Review: Australia Day

Australia Day
Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company
26 April 2012
Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 26 May
mtc.com.au

Jonathan Biggins's Australia Day is as Aussie-Aussie-Aussie as a CWA lamington and as comforting as wrapping a sausage (animal or soy) in white bread and adding tomato sauce.

The MTC pack us into the 4WD for a day trip to generic-regional Coriole where the Australia Day Committee are planning the annual celebration on the oval. There's Brian (Geoff Morrell), Mayor and running for Liberal pre-selection;  Robert (David James),  Brian's best mate and next in line to be Mayor; Wally (Peter Kowitz), a local builder who calls a spade a spade; Marie (Valerie Bader), the CWA rep who loves her grandkids; Helen (Alison Whyte), a sea changer, Birkenstock-wearing, single mum Greens council member; and Chester (Kaeng Chan), an ABV (Australian born Vietnamese) primary school teacher.

These are folk who say "get a wiggle on" and "what's eating you". We know them so well (even if we haven't met anyone like them) and the planning meetings are so real that they send shivers of recognition through anyone who has sat on a committee or spent hours dealing with the public liability nightmare that the sausage sizzle has become.

Written after his experience as a Australia Day Ambassador (unrecognised by everyone in the towns he visited), Biggins's capture of small town (or any) politics is spot on. His characters are created from love and a begrudging respect, and there can't be anyone who doesn't recognise this type of event with its cricket match, karate display, vintage Datsun 180bs and backed up porta loos.  The result is the kind of genuine and hearty laughs that come from seeing our world and knowing that we're part of it

This world never disappoints our expectations – or question them.  The Greens chick is a 40ish chick who insists on a welcome to country, thinks a snag sizzle is culturally offensive, rides a bike and questions the Indigenous voice in the the local dance school's Godwana display. Pudgy, bearded Wally is a wally who doesn't care that he's called a racist and a misogynist by the Greens bitch. And there's jokes about a middle-age, small-business owning man not being able to get Liberal pre-selection; jokes about Chester being Chinese (Vietnam is like China's New Zealand he explains) and Marie gets in a tizz when she thinks she might get to make a cake for former First Lady Jeanette Howard.

It may challenge a dude like Wally who think an Asian face in a country town is an unusual site, but that's not the people who see Australia Day in a posh city theatre.

Don't think that I didn't enjoy it. I did. It's harmless entertainment and will rightly be one of the most popular shows this season, but like a lamington, it's mostly white and light and forgotten a few minutes later rather than savoured, remembered and thought about for days after.

This review was on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Jeff Busby.

Review: Not Quite Out of the Woods

Not Quite Out of the Woods: The Wharf Revue
MTC presents an STC production
7 January 2011
Sumner Theatre
to 29 January 2011
www.mtc.com.au

Three leftie boomers from Sydney

Best known for being on TV

Came down to Melbs with their revue

To laugh at our pollies, old and new.

One boomer made Pyne and Oakes tree puns

Two boomers laughed at Amanda V's bum

Three boomers scoffed at Don Watson

And they sang G and Sullivan...

Jonathon Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott and written and performed the popular Wharf Revue since 2000 and are widely known for their stage and TV show Three Men and A Baby Grand. Their theatre, opera and TV pedigrees are long enough to use 6 point font on the program and they have been joined by Amanda Bishop to play the girl parts.

If (unlike me) you can't sing along to The Mikado and quote Don Watson, don't remember Bill Hayden or watch QandA and Media Watch,  you'll miss the intricacies of the wit, but you won't miss the jokes.

As it should be, many giggles are about our newest Prime Minister. The one who looks like a woman. The one who isn't keen on a threesome with the three independents, who are in a bed together. The ranga who might not have red pubes. The one who humiliated Kevin07 because he was rolled by a sheila. The one without a willy. The amount of jokes about our PM's gender outweighed those about her politics. Imagine the uproar if Mrs Slocombe and her pussy had been made floor supervisor at Grace Brothers and you'll be on the same level. None of which makes Bishop's Gillard anything less than a highlight of the evening.

