Sharp and savage: This iconic story is still shockingly relevant

THEATRE
The Removalists ★★★★
By David Williamson, Melbourne Theatre Company, until April 17

First staged at La Mama Theatre over half a century ago, David Williamson’s iconic dark satire The Removalists retains its dramatic power. The play was written long before the term “toxic masculinity” was coined, yet it unmasks the worst aspects of Australian male behaviour with sharpness and savagery – and a grimace at anyone who’d turn a blind eye to it – so that it feels shockingly relevant today.

From left: Jessica Clarke, Steve Mouzakis, William McKenna and Eloise Mignon in a scene from The Removalists.Credit: Pia Johnson

Considering La Mama itself has paused public performances in 2025, Anne-Louise Sarks’ revival of a classic is a timely tribute to its cultural importance. The production also offers select audience members a La Mama-style experience: it’s performed in traverse, with a small seating bank onstage giving an intimate rear view of the suburban police station from which the action unfolds.

The play starts with Sergeant Simmonds (Steve Mouzakis) asserting his “authority” over recruit Ross (William McKenna) in an insidious bit of workplace bullying, wrapped in an aura of comic menace that might remind you of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker.

Black comedy is spurred by a domestic violence complaint. Sisters Fiona (Eloise Mignon) and Kate (Jessica Clarke) arrive at the station to report Fiona being bashed by her husband Kenny (Michael Whalley). Misogyny leaks into the handling of the case, though it isn’t until the two cops appear at Fiona’s flat the next day, to subdue Kenny and help Fiona move out, that perpetrators and protectors compete for awfulness in that regard.

Perhaps the figure of the removalist – deadpanned by Martin Blum (and originally played by Williamson himself) – is worst of all. The blinkered, self-interested fence-sitter, wilfully turning a blind eye to evil with an easygoing shrug, is a large part of why domestic violence and police brutality are still with us.

Mouzakis is the linchpin of the production.Credit: Pia Johnson

It’s Mouzakis who’s the linchpin of this production, though, and his portrayal is electrifying to watch.

His Simmonds is the kind of bloke who can turn something as innocuous as doing a crossword into a power play. There’s a writhing inadequacy beneath the competitiveness, mediocrity under the bluster, and when the harvest of bullying and hypocrisy reaches physical violence, it’s bleaker for germinating from such tiny, perfectly formed seeds.

Fascinating complexity emerges through bare-knuckle power dynamics. Kenny is unambiguously hideous – a brute who wallows in his own perceived victimhood, though not without gallows humour – and yet he is a victim, too.

Mignon’s Fiona quietly but firmly wields the one weapon she has – acutely aware she cannot control it and that her so-called defenders are as toxic as her abuser. When she says that what she’s looking forward to most is “a rest”, her fatigue lingers.

Flagrant misogyny permeates this world. The female characters are “used to it”, and the two-faced attitude to women is exemplified by Simmonds, who slut-shames Kate even as he prepares to beat up Kenny and feel chivalrous doing so.

Maybe there’s room for McKenna’s Ross – the one male character who starts relatively unsullied – to be sunnier and more idealistic at the outset, though the intensity of his corruption is nailed home. The infamous final scene is an appalling spectacle to witness live.

Could the play have ended any other way? Not really. The psychology of violence and the bad faith on display, and the very nature of unearned power abused, initiate a spiral of paranoia that continues to afflict the way boys and men are socialised. That Williamson saw the blight so clearly and dared to write about it in a way that directly implicates Australian audiences, makes his satire as unsettling and important now as it was in 1971.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
Boys on the Verge of Tears ★★★★
By Sam Grabiner, fortyfivedownstairs, until March 30

Set entirely in a male toilet, Boys on the Verge of Tears would be an excellent show to see alongside The Removalists at the MTC. The recent West End hit deals with the same questions about masculinity as that Australian classic, though it’s British men on trial here, and the comic gloss is more overt and absurd, the dramaturgy and cultural touchstones more contemporary.

Boys on the Verge of Tears is set entirely in a male bathroom.Credit: Ben Andrews

Public dunnies are ground zero for dealing with gendered shit. We’re segregated by assigned sex from the moment we’re toilet trained, and the opening scene plays with just that scenario – a harried dad instructing his young son, hidden in a cubicle, to piss like a grown-up.

