This was published 6 months ago
Move over David Williamson, we have a new five-star footy play
By Cameron Woodhead, Marcus Teague and Vyshnavee Wijekumar
This wrap of shows around Melbourne includes a thrilling five-star Melbourne Theatre Company play about footy and racism; the Jonas Brothers’ first-ever Australian tour at Rod Laver Arena; music producer Fred again.. also at Rod Laver Arena; and two comedies: one about two super-Karens meeting for their weekly lunch, and another about two young men who have to deal with a sick cow.
THEATRE
37 ★★★★★
Melbourne Theatre Company, until April 5
I wasn’t a footy fan until seeing Nathan Maynard’s 37. This funny, big-hearted, vigorous and accessible show is unquestionably the best theatre about football I’ve ever seen. Time to mothball David Williamson’s The Club and let this generous new work have its season in the sun.
Flying high: the cast of Nathan Maynard’s 37.Credit: Pia Johnson
Long before Australian Rules was codified, there was Marngrook, the Gunditjmara word for “game ball”. The First Nations sport had similarities to modern footy and likely influenced its development. Local mobs assembled into teams. The ball was kicked into the air. Speckies have been taken on this land for many thousands of years.
Yet the ethos of Marngrook was very different to competitive AFL. Games weren’t scored; they were played for joy. They could last for days and involve hundreds of players, and after each match the ball – made from possum skins in the Gunditjmara version – was buried, returned with gratitude to the land from which it came.
Marngrook cousins Jayma (Ngali Shaw) and Sonny (Tibian Wyles) have footy in their blood. When they join a regional side who’ve never won a premiership, a coach known affectionately as “The General” (Syd Brisbane) is hoping the new Aboriginal recruits will help them score their first-ever flag.
Ngali Shaw and Tibian Wyles in 37. Racism threatens to poison the camaraderie.Credit: Pia Johnson
Training camp becomes a site of bonding and division. Sweating and swearing together through the pre-season, the team finds spirits lifted with the Marngrooks on board, until racism threatens to poison the camaraderie.
It varies greatly in scale. There’s the simple awkwardness and confusion of some white teammates. One priceless scene sees the Marngrooks defer to the long-suffering captain (Ben O’Toole) with a mischievous wink, every time a player asks themselves: “Is [what I just said] racist?”
But playwright Nathan Maynard doesn’t pull his punches: one player harbours an inveterate prejudice that no cultural awareness course can fix. As Jayma bridles against it – donning the 37 guernsey made famous by Adam Goodes – conflict erupts on the path to the premiership.
Director Isaac Drandic guides a muscular, finely observed ensemble performance. He incorporates choreography that channels the cellular intelligence and athleticism of sport – a difficult thing to capture on stage – and from the first scene, you might be asking yourself why, when the All Blacks perform the haka with pride before each game, our First Nations dance isn’t embraced in the same way.
Syd Brisbane and the cast of 37: choreography channels the cellular intelligence and athleticism of sport.Credit: Pia Johnson
This production gives us a glimpse of what that might look like, and it makes you want to leap from your seat and cheer.
Ngali Shaw is a born performer: he gave a tour de force in Jacky at the MTC last year, and his mercurial, wounded Jayma is just as pure a joy to watch. I can’t be the only one reminded of Uncle Jack Charles, and the light he got in his eyes every time he walked on stage.
Still, to single out performances is hardly in the show’s spirit. Stars are subordinated to the common goal of faithfully representing, examining and uniting the cultures behind the game.
Don’t take young kids unless you want them spouting creative obscenities on the way home. Anyone else who loves footy or theatre should find it a thrilling, defining moment.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
MUSIC
The Jonas Brothers ★★★
Rod Laver Arena, March 8
With an electrifying flash of lights and the strum of an electric guitar, the backing musicians arrive on stage; a countdown begins before the Jonas Brothers walk on to perform the chorus of their 2023 single Wings to rapturous cheers.
Jonas Brothers at Rod Laver Arena: on their first-ever Australian tour, greeted by rapturous cheers.Credit: Martin Philbey
The JoBros as they’re affectionately called by fans, became a household name after appearances on the Disney Channel. This wholesome beginning to their careers and their sibling dynamic set the family tone, which felt quite cheesy at times, as they danced choreographed moves alongside the enthusiastic brass section. There was a secondary stage with a piano towards the back that facilitated an intimate connection with the crowd positioned furthest away. A montage of tour footage and music videos played in a screen above in tribute to their legacy.
