No serious theatre lover should miss this epic event

This wrap of shows around Melbourne includes The Inheritance at fortyfivedownstairs, a cabaret built around our city’s love stories, a high-energy exhibition of Argentinian folk dance and circus skills, and Gracie Abrams’ Melbourne debut.

THEATRE
The Inheritance
By Matthew Lopez, fortyfivedownstairs, until February 11
Part I ★★★★★
Part II ★★★★

Told over six hours in two parts, Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance is itself the inheritor of a celebrated forebear. Critics searching for comparators can’t avoid the sacred light of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, that staggering dramatic monument to a lost generation of gay men, their taste of liberation cruelled by the initial onslaught of HIV/AIDS and an ensuing wave of death and discrimination.

The Inheritance is a retelling of E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End set in a New York gay community.Credit: Cameron Grant

The two plays share an epic canvas. They portray queer lineages of trauma and resistance and use mythic elements to encapsulate the struggles of a generation.

Beyond those obvious parallels, The Inheritance draws energy from allowing a more complex queer ancestry to surface. It is, plot-wise, a 21st-century retelling of the E.M. Forster novel Howards End (1910), set amid a multi-generational milieu in New York’s gay community.

An imagined collaboration between the ghost of Forster – a closeted homosexual who only “came out” posthumously, with the 1971 publication of his novel Maurice – and a large cast of 21st-century characters frames the action.

Playful tensions emerge in The Inheritance as the Edwardian plot line careens into contemporary gay culture.Credit: Cameron Grant

Playful tensions emerge as the Edwardian plot line careens into contemporary gay culture. Unchanging verities about love and human nature rub against a revolution in social and sexual mores, sparking everything from liberating comedy – one droll sequence has the repressed Forster (Dion Mills) narrating explicit descriptions of anal sex, for instance – to the poignant human connection of young gay men who read Maurice and found they weren’t alone.

Queer history and community lie at the heart of The Inheritance, particularly the intergenerational dialogue they generate.

For Eric (Charles Purcell) and Toby (Tomas Kantor) and their circle of friends, lucky enough to be born millennials, it’s difficult to imagine what the generation before them went through. HIV is no longer a death sentence; infection is easily treated and prevented. The fight for equality has progressed and same-sex marriage is a thing: Eric and Toby announce their engagement even as Adam (Karl Richmond), a young actor Toby falls for, creates a rift between them.

Meanwhile, Eric develops a profound affection for Walter (Mills), an older gay man who lived through the HIV/AIDS crisis and owns a country estate with a spiritual connection to the dying years.

The Inheritance features an extraordinary ensemble cast, including Charles Purcell (left) and Dion Mills.Credit: Cameron Grant

When he bequeaths the property unexpectedly to Eric upon his death, Walter’s billionaire life partner Henry (Hunter Perske) and his sons thwart the inheritance, though Henry himself becomes entranced by Eric’s kindness and proposes marriage.

An intergenerational saga opens out, straying into gay saunas and drag nightclubs, entwining characters including the repentant mother of a dead gay son (acted with etched poise by Jillian Murray, the lone woman in the cast), and a homeless teenage sex worker (Richmond).

It’s an extraordinary ensemble performance. Director Kitan Petkovski uses a large chorus to engaging effect – as witnesses, commentators, and, yes, as a community. Tag-team narration lightens the burden of storytelling, makes us feel involved, and judiciously ignores the classic advice “show, don’t tell” so that the show feels, in part, like essential oral history.

If you saw the outrageously talented Kantor as Feste in Twelfth Night last year, you’ll know he can sing and dance and clown. As Toby – a saturnine, hedonistic and traumatised artist whose destructive spiral damages those around him – he proves a star in a marathon dramatic role, bringing a quicksilver touch to a slow-motion train wreck of a character, unlikeable and charismatic in compelling equipoise. You really can’t look away.

Purcell’s Eric has such an insistent gentleness that the rare moments of cruelty cut deeper, while Richmond’s double-act – as a rent boy and a rich kid who becomes a famed actor – encapsulates the ecstatic discoveries of youth, its vulnerability and its power. Mills is just as sure-footed at portraying the subtleties of age.

But the entire supporting cast performs powerfully in this Tony Award-winning saga. It’s queer durational theatre of great significance – add it to Angels in America and Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music – and no serious theatre lover should miss this epic event.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

CABARET
On The Uncertainty of Signs ★★★★
Theatreworks, until January 27

There’s nothing more cringe to the MSN generation of millennials, who speak to each other in horoscopes, dank memes and therapised parlance, than earnestness. No one knows this more than Willing – gifted musician, performer and admin behind a viral Melbourne meme page. But what’s a jaded cynic to do when the love he seeks is serendipitously found through this very meme page?

