Twist on Frankenstein transports the classic to London under Thatcher

THEATRE
Cruel Britannia: After Frankenstein ★★★★
Arts Centre Melbourne, until November 30

Classic texts refracted and reimagined through the prism of trans experience are an irresistible lure for Kristen Smyth’s magnetic gifts. Her incarnation of Jesus, reborn as a trans woman in Jo Clifford’s The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven, subverted Christian dogma and left transcendent the inclusive ethical crux at the core of many New Testament parables.

Cruel Britannia, written by and starring Kristen Smyth, is set in Thatcher’s 1980s London.Credit: Mark Gambino

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a parable of modernity in which an unforgiving gender binary plays a crucial role. Victor Frankenstein’s fear of the feminine, and his masculine desire to usurp and control procreative power, are among the true monsters in the story; the abjection of Frankenstein’s creation – the monstrousness – is a dark mirror of the all-too-human impulse to fear and revile difference, to reject those who do not conform to established ideas or social categories.

The gothic tale has long been fertile ground for queer subversion – The Rocky Horror Picture Show, for one. Cruel Britannia is a more high-concept response, transporting us into a liminal underworld in 1980s London under Thatcher.

It finds the gothic not in university basements and secret laboratories, mountain fastnesses and frozen Arctic seas, but in a homophobic milieu of working-class men, a queer subculture spiralling into New Romanticism and punk and novel drugs, and in the torment of a trans woman struggling to emerge in a world that thinks her monstrous.

The text is moody in-yer-face theatre, the world-building brilliantly evocative. Although even those very familiar with the original may find the storytelling lacks clarity, its sustained intensity, the atmosphere of uncanniness and threat created by gender conformity, and an outcast’s quest to find sanctuary all resonate with deeper truths that a more straightforward retelling might miss.

Cruel Britannia is moody in-yer-face theatre and the world-building brilliantly evocative.Credit: Mark Gambino

Violent rage and ecstatic release bubble up through the cracks – a reference to Derek Jarman’s darkly subversive queer classic Jubilee is clearly a touchstone. Smyth flickers wickedly between yobbish male personae and Ruby, a repressed female gender identity who cannot ultimately be denied, in a compelling dance with Shelley’s text.

I had a few reservations. The show’s hedonistic riffs might be more fun if they were audience-responsive, rather than entombed behind a fourth wall; the monstering of masculine sexuality – whipped into paranoia and moral panic by TERFs and used to scapegoat trans women – isn’t made manifest with the sharpness or grotesquerie it could be. Neither undercuts the impressiveness of Smyth’s writing and solo performance, which let Cruel Britannia command attention as a trans theatre classic all its own.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
St Vincent | All Born Screaming Tour ★★★★★
Always Live, Palais Theatre, November 25

St Vincent cuts a striking figure in the dark. A white spotlight shines behind her, illuminating her silhouette with an angelic glow.

This is the American singer-songwriter’s first appearance in Australia since 2018, performing exclusively in Victoria as part of the state government initiative ALWAYS LIVE.

St Vincent performs on stage at the Palais Theatre on Monday night.Credit: Martin Philbey

The Grammy award-winning performer, whose real name is Annie Clark, coined her moniker from a line in Nick Cave’s There She Goes, My Beautiful World. Her monochrome outfit suits the existential themes of life and death in her latest self-produced album All Born Screaming, eliciting gothic imagery – just like Cave himself.

Her set showcases her signature approach to complex arrangements. She manoeuvres between distortion-heavy tracks such as Big Time Nothing and sweet melodic tunes in the older Candy Darling, captivating the audience and keeping them guessing. The lighting theatrics, as well as her jerky movements and scurrying, are reminiscent of a horror movie, perhaps drawing from her directorial experience with anthology film XX.

There’s an elusiveness and enigma about St Vincent; not giving too much away about herself or her album, yet ensnaring the theatre with her kooky artist persona and unique sound. At one point, she says: “I love you all, I’m so glad to be here and that’s all I have to say at this moment.”

There’s an urgency as she angrily paces, swiftly changing her guitar and returning to the mic while gesturing to the crowd to react and stand up. The orange and red-lit stage gives the illusion that … Hell Is Near.

Yet, there’s also an intimacy, warmth and element of seduction. Before playing Fear The Future, she slides off her black arm-length gloves and drops them to the floor. During Dilettante, she sits at the edge of the stage, slowly leaning towards the front row as she sings. While performing New York, she descends into the aisle to engage with fans. At the end of her performance of All Born Screaming, she stands still, with her hands crossed at the wrist in front of her face. She soaks in the adulation like a patron saint receiving her disciples.
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar

MUSIC
Hatsune Miku ★★★
John Cain Arena, November 22

Hatsune Miku is a superstar. She spawns into being on-stage with a flash of stardust. She’s 16 and around eight feet tall, with blue pigtails longer than her schoolgirl skirt, and a near-indecipherable digital accent. The crowd raise their glow sticks.

