UFO

26 Apr

When I was a child, my father would occasionally threaten to buy me a model train set. Fortunately for me, he retired early and had ample time to build his own. He laboured for seemingly endless hours in what came to be called “the train room”, one of the many rooms vacated in the family home by deserting children. Having spent forty years behind a desk as a railway clerk, my father needed to learn the skills required to create a miniature world (as against those required merely to survive one.)

Visits home invariably included visits to “the train room”, and seeing the set complete, not once did I wish my father had made good the threat that had hung over my early years. However, though a self-obsessed, opinionated twenty-something, I could still admire his skill and his effort, and found it easy to praise his achievement.

UFO, written by Kirby Medway and directed by Solomon Thomas, struck me as a bit of a train set. The 65 minute performance consists of four actors manipulating small models of themselves situated in a golf course (?), the site of a supposed UFO landing. The actors both voice the figurines and photograph them in the miniature landscape. These images are projected onto two large screens. The result is something like watching the creation of a stop motion animation.

Meticulously constructed, the images are beautiful and haunting.

The story is Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival meets Kafka’s The Castle meets Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s The Thunderbirds. It’s Arrival in that the characters are closely monitoring a landed UFO that may or may not be attempting to communicate with them. It’s The Castle because the characters are little people struggling to make sense of the human world, impotent and bewildered victims of a mysterious bureaucracy. It’s The Thunderbirds because … I used to really like The Thunderbirds.

There’s plenty of humour, which the cast (Matt Abotomey, James Harding, Angela Johnston and Tahlee Leeson) deliver wonderfully.

Because there’s such a focus on the technical side, it’s tempting to see this production as an experiment in form that has little interest in presenting meaning.

But, I guess, a bunch of tiny manipulated figures, who display only pettiness in the face of what is possibly the greatest challenge in human history, would seem for many a fitting metaphor for current affairs.     

Paul Gilchrist

UFO by Kirby Medway and Solomon Thomas

Produced by re:group performance collective

at Griffin until 29 April

griffintheatre.com.au

Image by Lucy Parakhina

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

9 Apr

The more discerning theatre-goer might surmise from the title that this is a comedy.

The fourth wall is firmly down as three actors share their attempt to present all 36 of Shakespeare’s plays.

Having said that, only Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Hamlet are presented in any meaningful way (providing that wacky parody fits your definition of ‘meaningful’.) Most of the other plays are merely namedropped. Considering the alternative, this is in no way a criticism.

As an abridgement of Shakespeare’s plays, The Complete Works is equivalent to summarising Moby Dick with the word ‘whale’.

Written by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield, it’s been kicking around since the 1980’s. Ironically, for a piece that responds to our obsession with the Bard, I’ve seen it more times than I’ve seen most of his plays.

There’s some theatre in-jokes, but no need for any knowledge of the canon. The whole thing operates simply as an opportunity for some seriously crazy comedy. It’s audacious, exuberant and effervescent. Under the skilful direction of Madeleine Withington, the brilliant cast (Alexander Spinks, Lib Campbell and Tel Benjamin) gives this madness the high energy performances it deserves.

Once or twice the poetic (though not the dramatic) genius of Shakespeare is allowed to shine through, creating a poignant contrast that only enhances our enjoyment of the zaniness.

The original play is designed to facilitate improv and extra dialogue, and this team add some contemporary sparkle. (Though I’m not sure the references to the venue, both its history and nature, are conducive to the openhearted relaxed mood required to appreciate this sort of playful froth.)

Rachel Scane’s design is magnificent. Part locker room, part synthetic playing court, and peopled with characters in daggy sportswear, it’s a world where the trivial competes with the impossible, as weirdly captivating as the silliest of Guinness Book of Record feats.

80 minutes of energising entertainment; Shakespeare would have loved it.

Paul Gilchrist

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield

presented by Precipice Creative

at Meraki Arts Bar until 22 April

meraki.sydney

Image by Clare Hawley

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Cherry Smoke

2 Apr

Theatre is a weird art form. (Though, they all are, if you think about it.) What’s odd about theatre is the predominance of interpretive artists. Compare it to visual arts and literature, which are filled with creative artists.

Let me explain. If you buy a play from overseas, or dip back into the canon, no-one in your team is doing the original creative work. Everyone is interpreting what already exists. And, in theatre, this is par for the course. (It could be argued it’s what actors and directors always do, no matter from where the play is sourced.)

