Not a review: The Audition

The Audition
Outer Urban Projects and La Mama
14 November 2019
La Mama Courthouse
to 24 November
lamama.com.au
outerurbanprojects.org

"The Audition" Peter Paltos, Sahra Davioudi. Photo by Darren Gill

Last night, the door prize at La Mama was a copy of No friend but the mountains by Behrouz Boochani‎. Where I was standing, there were murmurs of "the guy on Manus from Iran" and everyone wanted it. After all, we were at the opening night of The Audition, a new multi-writer work by Outer Urban Projects about the experiences of asylum seekers and immigrants in Australia.

This book won the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature. This is Australia's richest literary prize; it's one writers aspire to win. Boochani is a Kurdish refugee from Iran. He has wasn't at the ceremony when he won because he was still incarcerated on Manus Island. The book was written by text messages; the same way he written for The Guardian in recent years. (Links are to Guardian stories.)

Directed by Irine Vela, The Audition project has been developed by working with and sharing stories with artists who are also asylum seekers. With contributions from writers Patricia Cornelius, Tes Lyssiotis, Sahra Davioudi, Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Reeves, Milad Norouzi and Wahibe Moussa, it's a not-miss before it even gets seen.

There are theatre in-jokes as it compares the power imbalance of the theatre audition process to how immigrants have to audition to be "good Aussies", and personal confessions and stories that affirm that so much of Australia's attitude and government response to refugees and asylum seekers is racist and ignorant and the cause of so so much suffering.

While each has it's own strength and emotional drive, the theme feels forced at times and the strength and power of the writing varies, as do the performances; the writers Davioudi and Norouzi also perform and are joined by Mary Sitarenos, Peter Paltos and Vahideh Eisaei.

None of which takes away from why this project is on our stage. But I left wondering how a work like this reaches anyone who doesn't already believe everything it's saying.

Then this happened last night.

Behrouz Boochani‎ is free because of a writers festival in New Zealand. A writers festival.

So, let's keep telling, writing, reading and seeing stories, even if no attitudes change, because telling stories is how the world will get better. Telling stories is how creative minds find solutions to horror and work towards humanity. Telling stories – even if no one except the inner-city leftie woke read the book – is how Behrouz Boochani is finally FINALLY out of the hell that Australians put him in.



From this story. 

Review: Merciless Gods

Merciless Gods
Little Ones Theatre and Darebin Arts Speakeasy 
28 July 2017
Northcote Town Hall
to 5 August
darebinarts.com.au
littleonestheatre.com.au

Jennifer Vuletic. Merciless Gods. Photo by Sarah Walker

Yesterday there were only a handful of tickets available for Little Ones Theatre's Merciless Gods at the Northcote Town Hall, so they've snuck in an extra matinee on Saturday (August 5). Book now because otherwise you will have to go to Sydney to see it at Griffin in November. Really, it's that good.

Director Stephen Nicolazzo approached Melbourne-based author Christos Tsiolkas to adapt his series of short stories, Merciless Gods (released in 2014 but is a collection of older work), he said yes, and long-time Little One's collaborator Dan Giovannini wrote the script.

So much of the strength of Little Ones Theatre's work comes from an ongoing collaboration with a core group of artists. And, as an arts writer, it's been pretty amazing to watch this group of artists find each other and develop over the years. One of the many reasons to see new work and emerging artists is that rare opportunity to see how original voices develop in on our stages.

As all good Melbourians have read at least one of Tsiolkas's books (The Slap, Dead Europe, Head On), there's an immediate familiarity with Merciless Gods – the first story onstage story about five middle class friends could be easily re-cast from the audience. The work feels like being inside one of Tsiolkas's books, but what makes this adaption so remarkable is that it's nothing like reading Tsiolkas on the page.

There's no attempt to recreate the sense of place in his books. Tsiolkas evokes and uses place so effectively in his writing. Northcote, Brighton and Moorabin in The Slap could be no other suburbs, but as a reader you don't need to know where you are to understand the attitudes that define the area. On stage, place is mentioned but it's only seen through the design by Eugyeene Teh (set and costume) and Kate Sfetkidis (lighting).

