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The Queen’s City of the South

14 Oct

Written in a predominantly TV-style realism, The Queen’s City of the South by Mark Salvestro is thoroughly engaging.

Set in contemporary Cooma, this play achieves a strong sense of place, always a real achievement in the dramatic form.

It also builds on some fascinating tensions, pitting city against country and the past against the future.

Director Ryan Whitworth-Jones elicits good performances from the three-strong cast.

Ryan (Salvestro) has returned to his home town from the Big Smoke, and is now well and truly out. Cooma seems to have embraced his very camp community radio program.

His close friend, Maggie (Kath Gordon), is a member of the local historical society. She’d love to relaunch the Festival of the Snows, the street parade that did so much to bring the multicultural town together when she was young.

Her historical passion is tied thematically to the arrival of an outsider, Lucas (Jack Calver), a man similarly intrigued by the past. Lucas is writing a book about his recently deceased grandfather. To his surprise, Lucas has discovered that his grandfather spent time in Cooma. To his greater surprise, he has also discovered his grandfather was gay.

Why Cooma? There’s no record his grandfather ever worked on the Snowy Mountains Scheme …. and then the penny drops: the gaol. After all, homosexual activity remained a criminal offence in this state until 1984 – and Cooma is where that particular set of “offenders” were sent. In the late 1950’s, the then Justice Minister proudly boasted that Cooma was “the only penal institution in the world, so far as is known, devoted specifically to the detention of homosexual offenders”. There’s even a strong suspicion that conversion therapy was practised, something no-one’s rushing to mention at the Cooma Visitors Centre.

Set in the present, the play doesn’t dig too far into what actually happened in the gaol, but rather focuses on contemporary responses to it. As such, it’s a vital interrogation of our relationship with the past. What do we choose to remember and what do we choose to forget? What conversations about the past are we allowed to have? Ryan is given a beautiful line in which he suggests that, in regards to homosexuality, the wider community is happy with gay camp but wants it without any gay trauma. In the varied response to the town’s history, the divide between the two gay men and the presumably straight Maggie is presented with beautiful subtlety and texture.

Our contemporary focus on political rights sometimes leaves little space for consideration of political process. But how is change to come about? You may be certain of what is just, but how do you make society follow suit? The current default position is to simply assert your vision repeatedly and aggressively. It’s a strategy more suited to the creation of division than progress.  

Though the denouement is rather quick (not surprising considering the production’s already 100 minutes running time), it’s exciting to see modern Australian theatre with political maturity, a piece that suggests real change can happen, not when those who disagree with us are cast as immutable enemies, but when we seek ways in which people might work, and grow, together.

Paul Gilchrist

The Queen’s City of the South by Mark Salvestro

At The Loading Dock Theatre, Qtopia until 19 Oct

qtopiasydney.com.au

Image by Bojan Bozic

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Seventeen

10 Oct

It’s a neat trick that blossoms into a fascinating night of theatre.

Seventeen by Matthew Whittet is a piece for mature actors but asks them to play teenagers. School has just finished – forever – and they’ve gather in the local park to celebrate. It’s an ensemble piece, and we watch these six young people drink, dance and greet the dawn.

The title implies we’ll be offered a representation of a particular demographic, and like all pieces with an aim this broad, it has to fail.

What it does achieve is sentimentality, in the most wonderfully humane way. (Sentimentality, not nostalgia; the play’s set here and now, not in the past of the actors’ youth.)

Sentimentality could be defined as being overly emotional and safely enjoying the feeling – which is often exactly what we want from a visit to the theatre, and this play delivers.