The play is loosely structured around developmental psychology.Credit: Ben Andrews

When doing a number one turns into a number two, Dad fails to handle the situation and it’s up to Mum to save the day.

It’s a symbolic moment in a play that’s loosely structured around developmental psychology. This production streams scenes into one another with propulsive urgency, a directorial choice from Keegan Bragg that lends free-flowing force to the tragicomedy of male socialisation.

Two prepubescent boys abscond from a children’s birthday party and take turns holding knives to their willies. Private schoolboys compete and conform – inciting each other to misogynistic banter, smelling their fingers and telling rape jokes – before one of them reveals how he lost his virginity, unaware his “romantic” story might well be a confession of sexual assault.

The longest sequence is something of a 21st-century passion play, though it draws its hallucinatory power from the shadow of in-yer-face playwrights such as Philip Ridley and Sarah Kane.

When set at a rave, it swirls around a young man (Akeel Purmanund) who gets beaten up and takes refuge in the toilets. Strangers enter and exit with bewildering speed, including a male nurse who might be trying to feel him up or might be genuinely trying to help; two drag queens, one openly disdainful, one who listens to his story; various brightly costumed ravers who ignore or are frightened and repelled by him.

It ends in ambiguous, diabolically masked pageantry, before collapsing into an almost silent scene in which a pair of laconic cleaners fail to connect as they mop the floors.

During the coda, a dying man in a Santa outfit changes his colostomy bag, unburdening himself and dispensing life advice as his stepson cringes; the sentimental vibe turns to spotlit poignancy when those characters vanish and a young boy emerges to wash his hands alone, in a haunting reminder that no one is born a man.

The five-strong adult ensemble – Purmanund, Ben Walter, Karl Richmond, Justin Hosking and Damon Baudin – give terrifically versatile and engaging performances.

Every kind of male neurosis is sketched with precision, and the design is equally accomplished, from the atmospheric score to the exquisitely rendered grime and ordure of the replica toilets.

Produced by The Maybe Pile, which also gave us Trophy Boys, it’s an outstanding premiere of a compelling new play, among the best Melbourne’s indie theatre has to offer.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
Ganavya ★★★★★
The Jazzlab, March 16

Over the past few weeks, American Tamil singer Ganavya has been opening for Nils Frahm in some of Australia’s largest concert halls. But while Frahm’s live shows tend towards the epic, Ganavya leans into intimacy and introspection – so it was a privilege to see her up close at Jazzlab on her first visit to Melbourne.

Born in New York and raised in Tamil Nadu, Ganavya grew up immersed in South Indian devotional music, storytelling and dance as she accompanied her parents on the pilgrim path, before her own path led her to explore jazz and other contemporary sources of inspiration. These days, it’s her parents who accompany her – including here in Australia – and she refers to them tenderly throughout Sunday’s show. At one point, she invites them to join her on stage for a musical prayer, her voice wrapping around theirs in a poignant expression of familial love.

In a sense, the whole concert is an invitation – to be present, to be open, to surrender to the moment. As Ganavya reminds us in one of her songs, “there is so much beauty and comfort … in just being”. It’s an affirmation she embodies with every note she sings, her exquisite voice gliding like a bird on thermals as her body gently sways.

Though most of her lyrics are in languages we may not understand, she guides us with the poetry of her vocal melismas and hand gestures, along with spoken asides that can be philosophical, playful or disarmingly personal.

Ganavya leans into intimacy and introspection in her live performances.Credit: Carlos Cruz

Accompanying her on harp is Miriam Adefris, who quietly amplifies the spell cast by Ganavya’s voice, variously evoking the resonant drone of a shruti box, a gently syncopated bassline or the crystalline shimmer of Alice Coltrane’s spiritual jazz.

Together, she and Ganavya make centuries-old poems, Bollywood hits and ’60s folk songs sound like they spring from the same cosmic well, and we listen, entranced, basking in the beauty of just being.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

MUSIC
Polychoral Splendour ★★★★
Polyphonic Voices, St Patrick’s Cathedral, March 14

St Patrick’s Cathedral was the perfect setting for this impressive program of sacred music, where architecture and musical art were destined to make rapturous harmony. Mostly accompanied by period instruments, the 16 youthful singers of Polyphonic Voices presented works in either eight or 12 parts in the polychoral style which flourished in the late Renaissance and early baroque eras.