In theatre, no-one blinks an eye when you choose to produce, say, Hamlet … again. What is important is your take on the play. On opening night your hope is not that someone will say something like “Where’s the playwright? I got to meet the guy who absolutely nailed the debilitating chasm between the brutal simplicity of action and the rich ambiguity of thought.” No, you hope the buzz is more: “Swahili speaking puppets? What a brilliant choice!”

As result, we get what I call “cover theatre” – in the way a band is said to do a “cover” when they play a song they didn’t write. Those sort of musicians are usually relegated to RSL clubs, but fortunately, in theatre, there’s no such privileging of originality. (And, please, read to the conclusion of my review before concluding my attitude to this phenomena.)

Consider Crisscross’ production of James McManus’ Cherry Smoke. The play is American and has been kicking around for a decade or so. But, here and now, director Charlie Vaux’s production is an invitation to an intriguingly foreign world. It’s brutal; these characters are from the south of the US, and they’re seriously down and out. Cherry (Meg Hyeronimus) is homeless, effectively abandoned by her deeply damaged, and damaging, family. She looks for more in Fish (Tom Dawson), her “angel”, but he was forced into the boxing ring as a child, and so violence, and the incarceration that often follows, is his existence. He knows there’s something wrong with the “wires” in his head. Duffy (Fraser Crane) tries to guide Fish, but it’s a challenging task, especially when his garage barely breaks even and his own relationship with Bug (Alice Birbara) is troubled. She desperately wants a baby, and her childminding and occasional midwifery is, in Fish’s words, like being an alcho working in a bar. She “hates God” because He won’t give her what she feels she needs.

How do you find hope in such a world? Well, Cherry espouses a sort of soft-metal romanticism. It’s tough, sensual and hyperbolic. She calls Fish “Baby” a lot, and can’t eat, or breathe (she says) without him. She claims Jesus once lit her cigarette, with His finger. The smoke was cherry coloured. She offered Him one, but apparently He’s trying to quit. Her conclusion: He’s broken – just as they all are. There’s little more religion than that in the play, but the sequence evokes perfectly the pathos of weaving meaning from scraps.

We do cover theatre like this because it reminds us of basics. The world of the characters is one in which a “meanness” swirls endlessly, and lands randomly, refusing to be shaken off. In this world, posited by McManus and brought back to life here by Vaux and his committed cast, we meet again those age old problems of suffering and evil.

And so, in KXT’s cool new space in Broadway, we’re invited to a foreign place, to be reminded of our common humanity.   

Paul Gilchrist

Cherry Smoke by James McManus

presented by Crisscross Productions in association with Bakehouse Theatre

until April 8 at KXT Broadway

www.kingsxtheatre.com/cherry-smoke

Image by Abraham de Souza

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APOCKA-WOCKA-LOCKALYPSE

28 Mar

There’s a long tradition of the subversive puppet. Think Punch and Judy, Lamb Chop, Basil Brush, Agro. These puppet’s cheekiness and exuberance challenge adult norms. They’re like a personification of the Medieval Carnival; they turn the world upside with their irrepressible glee. Brash and insensitive, they topple convention with their childlike mischievous simplicity. It’s as if, when all the hobgoblins perished in the searing sun of the Enlightenment, they reincarnated as puppets.

I’ve often wanted to write puppet reviews, to respond to shows with a refreshingly impertinent naïve directness. My puppet personality would write that Waiting for Godot is “repetitive rubbish”, that Hamlet is “indulgent slop”, that this show is “puerile nihilism”.

But I’m not a puppet, and my response to theatre is more adult. (‘Adult’ as in considered and staid, rather than ‘adult’ as in naughtily scatological and profanely sex aware, which is the way the word is used when a show like this is described as an ‘adult’ puppet show. )

Richard Hilliar’s Apocka-Wocka-Lockalypse is a heap of crazy fun. It’s post-apocalypse, a disaster brought on by human greed. Melissa has found haven in a bunker, which she shares with four furry little monsters. She is part nurturing house mother, part controlling authority figure. She and her monster ‘friends’ play out a children’s TV show. There’s no audience; it’s as though by continuing familiar routines they can assure themselves all is right with the world. They sing songs, play games, read children’s books and Melissa is Miss Melissa, the kind and caring adult who gently guides her little monster friends. Well, at least that’s how it begins.

