure.) We say we entertain this attitude of telling other people what to do because we genuinely care, but we know it can be problematic. A accuses B’s partner of being the “joy police”, but also criticises B’s absence from a rally opposing the overseas military intervention – even though she knows it’s an action he supports.

A and B’s friendship has always been exhilaratingly combative; they like to argue for their personal vision of the Truth. We sometimes say that individuals in such a relationship like the Drama of it. But that can’t be the case if each of the friends wants to win the arguments – for Drama’s gift to humankind is its ability to resist simplicity, to embrace the expression of multiple voices. In great Drama, no single character wins, only the audience. (One of my favourite moments in this very funny play occurs in a gallery.  The two friends examine an artwork. We’re told it depicts Tony Blair taking a selfie in front of a war-torn cityscape. A has wanted B to see this artwork. But B‘s response is to ask if it’s some sort of magic eye picture. He asks if he looks at it long enough, or if he squints in some weird way, will it finally reveal itself, despite all appearances, as being a work of subtlety and depth?)

Directed by Mike Booth, this production is a comic delight and a thrilling invitation to thought. As A and B, Brea Macey and Jake Harvey are terrific, delivering Bartlett’s hilarious contemporary dialogue with aplomb. Despite being only eighty minutes in length, it’s a beautiful slow burn of a piece. It’s a joy to watch Harvey present B’s gradually growing awareness that a gladiatorial relationship might not make him happy. Similarly, Macey’s portrayal of A’s slide from sarcasm to bitterness is both pathos-inducing and utterly engaging.   

I suggested earlier the play wasn’t only contemporarily relevant, but also universal.  

Consider the final scene. (Don’t worry, no spoilers.) To be honest, the final scene did leave me feeling as if the play had morphed into a different genre, that we were now watching a black comedy. And the script does dictate some staging that wrenched me out of its invented world, emotionally and intellectually. But the final image, both visually and aurally, is absolute gold, an almost Beckettian encapsulation of the human condition. Other people are both the cause and cure of our Desperation.

But a Desperation shared is a Desperation halved/doubled.

(Another Choose Your Own Adventure.)

Paul Gilchrist

An Intervention by Mike Bartlett

Presented by Harvey Family Co.

At TAP until July 4

bit.ly/An-Intervention

Image by Patrick Phillips

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The Roommate

24 Jun

This a terrific production of a wonderfully rich, wonderfully funny play.

Written by Jen Silverman and directed by Lee Lewis, it’s a beautifully sophisticated use of the comic trope of the outsider who shakes up the status quo.

Sharon has taken a new roommate, Robyn. Sharon is conservative, inexperienced and uptight. She lives in Iowa, where she says there is no culture – she’s from Illinois. Robyn is from New York and is street-smart, experienced and, it would appear, more self-assured.

One of the joys of the piece is its presentation of the friendship between two middle-aged women. Sharon may feel that she’s slipping out of view, but the play says not so fast, and hauls her centre stage. Robyn warns her not to become old before her time. It’s a glorious celebration of second chances.

As Sharon and Robyn, Lucy Bell and Belinda Bromilow are utterly superb, creating characters who are both comic magic and entirely grounded in Truth.

The setup may seem sitcom, but don’t be fooled. The play is an absolutely engaging investigation of identity and how it’s created.

Is our identity unchanging? Or is it fluid? Asked if she is a bisexual, Robyn replies we look for labels for ourselves but sometimes they don’t really fit. Robyn, after all, is an ex-smoker – after this next cigarette.

Is our identity determined by the role in which society casts us? A bewildered Sharon says she was once a wife, but is no longer; was once a mother, but has become redundant; is now a roommate, but….  

Or do we have genuine agency? Are we free to create ourselves? Robyn has made some pottery dolls. Made people. (And breakable people.) She jokingly calls them voodoo dolls, evoking – just momentarily – a sense of the small spirit that might make such tiny parodies. And then there’s what Robyn has been doing for money, entailing a rather cavalier approach to self-invention.

