Review: The Temple

The Temple
Malthouse Theatre and Pan Pan
8 May 2019
Beckett Theatre
to 26 May
\malthousetheatre.com.au

The Temple. Photo by Pia Johnson

I went into The Temple knowing as little as I could about it. I left not knowing much more.

But I know a theatre reviewer having a week when they couldn't write would fit in very well on that stage.

The Malthouse co-production with Ireland's Pan Pan theatre ( Playing The Dane, 2011) was developed in rehearsals by director Gavin Quinn and the cast – Aljin Abella, Ash Flanders, Mish Grigor, Marcus McKenzie and Genevieve Giuffre. Guiffre replaced Nicola Gunn who worked on the development.

There's a line where process and on-stage look-at-me indulgence smash together and create art. The Temple does this, but it's far more successful when it fails and collapses into almost incomprehensible chaos.

The Temple is whatever it needs to be. With yellow walls, cheap chairs and a table filled with too-bright cordials to drink (designer Aedín Cosgrove), it could be a church, an addiction meeting, a reality game show or a residential therapy centre. Or whatever you want it to be.

It's every work training session I've been forced to go to, every conference, every bloody yoga retreat I chose to go to, every hope that maybe some intense time with strangers will be fun or enlightening or bearable. They're not. Strangers are the worst. Strangers who know they can be whatever and whoever they want to be without consequences are more the worst.

Each character is a version of the actor. Maybe turned up a lot. Maybe nudged down a smidge. Maybe just without their off switch. Their stories are as likely to be true as they are fiction created by someone else. Their behaviour is at best frustrating, which is often harder to deal with than when they are mean.

It's selfish behaviours without the fear of being cruel. Imagine being able to do what you want and say exactly what you think without the fear of consequence or repercussion? Maybe a reviewer doesn't fit in on that stage.

Drink The Temple Kool-Aid. Even if you don't know the reference. Even if you don't like it or have any idea what it's all about.

How to Fringe 2017: Genevieve Giuffre

Genevieve Giuffre
Actor
(also recently finished Lilith: The Jungle Girl at Edinburgh Fringe)

Genevieve Giuffre

The Melbourne Fringe in three words.
ABSOLUT–LEE–EREBODY

A favourite Melbourne Fringe memory.
I remember seeing The unspoken word is ‘Joe’ at La Mama in 2012 and loved it. What a Fringe Bizarre!

Your experience as an independent artist being part of the Melbourne Fringe.
I haven’t done a Melbourne Fringe yet! Hoping for 2018.

What makes the Melbourne Fringe unique?
The fresh Melbourne/Sydney/Straya talent!

Your advice for choosing what to see in the Melbourne Fringe.
Go through the manual/web site and follow your hunch. You may only get one chance to see The marriage of kim k (a new opera based on The Marriage of Figaro.)

Do you think there’s a better system than star ratings for reviews?
Maybe a flavour chart? I really liked in Edinburgh when performers would say, “This shows not for everyone but if you know someone who’d love it, spread the word!”

Five shows/events that you will not miss at the 2017 Melbourne Fringe.
Let’s get Practical! Live. Presented by The Very Good Looking Initiative
Betty GRUMBLE: Sex Clown Saves the World
The Super Queer Murderess Show. A marginalia of fatal femmes
ECHO
The Sky is Well Designed

What Melbourne Loved in 2016, part 9

Today we here from three amazing kick-arse women and actors: Andi Snelling, Mary Helen Sassman and Genevieve Giuffre.

And we're reminded that La Mama turns 50 next year. Here's to spending a lot of time in Carlton next year.

Andi Snelling
actor

Andi Snelling. Photo by Sarah Walker

AS's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: I'm the sort of person who uses the word "love" a lot. And I do mean it when I say it. I love colour co-ordination. I love satire. I love cry-laughing. And I really, really, really super love theatre. This year, I recall saying the word "love: in relation to something I’d seen on a stage in these ways:

Am I Right Ladies? (Luisa Omielan, MICF): I loved the dance party atmosphere Luisa created as you entered and exited her show. It made me feel like everyone in the audience had suddenly come together to be in the same feminist, fist-pumping gang. Like we instantly got every other stranger in the room. It was that simple and powerful.