The puppets, initially, have had much of their subversive element drained out of them. They behave as grateful but cowed children. Brilliantly crafted by Ash Bell, they’re gloriously brought to life by the cast – Matt Abotomey, Lib Campbell, Zoe Crawford and Nathan Porteous. There’s a wonderful magic in being able to see both puppet and operator, a mesmerising echo between the puppet’s reactions and that of the performers. Nicole Wineberg’s Miss Melissa is comic genius, a terrific parody of the children’s TV presenter with a magnificent black comedy shadow.

Hilliar’s script is very funny, capturing both the absurdity of the situation and its growing darkness.

There’s a couple of absolute stand out moments. Crawford’s performance of Alexander Lee-Rekers’ very clever song “Maybe a Baby” is both hilarious and heartbreaking.  Wineberg’s reading of a children’s book that is surprisingly and delightfully petty-minded is a riot.

Bell’s set beautifully mimics that of children’s TV set, with its bright, bold colours and its symbols of hope.

But what happens in this space belies the brightness.

Asking if saccharine positivity is really the cure for our current crises or merely a façade for malignant, manipulative forces, Apocka-Wocka-Lockalypse is a deliciously dark comedy.

Paul Gilchrist

Apocka-Wocka-Lockalypse by Richard Hilliar

presented by Tooth and Sinew

at Meraki Arts Bar until April 1

meraki.sydney

Image by Clare Hawley

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On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

23 Mar

Reincarnation is an alluring belief, and may even be true.

The depth of our emotions, especially for others, can lead us to feel that one life is not enough. Perhaps, somehow, there will be other lives in which our love can continue.

The problem – for those of us with a modern sensibility – is proof.

But none is needed. A belief (or faith or hope) in reincarnation requires no verification; its value is expressive. One might as well ask for proof that my favourite colour is blue.

In Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane’s musical, Dr Mark Bruckner hypnotises Daisy Gamble, in an attempt to understand her apparent Extra Sensory Perception. Exploring her memories, he discovers Melinda Wells, an English woman who passed over a century ago.

Perhaps my philosophical pretensions make the subject matter sound heavy, or just plain weird, but it’s not – it’s light, breezy, and beautiful; a glorious expression of our dearest desires.

The play has a history of revisions, and Jay James-Moody (who also directs and performs) has adapted and updated the original story. In this version, following a 2011 Broadway revision, Daisy is a gay man, David, and as Mark falls for Melinda, he must ask what are his feelings for the man in whom she resides. It’s all about…. fluidity.

James-Moody’s production is visually delightful, musically superb, and very funny. As David, James-Moody is both movingly vulnerable and deliciously comic. His timing is spot on. Melinda is played by Madeleine Jones with a mesmerizing pizazz. Blake Bowden’s Mark wonderfully captures both the psychologist’s obsessive drive for knowledge and the man’s desperate need for love.

The vocal performances are terrific, with highlights including “When we are 65” sung by James Haxby and James-Moody, “Don’t Tamper With My Sister” sung by Jones, “Come Back to Me” sung by Bowden, and the title song, performed by James-Moody, Jones and the company. Natalya Aynsley’s orchestra is brilliant. Choreography by Leslie Bell is cheeky and playful, perfectly suiting the gorgeously non-conventional relationships portrayed, and the cast perform it with aplomb.

On A Clear Day You Can See Forever is an exuberant reminder to look beyond the mundane and be open to the surprise of joy.

Paul Gilchrist

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane, revised and adapted by Jay James-Moody

presented by Squabbalogic and Seymour Centre

until 15 April

seymourcentre.com

Image by David Hooley

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Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica

16 Mar

It’s natural to assume, that as a theatre reviewer, I’d relate to a story about failed artists.

David Williamson’s Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica, directed by Mark Kilmurry, is a light two-hander, a gleeful rom-com, performed with comic expertise by Georgie Parker and Glenn Hazeldine.

It’s a simple tale of the need to be open-minded. (If you’re thinking No, not that again; I’ve had it up to here with that I salute your obtusity.)

Monica can no longer perform with the Sydney Symphony; tendonitis has robbed her of the ability to play the violin.

Her life is one of rage and renovations; rage at the injustice of a career cut short and renovations ….well, just renovations. She’s getting her kitchen done.