With a colbolt blue wedge that literally stabs into the audience from a red curtain that's somewhere between blood red and fuck-me lipstick-red (Teh's use of colour to create emotion is always incredible), the eight worlds/stories place the audience as those merciless gods who watch and may want the unthinkable to take place in front of their passive gaze.

Instead of being comfortable in place, ranging from suburban backyard to a gay sauna, Giovannini's script lets us into the hearts and heads of the characters. There's no sitting back and letting environment control actions and this lets these stories find a humanity in people who are often ignored or seen as defective or inhumane humans.

These stories are about characters and people who are rarely seen on our stages and in our stories, or  those who are invisible or ignored in our lives. Along with the queer and Australian immigrant stories expected from Tsiolkas, are people whose circumstances or behaviours leave them fading or invisible. There's a middle aged woman dealing with her teenage son beginning to treat her like she's nothing, an older women watching male gay porn, a man in prison for a violent crime, a man who's chosen to end his life surrounded by his family.

Each are stories that confront – it's difficult to feel for someone whose behviour makes us want to ignore or hate them – but the production doesn't try to shock. Shock lets us distance ourself from characters. By finding common emotions and thoughts – we know the pain of grief, the irrationality of wanting revenge, the blindness of love –, it's much harder to say "that would never be me or mine".

All of which could fall apart if the cast (Sapidah Kian, Peter Paltos, Paul Blenheim, Brigid Gallacher, Charles Purcell and the incredible Jennifer Vuletic) didn't bring themselves to their characters. Again, they don't let the abhorrent or simply annoying behaviours of their characters create distance, and all find a personal connection with character that lets the audience find their own connection.

It's this connection that Nicolozzo ensures is always on the stage and this disturbs far more than anything the characters do. It's easy to connect with lovely people; it's confronting to connect with – and easily laugh with – people who you'd never look at in the street or are happy to pretend don't exist.

Review: Minnie and Liraz

Minnie and Liraz
Melbourne Theatre Company
22 May 2017
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 24 June
mtc.com.au

Minnie & Liraz. Virginia Gay, Rhys McConnochie, Nancye Hayes. Photo by Jeff Busby

One of the many things I love about Lally Katz's writing is that it really doesn't matter when a new show doesn't quite hit the mark. Often new writing needs to get on a stage and be seen before it really finds what it's meant to be and Minnie and Liraz, MTC, needs some time on (and off) the stage to find its stride.

The 90-something Cohens, Minnie (Nancye Hayes) and Morris (Rhys McConnochie), have been married for 70ish years and are living in an expensive, bland and peach-coloured retirement home in Caulfield (that doesn't feel like Caulfield). When Minnie's bridge partner dies, Liraz (Sue Jones) is  determined to take her place. The Cohens don't like aggressively loud Liraz, but she does have a single 36-year-old grandson (Peter Paltos) who might be perfect for their single 38-year-old granddaughter (Virginia Gay) – grandchildren would be worth the price of Liraz in the family. And for a lot of the night, the story plays out how it's expected to – but this is a Lally Katz play, so it's easy to reject the peach-coloured view of the world before getting too comfortable.

Katz writes from her life and the Cohens are based on her own grandparents and, perhaps, her own experience of finding someone who's your-kind-of-awesome in your late 30s. At her best, Katz's characters are created from such a place of love and understanding that it's impossible to see them as fiction.

Minnie and Liraz is at its most delightful when it explores character. With loving and detailed performances and direction (Anne-Louise Sarks) that focus on character, the love for these people  drive it far more than its story.

However, as the romance trajectory and the death of at least one oldies is inevitable, the plot and climax feel forced – no matter how funny – and there's a lot of awkward exposition that bring us back to watching the construct of the play rather than being in the world with these people. Much of the exposition is through Norma (Georgina Naidu). She's the staff member who knows her residents too well but always feels like the outsider or a convenience, like her running a memoir class that lets Morris tells the story that  tells everything about him but doesn't sit in the narrative.