Producing music together for almost 20 years, this is the band’s first-ever Australian tour. The show was segmented by albums, performing individual medleys of formative music from their first self-titled album as well as Lines, Vines and Trying Times and A Little Bit Longer, eventually transitioning to the adult contemporary sounds of The Album and Happiness Begins. This also felt distinct from Joe and Nick’s solo output, Jealous and Cake by the Ocean, which both performed independently in the second half.
Jonas Brothers: when they paused the crowd sang in unison.Credit: Martin Philbey
Nick and Joe worked the crowd and interchanged on lead vocals. Fan familiarity with the catalogue was clear when they would pause, only for the crowd to continue in unison. Nick was the storyteller, spinning tales on the band’s humble start, and Joe lent into his heart-throb status by signing autographs, having one-on-one conversations with fans and orchestrating an American-style kiss cam moment during Love Her.
The show was over two hours long with a brief 10-minute intermission. Being selective on song choice would have added more nuance to the emotional breadth and highlighted signature moments better.
Nevertheless, this was a fun-filled night to kick off International Women’s Day, which definitely put the camp in Camp Rock. Could this nostalgic celebration tour signal the end for The Jonas Brothers? Fans will have to wait and see.
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar
MUSIC
Fred again.. ★★★★
Rod Laver Arena, March 4
The confetti from Taylor Swift’s final Australian show in Sydney was probably still airborne when British producer Fred again.. touched down in secret last week. While one is the most famous person on the planet, and the other was born Frederick John Philip Gibson, it’s easier to correlate the two than local passport stamps.
Fred again..: Gibson alongside his brother Tony on the Rod Laver Arena stage.Credit: Brian Purnell/Mushroom Creative House
Both are current titans of industry who have fostered a cult of personality with their fans. Swift’s can be traced to the meta-commentary cleverly woven into her songs; Fred again..’s stems largely from his perpetually grinning, perennially online life.
That’s where, last Tuesday, he announced a pop-up show at the Sydney Opera House for the same night: 125,000 people tried to buy 2250 tickets. It’s where he sources snatches of sound to work into songs, posts demos asking fans for feedback, and can announce an arena tour of Australia just one week before packing Rod Laver for three nights. There’s a reason the mammoth video screens at his impressive live shows are vertical: the Fred again.. experience is as much an invitation into his online world writ large as it is to document it all over again.
Fred again.. taps into the big emotions.Credit: Brian Purnell/Mushroom Creative House
Tonight they do in droves. From the moment an appreciative Gibson appears alongside his brother Tony on the bare stage, phones are out to receive an arena going bonkers – Monday be damned. Opening with the slow ache of Kyle (i found you), Gibson’s surprisingly lovely vocals on Bleu (better with time), and a remix of hyper new single stayinit, the early set detonates into a bass-heavy rave when he runs through the crowd to stand on a mini-stage under a lowered, glowing ceiling, and frantically mash the pads of his MPC into, Jungle.
When Gibson brings out “best friend” Hen from support act Joy (Anonymous) to sing, “a brand new song we finished five days ago,” the audience already knows the lyrics. When he drops Marea (we’ve lost dancing) near the set’s end, the video footage is of a fan dancing in the crowd only last Saturday, during his surprise pop-up set at Port Melbourne’s Timber Yard.
When the show finishes, it’s the audience on the big screens hugging to Delilah (pull me out of this). Like Swift before him, it doesn’t really matter what songs Gibson plays – his knack is being a talisman for the big emotions of his community. Tonight it repays him with joy.
Reviewed by Marcus Teague
Eat Your Heart Out ★★★
La Mama, Until March 17
In Amanda Buckingham’s Eat Your Heart Out, two rich, white sisters meet weekly for lunch at a posh restaurant. This week is extraordinary – their mother Joyce died overnight, and Eleanor (Carolyn Bock) and Beatrice (Helen Hopkins) barely have the stomach for hors-d’oeuvres, working themselves into a lather at the memento mori.
Helen Hopkins and Carolyn Bock play super-Karens while Clare Bartholomew (centre) provides flamboyant physical comedy in Eat Your Heart Out.Credit: La Mama
Existential crisis is no doubt too grand a phrase. The sisters aren’t simply Karens, they’re super-Karens. The double-act rides into sardonic and absurd lampoon on the back of their entitlement, their comic lack of self-awareness.
One of them arrives late because her husband took her car and, as she declares in annoyance, she “had to make do with the Beamer”. You can imagine how they treat the waiter – and it is Clare Bartholomew’s turn as the mute representative of the working class that delivers, through silent clowning, the most assured hilarity.