Gary does kitchens. He used to play country. Think Golden Guitar. And there’s nothing that makes you appreciate country music’s perpetual paean to loss more than installing kitchens when you were meant to be playing Tamworth.

Does this make them a pair of failed artists? Sort of. The true failure lies elsewhere. Apart from kitchen quibbles, their source of tension is the refusal to accept the other’s taste in music. She loves Mahler and Shostakovich; he loves Cline and Parton. In comic shorthand, she’s a snob, he’s a philistine. Narrow mindedness, of both types, has long been a source of laughter, and with it Williamson and these two wonderful actors make hay. Not that I’m suggesting with my rural reference that the play favours the unsophisticated – but it certainly makes a space for the sort of thing it is itself: unashamedly simple fun.

Before getting back to that failure thing, I’ll mention one scene in particular. The pair are out together for the first time. They’re at a pub in Glebe. Is it a date? Confronted by the possibilities the evening offers, Monica has drunk too much before Gary has even arrived. Is this a door opening or closing? It’s brilliant comic work from both Parker and Hazeldine, a spotlight on human ambiguity, an acknowledgement of multiplicities (which belies my earlier assertion about the play’s simplicity.)

And what is artistic failure – and we’re all artists – but the failure to say Maybe this too?

Paul Gilchrist

Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica by David Williamson

Ensemble Theatre until 29 April

ensemble.com.au

Image by Prudence Upton

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Gundog

13 Mar

Time’s a funny thing. Read this review and you will have lost several minutes. But those few minutes would have slipped by anyway, regardless of how you had chosen to spend them.

Time is …. a great mystery. (Did you, for even a single moment, think a theatre critic would actually be able to explain it?)

Despite our belief in progress, or perhaps because of it, our culture is particularly bewildered by time. On several occasions in Simon Longman’s gloriously rich Gundog, individuals look at the difficulties they face, the challenges of eking out a living on a small British farm, and demand what time, what year, is this? How could these problems be happening now?

Time takes things from us. Mum is gone. Dad is going. Grandad, played with both delightful humour and affecting pathos by Mark Langham, is also on his way out. His crazy repeated stories are unconscious attempts to halt time. Anna, the matriarch by default, has a more conscious way of dealing with loss; she repeats the mantra it will be alright. But at every reiteration we wonder, and Jane Angharad portrays Anna with an utterly arresting tension between those two oh so closely related rivals, patience and despair. For her brother, Ben, despair appears the stronger, and James Smithers brilliantly captures the character’s anger and helplessness. LJ Wilson plays little sister Becky with the glorious dawn energy of youth, but red sky in the morning is a shepherd’s warning ……

Yes, they are shepherds, and for me the play evokes that grand tradition, present in British literature since the Romantics, of the shepherds’ life being particularly precarious. As in Wordsworth’s “Michael” and Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, the loss of the flock is both terrifying and imminent. Yet this particular life is all these people know: time may take everything from us, but it is time that makes us feel this everything was ours. (What the play does not evoke is the religious sensibility of Blake’s “The Lamb”. There is no God, no benevolent overseer – only the encroaching darkness. This gritty, dismal world is powerfully suggested by Travis Kecek’s lighting design and Smither’s set.)

Despite all, immigrant worker Guy is glad to have food and board. Saro Lepejian’s offers a magnificent portrayal of modest, steel-in-the-spine gratitude. The silence of the country disturbs Guy. It is not silence, he says, that will save us. It is stillness.

He is not alone in this insight. In moving poetic language, several characters express the desire to stop time –  just for long enough to gain a little courage.

But you have not stopped time by choosing to read this review. And you will not stop time by getting along to director Anthony Skuse’s production of Gundog.

Still (yes, still), it is a beautiful production of a wondrous play.

Paul Gilchrist

Gundog by Simon Longman

presented by Secret House

at Kings Cross Theatre until 18 March

www.secrethouse.com.au/gundog

Image by Clare Hawley

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Comfort, Spin, Travel

3 Mar

They are in an Officeworks store. They’re trying out the different office wheely chairs, determining which is the most comfortable, which rotates the best, and which moves around the space most effectively. They’re not looking to purchase. They’re reliving a game they used to play with their much loved little sister.