Minnie and Liraz often feels as peachy safe as its decor and design. But does anybody really like peach? Lets hope we get the chance to see the much darker and tighter work that it will become.

What Melbourne loved in 2016, part 6ters

Part sixters is all Sixters Grimm. Where would we be without them?

Declan Greene
Resident Artist, Malthouse Theatre; and lots of other things

Declan Greene in rehearsal for Lilith. Photo by Deryk McAlpin

DG's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: I spent a lot of this year very anxious about the dwindling support for independent artists. In particular those early career artists who missed out on the brief flourish of Heliums and NEONs and Downstairs Belvoirs and Wharf 2s that kick-started the careers of a lot of my friends. (And that was before the additional two-handed-fistfuck of NPEA/Catalyst and everything it ripped away from the small-to-medium sector).

So my favourite moments happened every time I saw early-career artists making incredible work in total defiance of the mess they've been plonked in.

Of these moments, my favourite-est was probably Embittered Swish's Our Lady Of The Flowers, an excavation of Jean Genet's novel, created by a phenomenal team of trans and non-binary artists led by Mick Klepner Roe (this was Mick's graduating piece from the VCA directing course). It seemed to exist in a state of constant slippage. A dream-like space where where gender, performer/character identity and temporality were in constant flux, and a thread of dark eroticism and violence pulsed beneath every fluctuation. The cast were uniformly exceptional, and there were moments that took my breath away: a horror-tinged monologue by Cinnamon Templeton about hormone therapy plus a sweating, pig-like doctor;  the visceral, driving sound design by Romy Seven. It wasn't a perfect work, but it felt daring, thrilling, and genuinely original in a way few art does.

In addition to this, I completely heart-and-soul loved Ian Michael and She Said Theatre's HART, Katy Warner's A Prudent Man, Mama Alto's Extravaganza, The Very Good Looking Initiative's CULL and there are probably a million others I'm forgetting, but those were some of 'em.

What DG is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: Finally seeing Ash Flanders's Playing To Win. Cuz he's a genius, duh.

And I'm super-biased, but pretty much the entire Malthouse 2017 season has me imploding with excitement: The Encounter, The Black Rider, Wild Bore, and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again and more and more and more. Seriously, its all so good.

SM: Lilith, the Jungle Girl was something else (co-written and directed by Declan) and there was The Listies in Hamlet:Prince of Skidmark (written by Declan), which I went to Sydney to see. This gave me a brilliant afternoon with my niece and nephew (this was their first theatre show!) and, side-splitting Listies performances aside, was easily the most astute adaption of Hamlet I've seen. I was thrilled that the first Ophelia my niece saw was a super hero who took charge of her life instead of giving all of her emotion to a boy who wasn't worth her time.

But favourite moment was Declan talking about how mid-career artists should choose an emerging artist and mentor them because a lot of the opportunities that these mid-career artists had no longer exist.

Ash Flanders
home owner, still skinny, power bottom

Ash Flanders. Photo by Sarah Walker. Slight improvements by Jeff Miller, Photoshop and the Jim Henson archive

AF's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: Without a doubt my favourite theatrical moment in 2016 was anything Dave said or did – or mimed – in Trigger Warning. Zoe Coombs Marr has created a metatextual behemoth that captivates and terrifies audiences in the most brilliant way possible. I have never laughed as hard as I did the night I saw that show. It's too bad she's already married to Rhys Nicholson, because I'd love to be her husband/wife/significant otter ...  and then steal all her ideas.

I know it's only meant to be one thing but I can't miss a chance to talk about Anti-Hamlet. This was my first time seeing Mark Wilson's work and I was utterly blown away by the singularity of his voice. This freudian fantasia – mixed with Australian politics, queer theory and Shakespeare – was chock-full of dense, meaty ideas and concepts; I don't remember any other show in 2016 making me think quite as much as that show did.