Nelken (Tanztheater Wuppertal, Adelaide Festival*): I loved this show and the way I ended up there. Sometimes with theatre, you don’t go to it, it comes to you. I randomly wound up with a ticket to this show via a fortuitous conversation with someone I bumped into at the Adelaide Fringe Artists Bar. You know, one of those a-performer-I-met-once-at-a workshop type connections? He had accidentally gone on the wrong night to the show, but the ushers, for whatever reason**, hadn’t noticed his tickets were for the following night and they let him in and he somehow got seats. So on the real night that the tickets were valid for, I ended up going! I had second row seats so could literally smell the Nelken (carnations) – actually, they were fake, but I could definitely smell them, that’s how excited I was to be there. Apart from the show's historical significance, I feel like this was the first time I saw Tanztheater done the way it's meant to be done. I've always felt actors lack physical expertise and dancers lack acting expertise, so seeing these two elements beautifully melded together hit my heart hard. This experience was one that goes well beyond the minutes and seconds of the show itself.

* I know it’s not a Melbourne theatre moment, but I’m a sometimes rule-breaker and this was my favourite show of the year. (SM: Breaking rules is a rule here.)

** I like to think they subliminally knew that Andi Snelling chick just has to see this.

Purge (Brian Lobel, MICF): I loved the way something of significance in my life changed because of this show. Purge was totally out-of-the-box: part–game show, part–love story and part-lecture, which got my cry-laughing juices going (which you already know is a thing I love). It was a highly interactive theatrical experience in which Brian shared his story about how he had kept or deleted 1300 of his Facebook friends, based on strangers' decisions. During the show itself, I ended up on stage re-friend requesting an old friend who I had unfriended the year before after a bitter falling out. This personal moment for me became a personal moment for everyone in the audience that day. And I wasn't the only one who got up. I realised how extraordinary it was that a kooky comedy show had got me reflecting so soberly on my connection to the humans in my world.

What AS is looking forward to in 2017: Somehow managing to score a free ticket to The Book of Mormon!

SM: I love anyone who uses the word love even more than I do. Andi's Deja Vu at Melbourne Fringe was dance theatre at its best. It was emotionally dark and at times very weird; for most of it, I had no idea what it was about or what was going on – and that was the point. I loved being able to sit and watch a performer without having to assign any meaning that wasn't my own. It was like crawling around in emotion and not being able to tell which were hers and which were mine.

andisnelling.com

Mary Helen Sassman
actor

Mary Helen Sassman. Photo by Brett Boardman

MHS's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: I guess I can't name watching my four-year-old make his ballet debut in an excerpt from The Nutcracker as my faourite moment in a theatre in 2016?  It's not what you think, it's just that I got to watch his face in the theatre after his item had ended as he fell deeply in love for the very first time. Awwwwww.

I have two legitimate favourite moments to share:  One was to witness the harrowing transformation of Jane Montgomery Griffiths as a woman dying in Wit. She killed it. She crushed me. She is remarkable.

The other was Jess Thoms in Backstage in Biscuitland. I howled with laughter and crumbled with shame while she performed with vulnerability, with sheer resilience and at every step with consumate story telling skill.  This was the piece I raved about in the school yard.

What MHS is looking forward to in 2017: La Mama turns 50!!! What does this mean? Well, a party of course. But also a book on the history of my favourite theatre (oh the stories, oh the pics!) And then a season curated by Liz Jones where she has invited loads of excellent people who have worked here to present a work for a few nights.  The rest of this town might as well shut down for a time – it's going to be jam packed and so much fun!