And, if identity is a perpetual becoming, is this liberating or simply disorientating? Is it growth or is it just instability? Is there any outside certainty to guide the changes or to measure them against? Should there be? Robyn wonders if she has influenced her daughter too much. Sharon wonders if she has influenced her son at all.

But Sharon bemoans that she’s always been told what to do – by her mother, by her ex-husband. She senses, that in the making of a self, some of her self must be involved. Are we condemned to always define who we are by reference to others, either aligning with their expectations or rejecting them?

I can’t repeat it, of course, but the final line is a playfully provocative invitation to consider how we might embrace that greatest of Life’s opportunities, self-making.

If free to make ourselves, what is most intoxicating? The sheer freedom of it? Or the sheer miracle of self?

Both sassy and sad, the final line asks how grand our vision of self might be.

Paul Gilchrist

The Roommate by Jen Silverman

at Ensemble until 25 July

ensemble.com.au

Image by Brett Boardman

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Garry Starr: Classic Penguins

18 Jun

Never before has something that made me want to throw up been created with such genius.

Garry Starr (Damien Warren-Smith) is an absolutely superb clown, excelling in the ability to generate laughter through both voice and movement.

The conceit of Classic Penguins is, that in just on 70 minutes, Starr will lead us through every single work of literature published as a Penguin Classic.

In this, he fails. (Intentionally.)

He does not fail in the presentation of a piece of glorious, glee-inspiring comedy.

Very little (if any) knowledge of the classics is needed to enjoy Classic Penguins. The book titles are just clever hooks for Starr to hang some miraculous, madcap mayhem.

I should come back to my opening sentence. High-modal hyperbole it may appear, but I’m being honest about my personal experience of the vomit-inducing nature of the show.

Let me delineate the reasons for my response: Nudity; A lot of nudity; Nudity with a mischievous focus on the less noble aspects of the human physiology; Audience participation (voluntary); Physical stunts performed no doubt safely but with a disconcerting verisimilitude of danger; The flagrant breaking of the 3 second rule regarding food that has fallen to the ground; & The sharing of food mouth-to-mouth.

Two important caveats to the preceding list: It would make more interesting reading if annotated by my psychotherapist; & My response is clearly idiosyncratic – underlined by the fact that the majority of the audience instantaneously leapt to their feet for a standing ovation. (At the end of the show.)

There is something deeply saddening about this brilliantly audacious comedy; not in its execution, but in the response it garnered. The performer’s playful pushing of imaginary boundaries was greeted with such a seemingly universal shocked delighted that I was left with an overwhelming sense of sorrow: Are there really so many souls, who in silent, stultifying desperation, suffer lives of self-imposed imprisonment?

But to these gloomy intimations, perhaps only this can be said: Garry Starr definitely offers The Great Escape; and I really should book in to see that psychotherapist.  

Paul Gilchrist

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins – created/written by and starring Damien Warren-Smith,

at Carriageworks until 5 July

carriageworks.com.au

Image by Matt Crockett

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Everyone Knows I’m a Pervert

16 Jun

You might argue this is a prime example of the Theatre of Audacity.  You could argue it asks to be valued because it surprises and shocks. It has us say of the actors I can’t believe you stood in front of people and did that! (I’m contrasting it to the Theatre of Authenticity, which asks to be valued because of its veracity and honesty. It has us say of the actors You made me believe that was true.)

Everyone Knows I’m a Pervert by Taylor Fernandez playfully tells the story of Chastity, who accidently shares a saucy email with all her contacts. I wasn’t sure why this was such a problem, since Chastity also writes an erotic blog called The Vaginal Chronicles. (I’m guessing the Chronicles are anonymous – but the pace is so intense and the exuberance so stupefying, I think I missed that point of exposition.)

The show is certainly fast and furious, and ninety minutes long. (In the style of much of the humour, I can suggest it needs a good edit … a good, long, HARD edit.)