It’s a top cast, and under the direction of Mary-Anne Gifford, it’s a joy to see them do their magic. Peter Kowitz nails Mike, the annoyingly alpha male with some serious growing up to do. Di Adams as Sue, his girlfriend, offers a beautiful portrait of a gentle-hearted young woman who knows Life offers more. Noel Hodda’s Tom is a captivating mix of youthful suggestibility and soul-deep maturity. Katrina Foster’s Edwina is a delightfully funny presentation of a young woman already looking to the future, dismissing teenage foolishness but still naïve enough to be caught by its allures. Di Smith is Lizzie, Mike’s younger sister, and it’s a terrific portrayal of childish pester power, impish mischief and sibling affection. Colin Moody’s Ronnie is deeply affecting, powerfully capturing the awkward vulnerability of the outsider.

Apart from the sheer talent of this brilliant ensemble, the piece is also irresistible because it brings to the fore the paradox of performance. The usual way the game of theatre works is that the audience is invited to forget that the actors are actually acting. We’ll often judge a piece successful if this illusion is so persuasive that it’s only broken at the curtain call. Yet, in this production, the discrepancy between the age of the actors and that of the characters means we’re constantly being reminded they are, indeed, acting. If in these most unusual circumstances we still forget, it’s testament to the performers’ extraordinary skill. But I wonder whether the more likely impact is that we’re made more conscious of the actors’ active empathetic role-playing, more appreciative of their creative decisions.

And that brings me to the second paradox of performance highlighted by this play. In every production, each actor brings to each role their life experience, even though it’s not their life they’re being asked to portray. Their knowledge and wisdom will inform the character but not determine the character – the play itself does that. On one level, this particular play asks its actors to forget everything they might have learnt from a lifetime of adulthood. (For some of us, though not all, that’s a hell of a lot of forgetting.) Watching Seventeen, we know the actors are doing this forgetting, this erasing. We know they know more than the characters. (If dramatic irony is defined as those occasions when we know more than the character, then all actors present all characters with dramatic irony – only in this production, they do it explicitly.)

And irony is close cousin to pity. If only you knew…..

In witnessing actors in the deliberate process of forgetting, or erasing, the fundamental emotion aroused is pity. We pity the teenager characters their myopia, their naivety, their inexperience. Perhaps we even pity their innocence.

If only you knew…..

In the play, Tom reads a letter he wrote as a child to his future self. This play is a letter written to our past selves – a wistful, funny, forgiving, love letter.

Paul Gilchrist

Seventeen by Matthew Whittet

At Seymour Centre until 19 Oct

seymourcentre.com

Image by Carlita Sari

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Ruins أطلال

5 Oct

A woman travels to Lebanon. It was trip she was meant to make with her father, a man who’d expressed great attachment to the country of his origin.

Written by Emily Ayoub, Madeline Baghurst & Mine Cerci, and conceived and co-directed by Ayoub & Baghurst, Ruins explores connections with family and with place.

Though having an engaging text – much of which is delivered with a wonderfully rich, wistful regret by Tony Poli as the father – it’s at heart a piece of choreographed movement.

As such, it’s a stunningly beautiful work of visual metaphor. A door dances about the stage, a potent symbol both of entrances to new worlds and barriers to those lost.  A tray becomes a mirror and, looking at herself, the woman sees the past to which she is intrinsically linked. Ayoub’s performance powerfully expresses the complex joys and pains of love and loss. There’s projection: the woman and her father watch together films by Jean Cocteau, and discover his motif of mirrors, doors to the underworld, to the past. Does every mirror in the world lead here?

But perhaps the most salient image is the ruins of the temple of Baalbek. The woman is told she should visit the ruins for two reasons. One is that they teach ephemerality (also taught by this show’s 45 min running time). The other reason is to find a bond with the past.

The temple is to Baal. Baal is an ancient god, worshipped possibly before Yahweh, and certainly before the father of Jesus of Nazareth or Allah (if these sort of temporal differentiations make any sense in relation to the divine.) And Baal is a jealous god. He extracts a toll on everyone who leaves the homeland over which He rules: a piece of their heart. It’s a poignant image of the pain of displacement.