Oh, Joan (The Rabble) at Theatre Works will surely be AMAZING (I'm not in it so I'm allowed to say that). In fact, I'd take out a subscription to the entire 2017 Theatreworks program if I could.

And my now five-year-old wants to sign up for jazz and acro next year and that might just trump 'em all.

SM: Mary Helen acts from a place so deep inside her that it feels like we're watching something secret. As for a moment: steak and glitter in Cain and Abel.

Genevieve Giuffre
actor

Genevieve Giuffre

GG's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: I loved Hissy fits menacing work I might blow up someday for FOLA. After a long winter of some pretty boring theatre in London, it was so nice to be beaten and tackled to the ground by a giant head banging Bratz doll (main man Nat Randall).

I can still see Mark Wilson's body contorting in front of a black curtain in Anti-Hamlet (what a great show!) The "SORRY" on fire in Blaque Showgirls after the sorry not sorry dance. Ben Grant's yogo and wigs nightmare in The Rug, and how Zoe Coombs Marr's Trigger Warning emerged  like a phoenix out of a desolate tip of a year for independent funding and support.

What GG is looking forward to in 2017:  The next generation taking over... but in the meantime, The Homosexuals or Faggots, Joan, Merciless Gods, The Book of Exodus 1 & 11 and of course the return season of Playing to Win.

SM: This is easy: every moment Genevieve was on stage in Lilith, the Jungle Girl. She captures the soul of broken people and makes their pain so hilarious that it hurts to keep watching because you're trying to laugh and cry at the same time.

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6
part 7
part 8
2014
2013
2012

Review: Lilith, The Jungle Girl

Lilith: The Jungle Girl
Neon Next and Sisters Grimm
3 September 2016
The Lawler
to 1 October
mtc.com.au

Candy Bowers, Genevieve Giuffre in Lilith: The Jungle Girl. Photo by Jeff Busby

My review is in The Age/SMH.

Ash Flanders in Lilith: The Jungle Girl. Photo by Jeff Busby

Last Chance: The Good Person of Szechuan

The Good Person of Szechuan
Malthouse Theatre and National Theatre of China
2 July 2014
Merlyn Theatre
to 20 July
malthousetheatre.com.au

Photo by Pia Johnson

The Good Person of Szechuan. Epic!

And it finishes on Sunday. So there's still a chance to see it again.

The cast and performances are divine (even the ones playing gods), the design is somewhere between wtf and wow, the text is Aussie and the direction's Chinese. And it's as Brechtian as Brecht can be.

Brecht was a German modernist and a Marxist who rejected the emotional heart-grab of namby pamby naturalism and wrote theatre that was about understanding the manipulation and falsity of realistic storytelling in order to see the creation of fiction by rulers, governments and politicians. He wrote because he saw his world being torn apart.

Be it sense, fate or luck, he left his home in Germany in 1933 and moved around Europe (avoiding German invasion) and before going to the USA in 1941. He began Good Person in 1938 and completed it in 1943; no wonder there's enough content in this play to make it feel like it's written for any audience who have seen it since.

Set in a fictional Szechuan-cum-Berlin-cum-Melbourne-cum-AnyCity, it's about three gods coming to earth to find good people. It doesn't take long for them to settle for finding one good person. With the help of a water seller, they meet prostitute Shen Te, who gives them a room for the night and is rewarded with enough money to buy a tobacco shop. And then it gets really hard for her to maintain her goodness.

Photo by Pia Johnson

This version is by Tom Wright, who makes it sound like it was written in Melbourne. And it's directed (in translation) by Chinese director Meng Jinghui, whose work in China comes close to having a cult following. His Rhinoceros in Love was part of the 2011 Melbourne International Arts Festival. I didn't get it. However, I was sitting next to a group of young Chinese women who didn't stop laughing. It clearly spoke to them, and to so many others; it's been in ongoing production in China since 1999. I wanted to know what I was missing.

But I got The Good Person of Szechuan. Perhaps all I needed was a slither of familiarity.