Hatsune Miku performs at John Cain Arena on Friday night.Credit: Jonathan White / ©CFM / ©SEGA

Miku, importantly, isn’t real. She’s a Vocaloid – a digital simulation of the voice of a 16-year-old Japanese girl, designed as a virtual instrument for musicians to use as they see fit. Augmented with a hyper-sexualised anime schoolgirl avatar, she’s become a cultural phenomenon on par with any pop star, a “virtual idol”.

Her music is crowdsourced, made up of the creative output of thousands of fans. They don’t seem to mind her lack of corporeal reality. After all, Sabrina Carpenter is just a face on a screen for most – what’s the difference?

The fan love is in full effect tonight. Decked out in impressive cosplay and waving colour-switching neon glow sticks, the audience are young and very online. They are impeccably polite, remaining seated at all times and waving their glow sticks in pre-choreographed, colour-coded flourishes that are more like motion-sensing video game moves than dancing.

It’s hard to escape the notion that this is part concert and part tech demo. The huge signs saying “Miku Expo”, for one, are more like something from a travelling convention rather than a pop tour. Miku is confined to an LED screen (though backed by a real four-piece band), and her voice is intensely auto-tuned and emotionless, stripped down to a sketch of a human voice. This, I’m sure, is part of the appeal. The music is a frantic and colourful blend of electronic dance and power pop, and her human bandmates stop it being an entirely sterile experience. They and the thousands of fans – the very community that provide her material.

Hatsune Miku’s music is a frantic and colourful blend of electronic dance and power pop.Credit: Jared Tinetti / ©CFM / ©SEGA

Outside I chat to a fan in particularly impressive Miku cosplay. She’s into nightcore (essentially sped-up versions of pop songs), and Hatsune Miku rhythm games. “If you don’t press the buttons properly, she can’t sing,” she says.

Miku provides fans an outlet for expression, and she’s voiceless without them. Despite dystopian words like “Vocaloid”, there’s something utopian about that.
Reviewed by Will Cox

MUSIC
The Offspring ★★★
Always Live, The Forum, November 24

It’s 1999. I’m eating fish and chips on the beach and listening to The Offspring top the Triple J Hottest 100 with their novelty hit Pretty Fly (For a White Guy).

Dexter Holland and Noodles of The Offspring perform at the Forum on November 24, 2024.Credit: Martin Philbey

It’s 2024. Two giant, frantically waving inflatables, the kind you get outside vacuum cleaner stores, flank the stage at the Forum as The Offspring play Pretty Fly (For a White Guy). The lyrics, a satire of white people appropriating hip-hop culture in the 1990s, spew forth from my consciousness to my mouth without any effort.

I didn’t listen to much Offspring in the run-up to this show. I wanted to see how my brain would cope with the whiplash of recognition. The answer is, I had a lot of fun.

The Offspring write easy, infectious songs that you can skate to, built on a formula of four chords and a bratty scream. It’s uncomplicated and unfussy, and that’s the appeal, and by god it works.

This sold-out show is a ’90s pop-punk party. “I’ve been drinking since dinner time! I’m having a great time up here!” says Noodles the guitarist. Singer Dexter Holland is the cool dad who’s let you at the keg. Songs like Spare Me The Details and Want You Bad are straight out of a ’90s teen movie.

The Offspring write easy, infectious songs that you can skate to, built on a formula of four chords and a bratty scream.Credit: Martin Philbey

Keeping that decade’s party vibes alive means a few uneasy hangovers. “My friend’s got a girlfriend and he hates that bitch!” Holland sings at the start of Why Don’t You Get a Job? “This must be where my internalised misogyny came from,” says my friend.

One reason these songs are so easy to get along with is familiarity. Why Don’t You Get a Job? has been compared in the past with the Beatles’ Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. Two different songs have bits that sound like Baba O’Riley by The Who. And the main guitar riff in The Kids Aren’t Alright is distinctly similar to a track from, of all bands, Belle and Sebastian. At points, I think I must be hallucinating the similarities.

At least they’re self-aware. They drop in a bit of Black Sabbath, and Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine, as well as Edvard Grieg’s 1875 In the Hall of the Mountain King and a rousing rendition of the Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop. Noodles even leads an audience chant of “F--- yeah!” that’s basically Freddie Mercury’s call-and-response bit at Queen’s 1985 Live Aid performance.

Cheeky punks! But you know, it’s for a party.
Reviewed by Will Cox

THEATRE
The Hall ★★★★
fortyfivedownstairs, until December 1

A poised three-hander from Ro Bright, The Hall is performed in the round and features a small Sacred Harp choir, singing hymns in four-part harmony.