The focus on Baal avoids contemporary tensions in the Middle East, but it also harks back to a pre-Axial Age world view. Baal is ancient, and perhaps old fashioned. By old fashioned, I don’t mean irrelevant; I mean in conflict with challenging modern realities. In a world where so many people are adrift, so many people have migrated, so many people live on lands different from their ancestors, so many people must share their ancestral homes with the displaced, any intense bond to a particular place inevitably means heartache.

It all had me thinking about Simone Weil’s observation that What is taken from us does us harm, while what we give up does us good.

This splendid meditation on connection and loss is both evocative and provocative.

Paul Gilchrist  

Ruins أطلال by Emily Ayoub, Madeline Baghurst & Mine Cerci

Presented by Clockfire Theatre Company

at Belvoir as part of 25a, until 20 Oct

belvoir.com.au

Image by Geoff Magee

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Well-Behaved Women

4 Oct

I’ve never really warmed to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s famous comment, that “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

To make a difference, you’ll always have to challenge the status quo. But Ulrich’s comment seems to conflate the fight against patriarchal dominance with unethical action, as though it were men who determine what’s right and what’s wrong. It oddly privileges a male perspective, and has a whiff of the juvenile about it, expressing more the thrill of getting away with the naughty rather than the steel-in-the-spine determination to stand up for what you know is right.

(Skipping maths for a sneaky smoke as you hide behind the girls’ toilets versus abandoning work to march in the streets in front of armed men hiding behind uniforms.)

Of course, I’m being pedantic. Those who deal in words probably should be.

But we all need inspiration, and Well-Behaved Women delivers inspiration in bucket loads.

With music and lyrics by Carmel Dean (with additional lyrics by Miriam Laube), and directed by Blazey Best, the show presents famous women through the ages. Some are fictional, most are not.

There’s no narrative as such; each woman sings of the challenges they face, and the world they intend to make. We hear from inspirational women as varied as Boadicea to Malala Yousafzai. I could list them all, but part of the joy of the show is guessing who’ll be next. (Of course, at 70 minutes, plenty will be left out. Interesting factoid: a 3 min song for every woman who’s ever lived would take 165 billion minutes, or 940 000 years. And that’s without an interval.)

The musical approach is the perfect creative decision: the climb to inspiration is rarely by the ladder of logic but rather through emotional epiphany.

Dean’s songs are beautiful, and range in style from power ballad to musical comedy show tune to African American spiritual. The band is superb. (And I got to say, to go to a show where music is played live and to understand virtually every word is a rare treat.)

Four brilliant performers – Stefanie Caccamo, Zahra Newman, Elenoa Rokobaro and Sarah Murr – take on all the roles with consummate skill. (On the night I attended, Murr stood in for Ursula Yovich).  

To give a sense of the thing, here are some standout moments:

Newman as Eve sets up the whole conceit, and is magnificently cheeky, bold and sassy.

Caccamo as Virginia Woolf sings of Judith Shakespeare, the imagined sister of the playwright, musing on how a woman of genius might have fared in the Elizabethan Age. It’s provoking and poignant. (And, if you haven’t read Woolf’s original version in A Room of One’s Own, do – it’s a game changer.)  

Caccamo also excels as Mary Magdelene, the only woman at the table at the Last Supper. It’s witty, fun and delightfully satirical. Peter, pass the unleavened bread …. Peter, could you please pass the unleavened bread! Unlike the Magdelene of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice, this one’s not so much bewildered and awed by the divine, as bewildered the men are all so in awe of themselves.

Murr as Boadicea is splendidly ferocious, radiating a defiant, vital energy.

Rokobaro as Harriet Tubman is awesome. The famous African American abolitionist believed God spoke to her, and perhaps it’s true, because echoes of the divine still linger in this amazing performance.

The doubling and tripling of characters works wonderfully, not only showcasing the extraordinary talent of the cast, but evoking the shared experience of womankind and their dreadful, glorious inheritance.

This is a show about icons and role models.