And from the gods arriving with shopping bags and looking like bridezilla Madonna (Christian and pop) icons (design by Marg Horwell), it's a world that's filled with the nearly unrecognisable familiar.

From designer dresses (thank you audience member for telling me that they are genuine expensive frocks and not be-dazzled K-Mart t-shirts) to the smoke machine, piles of baby dolls and the live musician (THE SWEATS) in a glass box, there are no secrets but this forced distancing is combined with performances that draw us back into the world and make us see it as us and ours.

And Moira Finucane, Genevieve Giuffre, Emily Milledge, Josh Price, Bert LaBonté, Richard Pyros, Aljin Abella and Daniel Frederiksen! What more do I need to say.

The friend who came with me did have something else to say and she said it to the man who was sitting two rows behind us, Minister Malcolm Turnball.

"At the after party, I slyly bumped into him accidentally, so he had to notice me. After introductions, I questioned him about what was happening to the boatload of Tamil asylum seekers. His answer was, 'I don't know'. He tried to reassure me they were safe because we were 'looking after them'. I politely berated him about it and he really didn't have much to say. Finally I said, 'You've just seen a play by Brecht. What do you think he'd have to say about this?' Malcolm: 'I know what he'd have to say'. Me: 'Exactly."

I loved this production because it must be talking to those who don't care about Tamil refugees and carbon taxes and slow internet. It's made for our Malcolm Turnballs. If those in power can see the world how we do, surely they'll change.

Nup.


PS. I'm blaming my computer for losing my real review. And by computer, I mean I accidentally deleted it.

Review: Summertime in the Garden of Eden

Summertime in the Garden of Eden
Sisters Grimm and Theatre Works
10 November 2013
Theatre Works
to 16 November (and then to GriffinTheatre in Sydney)
theatreworks.org.au

Last year, the Sisters Grimm put on a show in a backyard shed in Thornbury. They pushed the crap aside and brought in some op shop curtains and folding chairs. It was nigh on impossible to get one of those seats and Melbourne was split into those who saw Summertime in the Garden of Eden and those who did not.

But – praise be – Summertime's deep south has returned to Melbourne's inner south and there might be some tickets left for the Theatre Works season, but get in quick because ticket sales prove that missing it isn't an option, unless you go to Sydney for the Griffin season.

Declan Greene and Ash Flanders formed the Sisters because they were bored to tears by the dullness of mainstream  theatre. From making venues out of any available space, they're now being invited onto mainstream stages (Little Mercy recently went to the STC and The Sovereign Wife was created for the MTC's Neon program), but they have consistently ensured that they embrace the extra budget and broader audience with the same mix of disdain and love that got them there in the first place.

Summertime (written by Greene and Flanders) is a Gone-With-the-Wind-cum-Tennessee-Williams Georgia. The rumblings of war and change are heard, but mean little as Daisy Mae (Agent Cleave), Big Daddy (Bessie Holland), Mammy (Genevieve Giuffre) and Daisy's beau (Peter Paltos) prepare for the return of prodigal sister Honey Sue (Olympia Bukkakis).

Saying more about gender, race and class (and theatre audiences) than a posh university full of earnest arts students, their shocking secrets are revealed in a story that makes perfect sense in the world where debutantes have full beards and a golliwog doll is cheered.

And, being a Sisters's show, it's tear-wiping painfully funny. It's not easy to laugh at the likes of Big Daddy's abuse of Mammy and the revelation of what Honey Sue saw in the greenhouse, but it's impossible not to.

Following the shed-chic of its first outing, first-time Sister and designer Marg Horwell had to create a new world to bring it into a theatre.  In this south, the cotton is high, the horse is crocheted and the flowering plant holders are macrame, and – along with Katie Sfetkidis's emotion-churning lighting – this overwhelmingly beautiful world re-defines high-camp trash with a look that's as outrageously glorious and sharply intelligent as its writing.