Polyphonic Voices perform Polychoral Splendour at St Patrick’s Cathedral on March 14.Credit: Tim Wiebusch

Structuring music in discrete groups or “choirs” found its genesis in the architecture of St Mark’s, Venice where its many side galleries allowed for an early form of “surround sound”. Exported across Europe and the New World, this style found favour with Spanish priest-composers Tomás Luis de Victoria, Francisco Guerrero and Antonio Juanas, the latter who worked extensively in Mexico.

From the distant depths of the cathedral sanctuary, the program began with two unaccompanied eight-voice settings of Ave Maria. Radiating quiet, intense devotion the singers brought an ethereal clarity to the masterly yet contrasting conceptions of Victoria and Guerrero.

Further variety ensued when the singers joined the instrumentalists at the front of the nave for a bracket of works by Victoria. A rapt account of an eight-voice Salve Regina, in which a small solo choir alternated with a larger ensemble, was an excellent foil to the rhythmic jollity of Lauda Sion. A 12-voice psalm, Laetatus sum arranged in three choirs accompanied by wind and strings brought further grandeur.

Writing more than a century after his compatriots, excerpts from Juanas’ Eight Responses for the Matins of the Holy Trinity revealed a wealth of musical invention.

Two mighty 12-voice works crowned this impressive offering. Guerrero’s Duo Seraphim and Victoria’s Magnificat on the Sixth Tone both brought soul-stirring glimpses of heavenly glory aided by colourful word painting.

Under the enthusiastic direction of Michael Fulcher, this brilliant, rarely performed music was brought vividly to life. More, please!
Reviewed by Tony Way

THEATRE
Djuna ★★
By Eva Rees, Northcote Town Hall, until March 23

Bullet Heart Club has produced some fascinating queer theatre since the company was formed in 2013. With Eva Rees’ Djuna, the artists turn their hands to a sinister and macabre transgender thriller.

Djuna builds a claustrophobic, disturbingly sustained level of psychological suspense.Credit: Darren Gill

Set in an upscale hotel room, it begins with a climactic glimpse of what appears to be sexual violence or kink gone wrong – an older man lies unconscious and hogtied on a bed, a distraught young woman straddling him. The clock then rewinds to contextualise the scene.

Despite technical issues interrupting proceedings on the night I attended, the two-hander does build a claustrophobic, disturbingly sustained level of psychological suspense.

Young trans woman Djuna (Jay Gold) meets a much older – and much richer – cis man named Marcus (Dion Mills) for sex. They play out gendered fantasies of dominance and submission, as the dystopian world outside descends into violent disorder.

Increasingly creepy power dynamics afflict the two-year affair. A question lingers over Djuna’s true age. Is the age-play between them a dark sexual fantasy being enacted, or is Marcus a super-rich paedophile grooming a vulnerable teen?

Increasingly creepy power dynamics afflict the two-year affair depicted in Djuna.Credit: Darren Gill

The disparity in wealth makes it even murkier. Is their relationship transactional? There are suggestions that this is a sugar daddy situation or clandestine sex work, but when Marcus tempts Djuna with a gift, strings attached, gilded cage turns to body horror.

We return to the opening scene in an inchoate resolution which functions, to the extent that it’s dramatically intelligible at all, as revenge fantasy.

The performances are intimate and so fearless in exploring the darkest corners of sexual taboo, they’ll make your skin crawl. Visual and sound design augment the unstable magnetism, alternately attractive and repulsive, between the actors.

Unfortunately, elements of body horror (and even visual references to films as diverse as Basic Instinct and The Shining) aren’t properly integrated into the play’s internal logic. They’re introduced late and feel decorative, distracting from the meticulously crafted suspense.

What the play needs to work, I think, isn’t a toning down of the shock-factor, but a greater emphasis on the fact that this is, at one level, a trans version of the Bluebeard story.

Whether special effects should be wielded to introduce a spectral third figure, mentioned only in passing, or Djuna given a frantic direct monologue foreshadowing her intentions and motivations, I don’t know. As things stand though, audiences might well leave this otherwise menacing thriller scratching their heads.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

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