Directed by Beatrice Blackwell, the cast (Jenny Guigayoma, Jade Fuda & Jake Walker) totally commit to high-energy performances.  

In suggesting the show’s audacity, rather than its authenticity, I have a few caveats.

Firstly, the show presents a poetic (by which I mean life-affirming) Truth. But more on that later.

Secondly, very few of the sexual acts mentioned by the characters are perversions. They’re not uncommon acts, and they’re certainly not taboo. What is in our society? There’s only the illegal. (I think one such act was mentioned.)

Perversion is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, and I guess that’s the point: Chastity suffers guilt about things she really shouldn’t. To compensate for this guilt, she wades in even deeper, like Macbeth when he says “I am in blood stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er” – except for the fact Shakespeare’s tragic hero goes on to actually do things. Chastity just talks about doing things.

And, thirdly, the way she speaks about these acts is revealing. Chastity talks of sex as merely mechanical pleasure. The utter absence of intimacy is tragic, and this sadness is the truth of the piece; the pity, the poetry.

Paul Gilchrist

Everyone Knows I’m a Pervert by Taylor Fernandez

Presented by NIDA in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre Co.

At KXT until 20 June

kingsxtheatre.com

Image by Laura Elaine

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Proof

16 Jun

Written by David Auburn, Proof has an absolutely extraordinary first act. It brilliantly works the element of surprise – which means I can’t tell you very much.

Suffice to say,  it’s set on the porch of the home of a family of mathematicians. The University of Chicago is perhaps just over the fence. Robert has produced works of genius across multiple fields of mathematics. But then he is attacked by mental illness. His daughter Catherine, a potential genius herself, becomes his prime carer. The job has clearly taken its toll.

The opening of my review implies the second act doesn’t compare to the first, but if that’s a criticism, it’s akin to suggesting that a 24 carat stone is worthless junk besides the Hope Diamond.

If I was in charge of marketing this play to a new audience, I might suggest it’s A Beautiful Mind meets The Big Bang Theory (which explains why I’m not in marketing.) It’s probably enough to point out that, in 2001,  Proof won both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize.

The title tells us it’s about the search for certitude, but it’s ultimately not the mathematical certitude we might expect. In fact, there’s very little maths in the play at all. Except for the fact it’s about prime numbers, we never really know the subject matter of the ostensible titular proof.  And the play doesn’t manifestly use maths as some kind of metaphor (as, for example, the Uncertainty Principle is used in Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen.) This absence of maths is partly structural; with the four characters that Auburn posits, there’s really no one who is the complete innocent who could stand in for an ignorant audience and have the maths explained to them. And the genius of the maths can’t really be shown (unlike Shaffer’s Amadeus, in which the music can simply be played, or Edson’s W;t, in which the poems are recited.)

So (no doubt to the great relief of many) there’s not much maths.

Instead we get a family drama of genuine heart and humour.

But the Proof is in the performance. Auburn has set a tough task: characters of top-class intellect, characters suffering mental illness (or maybe they don’t…)

Director Adam Dunn’s cast produces some fascinating work, the highlight of which is the emotional presence of the actors. Occasionally performances would gain from a greater focus on vocal technique – but we’re gifted an engaging night of theatre.

Kate Wooden as Catherine displays an exciting range, from sharp wit to weary confusion to raw vulnerability. As her father, Robert, Justin Knights is pathos-inducing. As Hal, a young academic interested in both the maths and Catherine, Johnny Nguyen is so likeably goofy as to make us suitably suspicious – but the scenes of romantic intimacy between he and Catherine are played with a truthfulness that is disarming. Claire, Catherine’s older sister, is intimidated by the genes of genius that flow through her family and guilty for her absence during her father’s illness, and Beth Williams gives a splendid performance of that great retreat, that soul-shrinking pretence of control and practicality with which we hide from Life’s most daunting mysteries.   

Paul Gilchrist

Proof by David Auburn

Presented by Sydney Acting Studio

Until June 21 at Redfern Acting Studio

sydneyactingstudio.com

Image supplied  

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