And the costumes! From Mammy's white trash wigger garb to dangerously swirly hooped dresses and a finger licking Big Daddy, the costumes show character with a glance and suit each performer so much that it's hard to imagine anyone else wearing them.

And the cast! With Greene's direction keeping the story tight and forcing everyone to the edge of no return, they balance a pin head between caricature and originality that teases with its familiarity and turns to run squealing into the unexpected. And their endless pain and repression is shriekingly funny.

I loved the backyard chooks and VB fridge of the shed show, but all little Sisters grow up to discard their training bras and dance in a bigger world. Summertime in the Garden of Eden is as shocking and hilarious as any of their earlier works, but they've transformed their atrocious aesthetic into something exquisite.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Mini review: Salome

HELIUM

Salome
Little Ones Theatre and Malthouse Theatre
30 August 2013
The Tower, Malthouse theatre
to 14 September
malthousetheatre.com.au

"Dance for me, Salome!" Never has Oscar Wilde been so gay – and he was in prison for sodomy and gross indecency when his play Salome was first performed in 1896.

Little Ones Thearte's HELUIM-season production of Wilde's Salome is so gloriously indecent that if it were performed in the 1890s, cast, producers, audience and passers by would be in the cells with Oscar.

According to the Bible, Herod wanted to see his step daughter, Salome, dance and promised her anything in exchange. She asked for the head of John the Bapsist. Wilde wrote his version of this story in French in 1891 and it was published in 1893. There were plans for a 1892 London season, but it was illegal to portray Bible characters, so its first performance was in Paris.

Wilde wrote Salome as a tragedy, but director Stephen Nicolazzo starts with its sexuality and moral ambiguity. It is, after all, a story about a virgin who wants the lust of a saint, and a king who wants his stepdaughter's virginity.

Surrounded by an Oz-emerald-green curtain, Salome rejoices in a mid-1980s aesthetic (gorgeous costumes by Tessa Leigh Wolffenbuttel Pitt and Eugyeene Teh; set by Teh), where the new romantics questioned gender on MTV, Madonna made pearls and lace cool, and David Lynch freaked out late-night film-goers; pass the oxygen, please.

With traditions and expectations abandoned, Salome is a man in a handmade matador costume, John the Baptist is a woman in a disco-ball bikini, Herod and Herodias drag up, and the soldiers and heralds are magnificently fabulous. It's a world where gender is everything but means nothing, and sexuality is everything until love and jealousy take hold.

Stephen Nicolazzo has found a remarkable and unique voice as a director. Following Psycho Beach Party (that's heading to the Brisbane Festival) and sex.violence. blood. gore, his high-camp, bold aesthetic defines his view of queer culture without rejection or criticism. His world is filthy without shame and welcomes everyone who celebrates difference and lets their heart make their choices.

And he has a a group of actors who have quickly established themselves among independent theatre's A-list. Paul Blenheim, Genevieve Giuffre, Alexandra Aldrich, Nick Pelomis, Peter Paltos, Zoe Boesen, Tom Dent are so sexy and so funny that it's impossible to decide which one you fancy the most.

Salome is glorious and hilarious and so damn smart that missing it isn't an option.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Chat: Genevieve Giuffre, Theatre Works

MIDSUMMA 2013

Psycho Beach Party

11–19 January

Theatre Works

review

Melbourne’s Midsumma festival has been celebrating queer culture for 25 years and officially runs from 13 January to 3 February. Theatre Works started with Psycho Beach Party.

When people in the town are attacked in strange sado-masochistic ways, it is up to the surf-bums and a B-Grade Horror star to find the culprit and save a Gidget-esque nerd with a dream to surf from her potentially lethal sexual awakening.

Directed by sex.blood.violence.gore’s Stephen Nicolazzo, its recent Bondi season blew Sydney away and the short Melbourne season is selling so well that you shouldn’t wait. Anne-Marie Peard chats with Genevieve Giuffre (sex.blood.violence.gore, Summertime in the Garden of Eden) about awesome stuff like leopard print, taking risks and gelati.