And OMG this just reminded me that this was the year I saw The Listies in Hamlet: Prince of Skidmark! I'll be quick about this but it was certainly worth the day-trip to Sydney and back. These guys made even the most cynical, jaded, bitter power-bottom remember why he ever fell in love with theatre in the first place. I can't wait to catch The Listies Ruin Xmas this month!

(I'd also like to mention my favourite onstage moment: looking out at my father as I penetrated myself with the leg of a stool while naked, covered in pink mud and chained to the MTC floor.)

What AF is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: Oh god, I know it's beyond shameless to pick Declan because he's clearly going to pick me, but in all honesty The Homosexuals, or Faggots is what I'm most looking forward to. Because, duh, I like his writing a lot! I've heard bits of it and am already considering what outfit to wear when I picket the theatre with my other outraged, middle-class gay brethren. Personally I'm also looking forward to working with a band for the first time in Playing to Win and hopefully making more of my webseries Friendly with Peter Paltos (www.facebook.com/friendlywebseries).

SM: It's a tough choice for Ash this year: kittie onsie or nude and covered in pink goo? Nup, can't decide which was better.

I'm going to watch Friendly asap (cos I adore Peter P).

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
2014
2013
2012

What Melbourne loved in 2014, part 1

It's December, which means one thing: It's time to find out what Melbourne's theatre community really loved this year.

It's time to ignore the awards and the critics and remember those shows, people and moments that made theatre in Melbourne so bloody wonderful in 2014.

To kick us off, it's Ash Flanders, Paul Capsis and Peter Paltos, who have just finished in Calpurnia Descending at Malthouse. I think Paul's “I wasn’t bored for a second” should be a goal for all shows in 2015. And I wasn't bored for a second in Calpurnia.

Ash Flanders
actor

Ash Flanders, the younger.  Photo by Ben Dyer

Ash: My list should start with shows I'm really bummed I couldn't see this year. These include (but are not limited to) the MTC NEON season, Madonna Arms (Next Wave at Arts House) and, of course, The Good Person of Szechwan (at Malthouse).

A highlight for me was Applespiel make a band and take on the recording industry (Malthouse, Helium series), which blew my mind largely because of the audacity of the concept – a rock-u-mentary made live in front of an audience by a clean-haired cult of young theatre makers, all who probably have $2 to their names. This show made me feel old and jaded – and reminded me to keep pushing ideas further... and to stop being such a whinger!

I will also never forget Jane Montgomery Griffiths’s naked (in every sense of the word) screams for her mother in The Rabble’s Frankenstein. I shall remain happily haunted forever.

This was also the year I discovered my Adena Jacobs impersonation, which has seen the total erasure of my natural voice. Good news everyone!

SM: I missed Ash in Hedda Gabler because Belvoir is in Sydney and I wasn’t. For that I too am bummed. But he posted plenty of pics of him in a one-piece bathing suit to keep me happy.

There was his performance in Calpurnia Descending (his Violet was fucking wonderful  – and Violet was my grandmother’s name, so I approved), but my moment has to be him telling me about meeting Katie Perry backstage. It’s not as sexy a story as it could be and I suggest asking him because it won’t be as good coming from me,

Paul Capsis
actor

Paul Capsis. Photo by Shane Reid

Pau: Hmmm, my favourite theatre moment in 2014  would be a little show I saw in the Tower at Malthouse. Applespiel I think was the title. A great young vibrant and highly energised cast with lots of funny takes on a rock documentary, using film, video, effects made and performed in front of the audience. I liked the energy, rawness, chaos and roughness of the performances and that’s something that’s lacking in a lot of Australian theatre right now. I find so much to yawn at these days. I wasn't bored for a second in this show.

SM: How about making “I wasn’t bored for a second” the goal for new shows?

There was only thing more amazing that Mz Flanders in Calpurnia Descending and that was Paul Capsis as Beverly. When I think of this show, the first image that comes to mind is Paul in his underwear at the top of a ladder; nothing left to hide, everything exposed. This show was endless laughter, but it ended with a moment that made every laugh hurt because we know they came from pain. In different hands, it could have been another laugh, but it was Paul and he was magnificent.

