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.

God of Carnage

God of Carnage
Melbourne Theatre Company
15 September 2009
Playhouse, The Arts Centre

God of Carnage holds an IKEA mirror up to the MTC audience and leaves them squirming with recognition and wetting themselves with laughter – or was that just me?

St Martin’s protagonists are in their teens and 20s, Red Stitch’s in their 20s and 30s, Malthouse’s in their 30s and 40s and the Melbourne Theatre Company will always have theatre for people who are surprised when they realise how old they really are.

Two couples meet to resolve a playground incident involving their respective sons, a stick and some dental damage. Naturally, the women wear shoes that cost as much as the dentist bill in question, and espresso and clafoutis are served.

Making fun of the upper-middle class, middle age, marriage, men versus women, and what parents really think of their children is easy. God of Carnage does all of this; however, satire without recognition is as bad as making fun of a deaf kid behind her back – it’s easy, nasty and likely to lose you friends. Playwright Yasmina Reza has an international hit because she ensures that she never makes fun of ‘them’; it’s always ‘us’ and it’s always the stuff we hate to admit!

Reza is France’s best-known playwright who, like Moliere before her, uses farce to show the masks, the absurdity and the humanity of the people who love her work. Structurally it is a blue print for a perfect farce, with ever-changing allegiances, status and opinions, but it’s her grasp of character and her observation of society that is winning this work awards and fans on Broadway, the West End and state-supported theatre companies all over the place.

As it’s difficult to imagine that Reza didn’t write this on a laptop in Church Street, Brighton, much must also be said of the English translation by Christopher Hampton (whose credits include the screenplays for The Quiet American and Atonement), as well as the universality of Raza’s themes.

With a faultless cast (Pamela Rabe, Geoff Morrell, Hugo Weaving and Natasha Herbert), director Peter Evans (who also directed Moliere’s The Hypocrite for the MTC last year) ensures that we are never distanced enough to make fun of these people. It would easy to laugh at this world, but it wouldn’t hurt so much (in the good way) if we didn’t see ourselves, our friends and our families up there.

My inner voice drooled over Annette’s shoes, wondered if I could wear a fringe as well as Veronique, knew I would have taken the clafoutis out of the fridge in time and wanted to offer advice about how to remove vomit from books (I don’t want to explain). I’m far from being a Toorak ‘wealth manager’, but I knew every person, every opinion and every passive and blatant aggressive reaction on that stage.

There’s much written about God of Carnage being an astute reflection about changing attitudes towards violence in society, especially towards children (hands up who hasn’t read The Slap). Of course, there is a serious side to the work, but if that’s what you’re raving about, perhaps you need to glace at the mirror.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Earl Carter.