Do they tell us how to behave?

No, they don’t make demands. (Hey, maybe they don’t even make history; after all, it is a rather nebulous phrase.)

What role models do is make suggestions, offer ways to navigate the mysterious mess that is Life.

So, we look backwards to find our way forward? Yes, the paradox is a recognition that we’re all in this together – and a show that draws attention to this is a true gift.

Paul Gilchrist

Well-Behaved Women by Carmel Dean

At Belvoir until 3 Nov

belvoir.com.au

Image by Brett Boardman

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sitting, screaming

3 Oct

This is a fine piece of theatre; it’s beautifully written and superbly presented.

Written by Madelaine Nunn and directed by Lucy Clements, it’s the story of Sam, a teenage school girl navigating what is (hopefully) the worse moments of her life. Dad has cancer and so mum has forgotten her. Her friendship circle has proven fragile. Sam is fraught and alone. Then a teacher, Mr David, begins to pay attention.

Nunn’s script is brilliantly crafted. Danger is hinted at gradually. Animal imagery lurks ominously amongst the everyday. Near Sam’s house, the ocean looms in the dark – loud, enormous, unceasing.

Sam’s teenage vernacular is pitch perfect. She has the glorious energy of youth and it’s frightening naivete.

It’s an one-actor show and performer Clare Hughes is absolutely extraordinary. Her Sam is utterly real, a spellbinding balance of brashness and vulnerability. Hughes (or is it Sam?) also evokes all the other characters; with a slight change of voice, a subtle physicality, she becomes each of the people in this young woman’s troubled world: her mother, the school counsellor, her best friend, her sick father, a gaggle of teenage girls, the loud mouth school boy – and Mr David. It’s a virtuoso performance.

Elsewhere I’ve written about the silencing of male voices in stories that indict misogyny. It’s an understandable response to the seemingly endless bellow of the patriarchy, but sometimes it can leave the female characters in a theatrical world in which their suffering seems oddly nebulous and ungrounded. By inadvertently questioning their grievances, it’s a creative decision that ironically can gaslight the very characters it aims to truthfully represent.

Nunn’s script is a thrillingly inventive response to this dilemma. Because Sam voices everyone in her world, it evokes her dreadful isolation but it also emphasises her power.  Mr David and the dickhead schoolboy are heard, their brutality is noted, but this is Sam’s story, and in its telling she embodies the courage that can slay the beast.

And, in having Sam voice everyone, the piece also magically positions her for a life-altering shock. Characters she gently mocks, who elicit parody and perpetual eyerolling, burst into unexpected fullness as she discovers genuine solidarity and sisterhood. It’s deeply moving and intensely inspiring.  

Paul Gilchrist

sitting, screaming by Madelaine Nunn

presented by New Ghosts Theatre Company

at Old Fitzroy Theatre until Oct 5

oldfitztheatre.com.au

Image by Phil Erbacher

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Ten Years to Home

2 Oct

This is a surprisingly fascinating piece.

The story it tells is very gentle. (I use the word story but, apparently, it’s non-fiction.)

Written by Sonal Moore, and directed by Neel Banerjee, the conceit is that the playwright has gathered her two adult children so that their grandparents can tell them about their migration to Australia from India. Interpolated between the conversations happening in something like the present are flashbacks to the 1960’s.

All the members of this family are played by actors, which might seem an incredibly odd thing to mention – except for the fact that this is a documentation of a real family history and the majority of the participants in this history are still with us. (Moore is played by Shabnam Tavakol, her two adult children by Karina Bracken & Madhullikaa Singh, and their grandparents by Taufeeq Ahmed Sheikh & Reema Gillani.)

I say the piece is surprisingly fascinating because it really shouldn’t work. After all, it doesn’t have the allure of narrative. There’s tender humour but little real tension. In literary terms, it’s a simple recount: the sort of thing listened to by polite friends or obliged family members. (The second of these being exactly who has been asked to pay attention to their grandparents in the scenes to which we are audience.)