Peter Paltos
actor

Peter Paltos

Peter: My favourites are:

Greenscreen by Nicola Gunn/Sans Hotel at MTC Neon. For me, Greenscreen was an existential theatrical poem that articulated both my loneliness and sense of belonging. I was really touched by this piece. Gunn is a goddess.

Madonna Arms by I'm Trying To Kiss You. Three feminists speaking in verse and smashing the science fiction genre a new asshole. So earthy and absurd.

Hedda Gabler at Belvior directed by Adena Jacobs. I have not stopped thinking about the first fifteen minutes of this production since I saw it. It was like a painting quietly coming to life.

Grounded by Red Stitch, directed by Kirsten von Bibra. This was a really well executed, solo show with an impressive performance by Kate Cole. I dug the minimalism of this piece: old school, clean storytelling with no tricks.

SM: If you were in Calpurnia Descending, there isn’t much hope that your performance in Calpurnia Descending isn’t going to be my favourite moment of yours.

Peter was as amazing as Ash, Paul (and Sandy Gore). He was pure matinee idol with all the guts it takes to be a real matinee idol and maintain the bullshit image.

2103 Favourites

2012 Favourites

Review: Calpurnia Descending

Calpurnia Descending

Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company & Sisters Grimm

14 November 2014

Merlyn Theatre, Coopers Malthouse

to 30 November

malthousetheatre.com.au

Ash Flanders and Paul Capsis. Photo by Brett Boardman

As Pennsylvania Avenue opened at the MTC, I know I wasn't alone as I wondered why. But they've just announced extra performances, so I think we know the answer. Meanwhile, a couple blocks away at the Malthouse, Calpurnia Descending opened and restored the faith of us who wonder why mainstage shows like to be safe.

Calpurnia Descending has already had a run in Sydney, but this is the first time the locally-adored punk camp Sisters Grimm have had a main stage show in their home town. 

And it has enough subversion, heart and guts to make up for Pennsylvania Avenue.

Like their maiden aunt at the MTC, Calpurnia Descending is also set in East Coast America, in New York, and also worships divas. Ash Flander's American hometown gal is as sweet as Bernadette Robinson's (but he's prettier; he's always prettier) and the Sisters knows that their Australian audience is likely to be better versed in popular US culture than by their own.

It starts with the simply-staged kind of show that would have worked as well in the days when the Sisters performed in the Collingwood flats' car park. Singing telegrammer Violet St Clair (Flanders) finds herself in the Miss Havisham-esque house of former-stage-goddess Beverly Dumont (Paul Capsis) and we're ready for a high-camp drag All About Eve. 

But the girlz know what we expect and expectations are damned as Sisters-founders Flanders and Declan Greene show us what they can do when they have some support and a mainstage theatre.

As always, director Greene is a step or three ahead of his audience and takes us places so unexpected that he makes it seem inevitable and obvious that much of it would be filmed live and shown on a giant screen and that it would be part-animation, part-game and part-better-than-any-mind-altering-drugs-I've-taken.

But with all its danger and manic thrills, it comes back to Capsis's Beverly, who can't find grace in ageing and would rather wear a wig cap than look at what she hides underneath her silk and wigs. As Beverly is faced with diminishing and no choices, Capsis is astonishing. There's an art to finding the heart in drag and no matter how grotesque and gut-hurting hilarious Beverly is, Capsis never lets us forget that she's real and hurting – and she remembers what it's like to be as pretty as Violet.

Along with the ever-wonderful Flanders and Capsis, Sandy Gore drags up as the manipulating men in Beverly's life and Peter Paltos proves that he would have been a matinee idol as butch as Rock Hudson were he born in an earlier time. They are all glorious.

Calpurnia Descending questions gender, sexuality, age and everything about our obsession with American culture. It even questions what belongs on a funded mainstage, while being one of the most exciting, smart and insanely beautiful shows on our funded mainstages this year.  

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

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

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