Perhaps best known as Astrid from the comedy rock band Die Roten Punkte, Bartholomew dons the impassive mask of hospo worker. Only tiny glimpses of fear and bewilderment at the diners’ behaviour are apparent; they slip out like compressed farts.
Carolyn Bock and Helen Hopkins: The double-act rides into sardonic and absurd lampoon on the back of their entitlement.Credit: La Mama
One moment she channels Fawlty Towers, the next the Swedish chef from The Muppets: flamboyant physical comedy segments see Bartholomew whipping up haute cuisine in the background. There’s even a delightful existential ditty on ukulele.
Bock and Hopkins as the sisters can be amusing too. There are shadows of Kath & Kim’s Prue and Trude on a fine dining experience (or “fahn dahning” as they would say), but the humour is more scattershot.
Partly, that’s down to the script, which needs refinement. The play is overstuffed, and vacillates between observational class comedy, overt caricature, and satire on both the disease of materialism and the obnoxious remedies (from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love to Gwyneth Paltrow kooky wellness products) marketed to its consumer-sufferers.
A chaotic denouement swells into berserk homicidal fantasy and, of all things, communist revolution. The ridiculousness doesn’t quite hit the mark, despite director Peter Houghton’s experienced eye for the technical side of comic performance.
Eat Your Heart Out does capture something of the stasis and cynicism, the ennui that can afflict the lives of wealthy women. Sondheim put it best in The Ladies Who Lunch:
Another chance to disapprove,
Another brilliant zinger.
Another reason not to move,
Another vodka stinger…
So here’s to the girls on the go,
Everybody tries.
Look into their eyes and you’ll see what they know:
Everybody dies!
Establishing these emotions authentically might better ground the comedy. It might also make more palatable the fact that the play seems to be an apology for Karens as much as a claim, to modify Socrates, that unexamined privilege is not worth having.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
This review was written from a preview performance.
THEATRE
Milked ★★★★
fortyfive downstairs, until March 10
I had an inkling this two-hander would be something special. The show’s artistic team is enviably talented, and the sheer number of respected actors in the audience is often a reliable guide.
Laurence Boxhall and William McKenna in Milked: this two-hander is something special.Credit: Ben Fon
Initially, Milked builds absurd black comedy from the desperation of two young men, Paul (William McKenna) and Snowy (Laurence Boxhall), stuck in rural Herefordshire.
The neurotic Paul possesses that rolled-gold guarantee of employability – an arts degree – and finds every frantic job application he makes rejected. Naturally, there is no relevant work for him in the sticks.
He’s distracted from this depressing quest by his mate Snowy, an amiable and unformed fellow who takes things as they come rather than working himself into a lather trying to make them happen.
Until he doesn’t. When Snowy discovers a sick cow in a remote location, he enlists his reluctant friend on a frenzied quest to save it. And then, when their efforts fail, to euthanise it.
Laurence Boxhall and William McKenna, confined within a claustrophobic square of astroturf.Credit: Ben Fon
The performances are terrific, giving full play to the idiotic buddy comedy, before edging it into more poignant fields tinged with tragic suggestion.
Director Iain Sinclair knows how to get fully inhabited performances from actors. Boxhall and McKenna quickly establish an intimate rapport and leap into gross-out humour that obeys the laws of pace and plenitude.
Superior acting can convey nuance in a stroke: Boxhall channeling male emotional immaturity and repression, jaw set, first clenched, as Snowy silently decides to avoid a farewell hug, and gives his friend the finger instead.
Or McKenna dandling a knife on his lap. Will it be used for creativity or suicide? For a moment, we genuinely don’t know.
But words are too ponderous to capture the complexity and vulnerability in these quicksilver performances. You’d need a paragraph for every minute, minimum.
The design is inspired, too. Louisa Fitzgerald’s set envisages a performance in the round, confined within a claustrophobic square of astroturf. Richard Vabre frames the actors to dramatic perfection, using the punctuation and language of light to imply what’s left unsaid. And the muffled, distant agonies of Connor Brown’s sound offer restrained symbolism.
I defy anyone not to laugh out loud at Milked – some of the shenanigans are hilarious – but the show also knows that rural youth can be as bleak a stage to inhabit as the one facing Beckett’s vagrants at the other end of life. It’s an immersive theatrical experience, deepened by the way it traces all the animal pain underneath the comedy.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
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