There are other women to lampoon and Amanda Vandstone and Julie Bishop are always deserving targets. I've thought it was because their politics and opinions reek of self-interest, lack empathy and fail to reflect the society they were elected to serve. Nup. We laugh at Julie because she has that weird eye thing and at Amanda because she's fat, and in Italy living "La Dolce Big Eater. Apparently she's also a racist bitch and refers to dagos and wops.

But it's not just unattractive righty women who get the boot. There's Michelle Grattan and her big glasses and Annabel Crabb with her big hair. If you don't read their political coverage and opinion, don't worry because you'll recognise them from the telly and that's all you need to laugh.

So many jokes were based on physical recognition and a political/social knowledge on par with a channel 10 news update. Bob H likes a tipple, Bob B likes a man date, Mark L is bitter, Sarah P is right wing,  Germans are still Nazis (lucky denial rhymes with Seig Heil), hippies and poofs like whales, and it's a cack to call the Japanese yellow bastards if it's in reference to whaling and sung to Gilbert and Sullivan.

Or am I just up on my high horse and siding with the humourless gen X gays, foreigners and feminists who take everything personally and wouldn't know a joke if it fell out of their Holiday Season cracker?

What I don't understand was who Not Quite Out of the Woods was speaking to. Surely it's more than wealthy baby boomers who support private education and arts funding and would never discuss politics or religion at a dinner party?  Political satire makes me cry with laughter when it laughs at me. The Don Watson's Party sketch hit the mark with jokes about the intelligentsia who still go to David Williamson plays, remember a time when the Labor party meant something to them and are stuck talking to themselves. It may be elitist humour, but at least it's laughing at people who buy theatre tickets instead of chicks, fats, gays and slanty-eyes.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

Avenue Q

Avenue Q
Arts Asia Pacific
4 June 2009
The Comedy Theatre

Strip down to your felt, put your finger “there” and be as loud as the hell you want, as you joyously scream for Avenue Q. Or at least click away from the porn for a minute.

We’ve been waiting, we’ve been hoping and now Melbourne has seen Australia’s first Avenue Q - and it was worth the wait. Too often the big shows have had the life and soul McDisneyfied out of them, but this Avenue is as fresh Lucy T Slut, as original Brian’s joke and as nasty as Mrs Thisletwat.

If you haven’t heard “It sux to be me”, “If you were gay”,  "The internet is for porn" or “Everyone’s a little bit racist”, Avenue Q is Sesame St for grown ups, with people and puppets, monsters and humans all living on a less-than-posh New York street.

As the Street is about learning about life, so is the Avenue. And there are still plenty of lessons to be learnt once you’ve left college, be it about unemployment, homelessness, racism, swine flu or what you’d do if you were the cutest little black kid on TV and became a broke has-been by the time you hit puberty.

The Q subversively exposes the layer of our lives that suck (suck as in “bad”, not as in suck like Rod’s girlfriend from Canada – who sucks like a Hoover). But schadenfreude (don’t worry you’ll learn all about it) always makes us feel better, and there’s plenty of misfortune to laugh at on the Avenue, as love can go wrong, you’ll have no purpose in life, be worried about being a homo-whatever and or be stuck with a fucking BA in English – and I’m not talking about the audience..

Under the mighty fine direction of Jonathan Biggins, the Australian cast are a dream, all following the lead of Mitchel Butel as Rod and Princeton. Every time I see Butel on a stage, I want to join the Mitchel fan club and force lesser performers to sit and watch him until they too begin to get what being on a stage is all about. Even with his hand up a puppet, you forget about the performer and only see the character.

Avenue Q will let you laugh til you cry and cry til you laugh. I’m still singing “Fine, Fine Line” and think I want to stop shaving and grow a layer of all over fur, just so I can hang out with the Bad Idea Bears and surf the net with Trekkie.

Or just see it for the sex. And yes, now you can click back to the porn.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.