Describe your show in three words?
Sex on drugs OR Oceanic leopard cult.

Who shouldn’t miss your show
Lovers of the words above.

Will anyone hate it?
Not even the jealous people will be able to hate on it.

What other Midsumma show(s) will you NOT miss?
Here lies Henry – they bump in after us, and what’s this I see…Vieux Carre Tennessee, yes I will!

Midsumma is 25 this year. What’s your toast?
Happy Birthday Midsumma, bless your heart! Year of the Dragon.

Midsumma is also about celebrating queer culture. What does your show celebrate?
Individualism in the form of leopard print and sexual expression. Jungle fever. Oh and insanity.

What films did you have to watch to prepare for Psycho Beach Party?
I watched a lot of Friday night lights proceeding this show, it definitely ignited my already blazing sense of team spirit. No really! I revisited some Gidget and took a sneak peak at Beach Blanket Bingo, I just couldn’t go past that title.

Would you swim at St Kilda beach?
Before and after every show I will swim in god’s pool.

Apart from the Midsumma, what festival would you love to be a part of?
CMA Nashville.

What was the first festival you were a part of?
Book week at school.

How would you convince a north-sider to cross the river to St Kilda?
I’d say it’s okay, you can bring your flask just hop on the 112 or 96 and come get sexy

If you could invite anyone to see your show (and you know they would come), who would it be?
Well my truest answer would be Dan Wylie, but he already came to opening night of the Sydney season! Dreams really do come true!

What is the best theatre advice you’ve received?
Take the big risks. It’s more fun.

What’s the worst and/or best thing a reviewer has said about you or your show?
A reviewer referred to my character, Berdine, as having a cleft palate. I don’t actually have one so that’s pretty cool I think. It’s subjective. It’s all subjective.

What’s your favourite gelati flavour?
Peppermint mixed with a scoop of rainbow.

What was the last film you loved?
The last film I loved was in fact the first film I loved, Cry Baby. ‘Hey Mr Jailer’, so much joy!

What’s the best thing to do when it’s over 40° and you don’t have air conditioning?
Get the gang together, dine in at McDonald’s Acland Street and book a group ticket for Psycho Beach Party at Theatre Works.

What work changed how you make theatre? Why?
Star Wars exists. All things imagined are real in the theatre. Fantasy has its place.

What director/actor/writer/creator would you just die to work with?
I would want to make country music with Ryan Adams, a film with David Lynch and take pictures with Terry Richardson.

What do love most about your show?
The cast. The PBP cult are the most fun people in Straya right now!

Originally on AussieTheatre.com

Review : Psycho Beach Party

MIDSUMMA 2013
Psycho Beach Party
Little Ones Theatre and Theatre Works
11 January 2013
Theatre Works
to 19 January – but it's SOLD OUT
theatreworks.org.au

Hot diggity! If Psycho Beach Party isn't the most hip, groovy and neat-o hit of Midsumma, then I've got no idea what people like. Full of lust, longing and psychotic shaving, it proves that you don't have to be a queen to be camp or be gay to be queer.

There's songs by the B52s on a beach made of leopard print and shiny silvery-black steamers (Owen Phillips) that's filled with a super-hot cast of dream boats and gals dressed in leopard print and black (Eugyeene Teh). Do you need to know more?

Charles Busch has been playing women and looking damn fine in a frock since the 70s and been writing like plays the 80s off-Broadway hit Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. In 1987, he wrote (and starred in) Psycho Beach Party. It's like a 60s Annette/Gidget beach film with dreamboats and boyish girls who learn how to to surf and how to fill out a bikini, but with a Hitchcockish undertone (without the misogyny) and a bloody splash of a multiple personality psychodrama and drive-in slasher flick. It's a bit like if Sybil and Freddie stayed at the new Bates motel on Malibu beach, but gayer.