Yes, the production could probably do with a bit more pace and sometimes the performers with a bit more vocal projection, but gradually, like the playwright’s two adult children, we’re drawn in – not by gawdy theatrics or attention seeking histrionics, but by the quiet, plain, unassuming Truth. This history, or one like it, is shared by so many Australians. We’re seduced by the piece’s mundanity, and if that sounds like a bad thing, I’d assert the world would gain enormously from learning to listen in quiet to the quiet. It’s not only how we’ll discover our shared humanity, it’s how we’ll further enrich it.

Paul Gilchrist

Ten Years to Home by Sonal Moore

Presented by Nautanki Theatre in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre

At KXT until 5 Oct

kingsxtheatre.com

Image by Kamal Khajuria

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I Worked with Heath Ledger Once…

28 Sep

It would be natural to assume, that as a theatre critic, I would relate to a story of a failed artist.

Jarred Keane plays Jeremy, an actor who’s made a pact with himself that he’ll quit if he hasn’t “made it” by 35.

Trouble is, 35 is hurtling towards Jeremy with the velocity of a dinosaur-ending rock.

Written and directed by Keane, this piece asks questions every performer should ask themselves:

Am I doing this for fame?

If so, WHY?

And how, EXACTLY, do I define success?

And is success really a HELPFUL concept?

Let me lay my cards on the table: I think the pursuit of fame is disturbing, at best symptomatic of a deep insecurity or at worst indicative of a myopic self-obsession. Similarly, I think success is a sloppy, problematic concept. Doing something successfully is a secondary virtue. The crucial issue is what you’re trying to do, not how well you do it. Surely, it’s better to fail at something worthwhile than succeed at something worthless. For example: Who’d want to be remembered for producing a piece of art that most effectively keeps the world small and cold? Alternatively, if being a success as an actor only means being able to earn a living wage from the craft, the concept loses its magic aura, and becomes akin to the success or failure you might have as, say, an Uber Eats delivery driver.)

Jeremy’s pact implies he isn’t really interested in art. (Stanislavsky said you should “love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art”.)

But as his deadline gets closer, Jeremy’s beginning to realise his simple ultimatum might just be that – too simple.

One possible catalyst for his change might be that a young filmmaker is shooting a documentary – with Jeremy as the subject. I don’t know why. It does allow the production to be a hybrid, with most scenes being played live but with sections of the documentary shown on a screen.

There are problems with pace. Everything would benefit from being faster, from the changeovers between scenes to the delivery of many of the lines. Some of the cast would also gain from a greater focus on vocal projection.

Jade Nicholson-Lamb as Nikki, Jeremy’s ex, has a wonderful stage presence, effectively portraying a woman who’s definitely moved on from a past relationship but refuses to dismiss it as merely a step in some upward progression, something to be kicked away and forgotten when finished.

Richard Cotter is very amusing, presenting a subtly satirical portrait of the experienced actor who’s worked with everyone – and makes sure you know it.

Lisa Hanssens plays a famous, successful filmmaker, more interested in art than fame and success. Hanssens has a gentle easy-going gravitas that makes for a magnetic performance.

I Worked with Heath Ledger Once playfully pokes at some unhealthy values that permeate the artistic world, and with some further tightening, it could prove the revitalising detox we need.  

Paul Gilchrist

I Worked with Heath Ledger Once… by Jarred Keane

At 107 Projects as part of the Sydney Fringe

until 28 September

sydneyfringe.com/events/i-worked-with-heath-ledger-once/

Image by Matej Hakl

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Gilgamesh

27 Sep

This is a world premiere, a collaboration between Sydney Chamber Opera, Opera Australia and Carriageworks, in association with Australian String Quartet and Ensemble Offspring.

Yes, that’s a lot of talent and expertise.