Comfort, Spin, Travel (written by Lu Bradshaw and directed by Emma Burns) presents as a generous-spirited sharing of what it is to live as a trans person. Its focus is relationships – not romantic ones – but rather those had with strangers and acquaintances, friends and family. Clearly, all is not plain sailing. There are issues regarding the nature of allyship and solidarity, the use of pronouns and personal terms of address, the pressure to advocate, the right to body modification, the importance of safe spaces … and of basic acceptance.

Performer Hadrian Conyngham has an extraordinarily engaging stage presence. The moment of coming out (“I no longer identify as a girl”) is presented with an everyday gentleness, a domestic ordinariness, that underlines its poignancy. The tale of dealing with cisgendered female friends who feel they can crash Queer Night is both an amusing self-deprecating anecdote and a moving expression of anger.

Setting the story in a late night visit to a stationery store allows for some delightful cameos from the supposed staff. Rachel Seeto, on stage throughout, creates a deliciously comic character, capturing both the lethargic alienation of the young student forced to work in retail and the vibrant human soul beneath.

This piece makes some fascinating dramatic choices. I suggested it presented as a ‘sharing’, and the honest expression of the difficulties experienced by a trans person suggests it is non-fiction, but the Officeworks scenario and the repeated reminders that the narrator might be unreliable evoke the opposite. (The press release tells me the piece is a semi-autobiographical creation of the writer.)  

Another intriguing choice is the playful conceit of the trying of the different chairs, a conceit which invites comparison with the serious story, the one about identity. Is it a trivialisation? No, it’s a theatrical artifice that forefronts the tension between choosing and being. From the outside, the chair a person ultimately chooses appears subjective; from the inside, it is an expression of the individual’s objective reality.

Which leads me to the other musing this piece launched me on. I’m not really riffing on the LGBTQIA+ moniker, but it is true that we are often tempted to view our identity as though it were like a letter in an alphabet. Who we are, is who we are. ‘B’ is not defined by ‘A’, or ‘C’, or ‘D’. They are just other letters, separate and distinct. But the phenomena of identity is perhaps more like numbers. The number ‘2’ is defined by the number ‘1’. The number ‘15’ is in a fundamental relationship with ‘14’. (For fun, or something approximating it, Google the meaning of ‘15’. Go on.) Despite the desperate weirdness of my analogy, I think it encapsulates the situation. Our identity is a deeply personal, existential thing, but it is – at least partly – dependent on society. We can identify any way we want, but if this identity is not accepted by others, we are troubled, or tortured or erased… Even the concept of pride is reactionary: an assertion that I am valuable despite any negativity from you. That the experience of identity is both personal and social is one of the great unresolvable tensions in the human condition. I imagine no-one would endure this tension if they could transcend it (but that might be more indicative of the limits of my imagination than the actual variety of lived lives.)

My self-indulgent philosophical ramblings aside, Comfort, Spin, Travel is a beautiful, vital little piece of theatre.

Paul Gilchrist

Comfort, Spin, Travel by Lu Bradshaw

presented by Fruit Box Theatre

at Meraki Arts Bar until 11 March

www.fruitboxtheatre.com.au/comfort-spin-travel

Image by Matthew Miceli Photography

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Choir Boy

28 Feb

Choir Boy explores the experience of a young queer man in an environment that frowns on difference.

It’s an absolutely beautiful piece. The songs are traditional spirituals performed a cappella, and with the guidance of musical director Allen René Louis, the cast present them brilliantly. Directors Dino Dimitriadis and Zindzi Okenyo elicit wonderful dramatic performances from the entire cast, and splendidly choreographed movement by Tarik Frimpong aids both the musical numbers and the scenic transitions.  

Tarell Alvin McCraney’s script is captivating and thought-provoking. Set in a boys’ high school of predominantly African-American students, it’s a fascinating exploration of the tensions within a group that we – on the other side of the globe – can be tempted to perceive as monolithic. Oh, if everyone just stayed in their box, life would be so simple ….and dull, and oppressive, and untrue. (Individuals remain in their allotted boxes only in bad art, and worse politics.)

Pharus is the choir leader; he’s gifted both musically and  intellectually, and he wants those gifts recognised, but his queerness challenges those around him. Darron Hayes’s portrayal of Pharus is utterly engaging and deeply moving. He presents a glorious talent, whose oscillation between cockiness and self-doubt is an understandable reaction to a small world. 