Natasha Herbert as Tup in a scene from The Hall.Credit: James Reiser

All art aspires to the condition of music, as Walter Pater noted, and although the chorus is an ancient dramatic device, theatre built around an actual choir is a rarer quantity. Choirs generally indicate transcendence, lifting a performance into a realm of unified abstraction, emotional intensity or scale that theatre strains to reach alone.

Sometimes choirs dominate – as with Heiner Goebbels’ avant-garde When the Mountain Changed its Clothing in 2014, created with a 40-strong Slovenian girls’ choir, which was effectively a beautifully designed concert.

The Hall is a striking if modest play, performed with crisp intimacy.Credit: James Reiser

When drama and live choral music are integrated in a more balanced way, however, we’re usually in the presence of tragedy or comedy aspiring to the sublime.

It’s true of David Greig’s moving play The Events – about a mass murder targeting a multicultural choir – and equally of Aidan Fennessy’s final and finest work, The Heartbreak Choir, which contrasts the ridiculous smallness of individuals with the uplifting unity of a rural community gathering in song.

The Hall joins these works. It’s a fly-on-the-wall portrait of a family struggling to cope with the grim impacts of dementia – now the leading cause of death in Australia – on one of its members.

Grandmother Tup (Natasha Herbert) has been diagnosed in her early 50s. Her cognitive deterioration and behavioural problems cause havoc for daughter Ally (Brooke Lee) and 15-year-old grandchild Billie (Emmanuelle Mattana) who devise elaborate tactics to keep Tup living with them as long as they can.

Hints of a long-held secret amid Tup’s strict religious upbringing emerge. As her condition worsens, Ally devises a plan to fly her mum across the world for a choir convention – Tup organised and was devoted to a weekly choir for years – hoping to snatch one unforgettable moment of light from the encroaching darkness.

It’s a striking if modest play, performed with crisp intimacy, and it deals with a situation that might have been unbearable to watch if not for the songs.

Herbert pulls no punches at the cruelty and humiliation of Tup’s plight. Its effect on her family is deftly sketched: the unsung heroism of Lee’s self-abnegating Ally, or the crushing moment when the irrepressible innocence of Mattana’s trans teen runs into the grim fact that Nan has forgotten to use the correct pronouns.

Any family faced with caring for a loved one with dementia, including mine, should be grounded and uplifted by The Hall.

For Tup, song is the last thing to go as her mind unravels, and the play’s sobering portrayal of domestic reality is elevated and transfigured by the sublime harmonies of a live choir, sitting among the audience.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
Troye Sivan | Something To Give Each Other Tour ★★★★
Sidney Myer Music Bowl, November 21

Troye Sivan begins by asking the crowd if they’re “motherf---ing ready to sweat”. He may be referencing the recent Sweat tour he co-headlined with pop icon Charli XCX, but what he’s ultimately doing is preparing everyone for what’s ahead: a sweaty, erotic and surprisingly heartwarming pseudo-club experience.

From the first track, Got Me Started, it’s clear this is more a feast for the eyes than for the ears.

Sivan and his six backup dancers contort their bodies to the beat, occasionally forming structured tableaus in which it’s difficult to tell where one body begins and another ends. Every movement is so precise, so high energy, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that Sivan is likely running on no sleep having just won three ARIA awards, including album of the year, in Sydney the night before.

Troye Sivan performing in Melbourne on Thursday night. He also picked up three ARIAs this week.Credit: Martin Philbey

Sivan has said he created his 2023 album Something To Give Each Other both to liberate himself and shine a spotlight on queer lived experiences. Now his sensuality is celebrated onstage, through lap dances, a now-viral phallic microphone moment, and even a surprise make-out sesh near the end of the night. But while there’s plenty of sex, Sivan knows when to cool things down, replacing gyrating thrusts for graceful, balletic movements during break-up ballads such as Still Got It.

After touring the US and Canada, Sivan is clearly glad to be back home. After all, he emerges from backstage in an “Aussies do it better” shirt, and even has his dancers wear outback cork hats while dancing what appears to be a club-rat version of the Nutbush.

“It feels so good to be home,” he says, before half-chastising the crowd for not going hard enough. “I’ve partied here before, I know how feral you can get, Melbourne.”

Sivan’s every wish is the crowd’s command, as it heaves to the pulsing beats of club songs such as Rush and Stud, and sways in time to his more introspective, sultry tracks like Heaven. He tells the fans, many of whom are dressed in his trademark leather assless chaps, to jump higher during Silly. Before you know it, people are closing their eyes, linking arms, and leaping for all they’re worth.

Sivan brought the heat to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and also knew when to cool things down.Credit: Martin Philbey

“He always slays this shit,” one awe-inspired fan says after One Of Your Girls, which features a video introduction of Sivan in full drag. Her friend responds: “Totally. I’m so sweaty right now.”

Mission accomplished.
Reviewed by Nell Geraets

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