It’s an adaptation of an old tale, seriously old, possibly the oldest written tale we have. The original source was created in ancient Mesopotamia and was bubbling around in different forms from around 2100 BCE. It settled into The Epic of Gilgamesh around 1800 BCE and was rediscovered in the late nineteenth century. Since then it has increasingly become an inspiration for modern artists, including the novelist Saddam Hussein.

A more skilled adaptation is this one by Australian artists composer Jack Symonds and librettist Louis Garrick. (Though you can imagine my disappointment when I found the libretto was in English, not Ancient Sumerian. Ten Tuesday nights at a community college for nothing!)

One of the attractions of the tale is its sheer age. But why does age create an aura? Age doesn’t automatically guarantee value. (Left Field Example: Though no longer young, I still have my appendix – but that ancient organ is still here not because it’s valuable; it simply hasn’t tried to kill me yet.)

But Gilgamesh’s tale is so old it seems to come from the dawn of civilization. It feels like an origin story, and that genre is often used to explain inherent, irresolvable tensions.

In this particular tale, the tension is between civilization and nature.

Gilgamesh is king of Uruk, but he has become a tyrant (a danger inherent to all civilization.) To weaken him, the gods create Enkidu, a wild man, a natural man. However, before Enkidu confronts Gilgamesh, he’s prepared for life in the community – by a temple priestess. (So much for our idea that sex is so rock’n’roll; it’s actually one of the great glues of human society. Nature? Or civilization?)

Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight, and are revealed as equals. They become close friends and lovers. United, they challenge the monster who guards the Forest of Cedar, a natural resource that Gilgamesh has long coveted. (Once again, civilization versus nature.)

Not actually being fluent in Ancient Sumerian (the community college brochure promising more than the course actually delivered) I’m not sure whether this nature versus civilization motif is a layering of modern concerns on an ancient tale. I’m not sure it matters.

Whatever the case, the environmental strand disappears for a while as the tale explores the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, using it as a lens to consider fundamentals of the human condition, such as longing and mortality. Perhaps the environmental strand of the story doesn’t so much disappear as deepen, as human ambition and desire for dominance are questioned at an existential level.  

Symonds’ score is superb, sufficiently traditional to evoke the past (or at least the relatively recent past in which opera was created and the ancient world was rediscovered) and sufficiently contemporary to give the tale a vibrant immediacy. Its performance is thrilling, emotive and utterly engaging.

Director Kip Williams elicits from the cast brilliant physical performances. Mitchell Riley as Enkidu, his wildness slowly tamed but never completely erased, and Jeremy Kleeman as Gilgamesh, his arrogant regal bearing tested by the gods, are both outstanding.

Williams’ use of space is a delight. With costumer designer David Fleischer, set designer Elizabeth Gadsby and lighting designer Amelia Lever-Davidson, he creates a stunning visual world. In the vast stage of Bay 17, symbols of nature gradually mix with those of civilized decadence, and the final scene that completes this portrait of perpetual tension is theatrical magic.  

Paul Gilchrist

Gilgamesh by Jack Symonds and Louis Garrick

At Carriageworks until 5 Oct

carriageworks.com.au

Image by Daniel Boud

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Tom Moran is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar

25 Sep

Sometimes, when I’m tired or sick or hungry, I worry about silly things – like if I’m liked. And then I remember that some of the people in history I admire the most were burnt at the stake in the public square.

The desire to be liked is pretty universal, and sometimes problematic. When I work with young people, I always try to slip in the same piece of advice: Don’t worry if you’re disliked, because you’ll often be disliked for qualities and actions of which you should be rightfully proud. I’m looked at blankly, or with boredom tinged with disdain – and it becomes apparent that my advice, though unsolicited, is entirely sound.

In Tom Moran is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar, Moran tells us how so very desperately he has wanted to be liked. So desperate, that the desire has often trumped the truth.