But the play offers multiple scenes in which individuals refuse to be contained or constrained.  Anthony, Pharus’ roommate (in a uplifting portrayal of openheartedness by Quinton Rofail Rich) shares an anecdote about his shock at his brother’s homophobia. Pharus delivers an electric speech challenging reductive interpretations of traditional spirituals: were they really just code use by the enslaved to fool the oppressors or, like all human expression, are they complex, multifaceted and so truly alive? Pharus even engages in a surprisingly stimulating verbal quibble with his nemesis, Bobby (portrayed by Zarif with a magnificent aura of brooding menace.) Should we speak of “slaves” or “the enslaved”? The former was good enough for Michelle and Barack, but ways of seeing develop, offering further opportunities for humanity to flourish. No box is ever big enough.

McCraney creates two adult characters who offer the younger men models of maturity, that open-eyed acceptance of complexity. There’s the teacher who runs a critical thinking course, portrayed by Tony Sheldon with that delightful collision of social awkwardness and intellectual grace of the academic. And there’s Headmaster Marrow, played by Robert Harrell, in a powerful portrait of authority and concern. Marrow must maintain school rules, and that might be of little help to Pharus, but inherent in the principal’s discussions of school boards and student codes is a hidden, hopeful reminder that our judgements are created things. All can be made anew.  

Paul Gilchrist

Choir Boy by Tarell Alvin McCraney

Presented by National Theatre of Parramatta in association with Sydney WorldPride

Until 11 March at Riverside Theatres

riversideparramatta.com.au/show/choir-boy/

Image by  Phil Erbacher

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CAMP

22 Feb

I love a good piece of history. I love stories that model change.

I’ve noticed in this year’s Pride Festival an interest in history; an awareness that, while change is still required, much has been achieved.

Because it has duration, drama is a perfect artform to explore change. When the house lights finally come up at the end of the performance, where the characters are – and where you are – is usually a long way from where you all began.

I suspect another reason that artists exploring the queer experience are currently interested in history is that the generation who began the public fight for rights are, if they’re still with us …of a certain age. Stonewall was in 1969. The first Sydney Mardi Gras in 1978. It’s a good time to honour and celebrate their achievements.

(I also suspect an older generation of activists might tire of an attitude sometimes expressed by those newer to the fight, an attitude of ‘Why isn’t the world the way I want it to be? What have you people been doing?’ It’s an attitude whose close cousin is the complaining ‘Karen’, she who’s always demanding to see the manager, whose sense of entitlement blandly assumes the automatic existence of structures that have to be both built and maintained.)

Elias Jamieson Brown’s CAMP presents the exploits of the Campaign Against Moral Persecution, a group of activists who in 1971 were the first in Australia to hold a public gathering of gay women and men.

The play presents their struggles to build awareness and achieve justice, and the personal challenges they faced. Particularly precious is the focus on the lesbian experience (maybe I should get out more, but it’s still a representation that gladdens my soul the rare times I see it). I’m not sure if the characters are fictional or if they’re based on specific historical individuals, but they’re fully and richly human, a glorious mix of failings and flaws, passion and determination. Petty jealousies vie with noble dreams (the surest test of human reality) and for these beautiful portraits of living souls we have to thank Jamieson Brown’s script, Kate Gaul’s direction and the gifted cast.

Our focus is on Krissy (Jane Phegan), Jo (Tamara Natt) and Tracy (Lou McInnes) as they navigate the tension between private needs and group goals. (It’s great to see these tensions represented on stage. It’s the romanticisation of political engagement that so often robs us of agency; a portrait of activism as utterly exciting only enervates us when we find it merely necessary.)

In wonderfully realised transitions and tableaux, Gaul powerfully presents a world of action, where the co-existence of the political and the personal is made manifest.  

Juxtaposed with scenes set in the 1970’s, Jamieson Brown shows us the women as they are now, played respectively by Anni Finsterer,  Genevieve Mooy and Sandie Eldridge. It’s over forty years later, and much has been gained, and much has …changed. It’s an intriguing device, an invitation to consider time, that great gift, the one which always goes, whether we use it or not.

How should we use it?

This is big, bold, inspiring theatre, with a very human heart.

Paul Gilchrist

CAMP by Elias Jamieson Brown

presented by Siren Theatre Co and Seymour Centre in association with Sydney WorldPride

at Seymour Centre until 4 March

www.seymourcentre.com/event/worldpride-2023-camp/

Image by Alex Vaugh

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