And there's no one better to re-imagine this American queer cultural-mash-up than director Stephen Nicolazzo and his company Little Ones Theatre. Its first season was at the Bondi Pavillion last year, but Melbourne has Theatre Works, even if St Kilda has never seen a surfer.

Nicolazzo models Psycho Beach Party as a parody that's not a spoof. It's non-stop hilarious, but it doesn't make fun of the absurd plot and outrageously stereotyped characters. Instead, it takes what we genuinely adore about about these genres and turns the volume up to magnificent, as it laughs at the dull squares who don't understand the fun – and reminds us how it's not about gender by letting drag heroine (Ash Flanders) perform without wig, padding or tuck. He does have a lovely hair clip though and a decolletage that lets him wear strapless gown without fear of side boob.

Mz Flanders is joined by a too-gorgeous selection from the new gen of local enfant terrifics: Genevieve Giuffre, Peter Paltos, Caitlin Adams, Kevin Kiernan Molloy, Zoe Boesen, Paul Blenheim, Tom Dent and Amanda McGregor and much of Psycho's magnificence comes from this cast who love every second the show, but never let that love get in the way of stiletto-sharp performances.

It finishes on Saturday 19; that's less than a week away and if you don't get a ticket ASAP, you'll be left like a wall flower who never took their sneakers off at the Sock Hop.

Photo by Sarah Walker

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: sex.violence.blood.gore

sex.violence.blood.gore

MKA

30 June 2012

MKA Pop Up Theatre, North Melbourne

to 14 July

mka.org.au

sex.violence.blood.gore is all flushed-flesh pink and delicate ivory lace, which makes it even sexier and gorier and gorgeous. First performed in Singapore in 1999 in a basement in secret, Melbourne's first production is in a secret warehouse in North Melbourne and, like all wonderful Melbourne secrets, you need a map to find it and may miss out because the word has already got around.

Malay-Muslim writer Alfian bin Sa'at was born in in Singapore in 1977 and with likes of the giraffe spot, Whitney-singing angels with plastic-covered wings, the problems of organ-donation racism and tiger blow jobs, it's easy to know why he's referred to as Singapore's "enfant terrible".

sex.violence.blood.gore is five short works connected by content that's sexy, violent, bloody and/or gorey, but start with sexual repression and are firmly placed in a country that deals with conflicts about religion, the aftermath of being a British colony and invaded by Japan, and defining its own identity between Malaysia and Indonesia. (I admit that my first reaction to Singapore was to look up the recipe for a Singapore Sling.)

With content so connected to the writer and his home, it could so easily be a curious, worthy and distancing work about queer South East Asia, but director Stephen Nicolazzo  (Home Economics, Two by Two, Negative Energy Inc) would never allow that.

He breaks down any sense of "them" with a glorious young cast of five women (Genevieve Giuffre, Catherine Davies, Whitney Boyd, Amy-Scott Smith, Zoe Boesen and Caitlin Adams) and one man (Matt Furlani) who freely play against their gender and ethnicity.  And Eugyeene Teh (designer) puts them in a pink world framed by body parts and net curtains and clads them in off-white underwear that teeters between repressive uncomfortable and irresistibly hot.

By taking it so out of its context, Nicolazzo lets the heart of this work speak and ensures that it's for and about everyone who sees it. This is what theatre is about. I see so many wonderfully written, beautifully performed works that are so terribly dull because they don't make this kind of connection with their audience.

And, of course, there's only one company in town that would bring us this type of theatre. sex.violence.blood.gore is the second show of MKA's winter season. Miss it and you'll regret it. And to ensure that you don't miss it, BOOK.

And, if you missed MKA's The Economist last year, there are TWO more shows before they go to Edinburgh on 20 and 21 July.

Photos by Sarah Walker

This review was on AussieTheatre.com

Read Cameron's wordgasm review that left me impotent.