Moran’s delivery is utterly superb, trippingly-on-the-tongue fast and strong … until it’s not, until it slows, until it softens, and with enormous emotional impact he shares moments of shame. The lighting design (Colin Doran) and soundscape (Aoife Kavanagh) beautifully accentuate this journey.

Directed by Davey Kelleher, the show is very funny and incredibly powerful; a brilliant performance by Moran.

If performance is the correct word. Presumably it’s a sharing, not a piece of fiction. (It’s odd how commonly we now do this on stage. Genuine honesty is rare enough in Life; in the theatre, until recently, it was completely unknown.) The whole thing feels a little like being at a support group – except that the guy whose turn it is to speak is absolutely riveting for 70 minutes straight.

The piece is about Moran and his family, and audiences will no doubt respond to the psychological particulars in different ways. Some might feel they’ve been invited to gaze through a portal into a bizarre alternative universe. From others it all might evoke a there-for-the-grace-of-God sort of response. Others still might feel the thrill of recognition, a realisation which can be either comforting or confronting, either assuring them they’re not alone, or challenging them that it can’t go on.

Of my three imagined responses, mine was of the first variety.

But undoubtedly, Moran is exploring one of the fundamental tensions in the human experience: the outside world is filled with people but your inside world is filled with you. How do we reconcile our social needs with the solitary aspect of consciousness? How does anything from that outer world become an unquestioned part of our inner world?

Is the only way out of these thorny dilemmas to focus on loving, rather than being loved?

This piece is fun, thought-provoking and soul-expanding.

Paul Gilchrist

Tom Moran is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar by Tom Moran

At New Theatre, as part of the Sydney Fringe Touring Hub

Until 28 September

https://sydneyfringe.com/events/tom-moran-is-a-big-fat-filthy-disgusting-liar/

Image by Owen Clarke

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Drink Rum with Expats

24 Sep

This is classic fringe theatre.

Sh!t theatre (creators and performers Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole) tell us how they got a gig to develop a piece of theatre in Malta. It’s to be presented at The Pub, a favourite haunt of British expats. (My choice of noun is deliberate; not expats, haunt; it’s the bar where Oliver Reed died. Not that the great actor has a continuing spectral presence; it’s just that, apparently, the venue milks the unfortunate incident for all it’s worth.)

Drink Rum with Expats is an intentionally playful, laidback telling. It’s constructed of bits and pieces: songs and sing-alongs (mainly drinking songs); slide shows and videos (caricatures of expats, screen shots of the daggy local media, snaps and reels revealing the beauty of the island); flash language lessons (fundamentals, like how to say penis in Maltese); free beer and rum (no joke); crowd surfing – and dancing (at least, impressions of Oliver Reed dancing).

Think of it as a trash and treasure stall, where in the ragged wildness of detritus true gold lies hidden. Or think of it as a mosaic, where the impressive, the inspiring, is made from many unlikely little parts. You could call it the theatrical equivalent of scrap-booking, except it’s terrific fun.

But what begins as a collection of cheeky anecdotes from a sun and booze holiday grows into a story of political awareness.

Ultimately, the show explores corruption and the plight of refugees. Expats party in Malta while those who manage to make it by raft from Libya are held in detention centres. But, at a more insidious level, we hear of the selling of European passports and the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who dared to challenge the practice. We see a deeply moving video of a protest attended by the performers, a candle lit vigil demanding truth and justice. (Convictions have since been made.)

The straightforward, overtly political approach works because the performers present as easy-going and fun-loving. What they say about the issues becomes indubitable – simple common sense. If only the world were cakes and ale. Alas, it’s not.

However, the show is a splendid example of theatrical exuberance, an invaluable reminder, that in the confrontation with the dark and dirty, the torch of truth might best be wielded by joy.

Paul Gilchrist

Drink Rum with Expats by Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole

at New Theatre, as part of The Sydney Fringe Touring Hub

until 28 Sept

https://sydneyfringe.com/events/drink-rum-with-expats/

Image supplied by Sh!t Theatre

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