On the Uncertainty of Signs skewers Melbourne, Melburnians and millennials all at once.Credit: Morgan Roberts

On The Uncertainty of Signs is a riposte towards this self-professed hatred of sincerity and an impressive amalgam of a few different forms: cabaret, stand-up, poetry. It’s a show about love and romance, the narratives we build about ourselves and each other, the self-mythologies we uphold because of our pride and shame. It’s about loneliness, ageing and kinship.

Which isn’t to say it isn’t wickedly funny as it skewers Melbourne, Melburnians and millennials all at once – cheating is “non-consensual polyamory”, white women mine their minoritised identities for clout, paninis have taken the place of focaccias.

What ties everything together is Willing’s own discovery of love and the revelations borne from this singular yet universal experience.Credit: Siena Stone

Posting a callout for love stories from his meme account under the guise of a non-existent PhD, Willing becomes a confidante for the masses. The interviews he conducts with five Melburnians about their travails of love and loss provide the show with its narrative structure.

Marrying song with storytelling, Willing expertly assumes the cadences and mannerisms of five different people before launching into songs about each of them. His vocal range is as expansive as his songwriting nous and the musical influences he embodies in each song – the stylistic flourishes of Elton John, the plaintive intonations of Rufus Wainwright, the jaunty pop synth sound of ’80s bands like The Blow Monkeys.

Willing occasionally plays the keyboard himself, and his sound is rounded off by an on-stage two-person band who play the guitar, saxophone, keys and clarinet.

As someone who ran a meme account that affectionately pokes fun at Melbourne’s subcultures, it’s unsurprising that the show is firmly rooted in references unique to this city – specifically the queer, inner north experience of Melbourne. Hope Street Radio and Miscellania are mentioned in the same breath as Loafer and Milney’s. It’s also expected that the love stories Willing solicits are from similar social milieus, though the fifth and final story – of a woman who finds love while traipsing around Europe in the ’70s – is a corrective.

If there are to be any quibbles, it’s that the songs occasionally cover the same ground as the characterisations – some exposition could’ve been omitted – and the show could benefit from some tightening.

But what ties everything together is Willing’s own discovery of love and the revelations borne from this singular yet universal experience. The act of an anonymous, irreverent meme page admin baring his soul in front of an audience is symbolic and beautiful in its admission of vulnerability.

An homage to love as much as it’s a love letter to this peculiar city companionship is often found in, The Uncertainty of Signs is breathtakingly sweet, achingly sorrowful in parts and acerbic in its wittiness.

Reviewed by Sonia Nair

DANCE
Malevo ★★★★
State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, until 28 January

Malevo is a high-energy exhibition of Argentinian folk dance and circus skills that is more rock concert than cultural showcase. It features 13 bare-chested, black-booted gauchos – or pampas cowboys – stamping and whooping and sweating buckets under bright lights as they celebrate the rhythms of Malambo.

There’s passion and discipline, but also humour.Credit: Jordan Munns

Malambo is a traditional dance characterised by speedy footwork, upright carriage and macho posturing. It’s traditionally performed solo or in dance battles between rival gauchos, but like Irish stepdance and American tap – which it superficially resembles – it can make a powerful theatrical statement when performed in unison by a large ensemble.

The show is supported by a quartet of musicians, but Malambo makes its own relentlessly percussive music. The stomping is vigorous but precise, with occasional moments of delicacy. The knees fly out wildly but the torso moves very little. There’s passion and discipline, but also humour. Sometimes the dancers mimic the contortions of trick riders and sometimes they mimic the horses themselves.

Midway through the show, the gauchos bring on their boleadoras and the fun really starts. A boleadora is tethered weight that was once used for hunting. When swung around, the weights create dramatic shapes and patterns in the air. They can also be slapped against the floor as part of the dance. It’s an impressive kind of circus act and when the whole ensemble starts whirling and slapping the effect is breathtaking.

Another feature of Malevo is the bombo leguero, a drum strapped to the body and played with two sticks. While the drumming is not as virtuosic as the dancing or spinning, the sound of 13 performers banging away is nonetheless impressive. And it’s all part of the spectacle: bare arms pumping furiously while hips twist and thrust.

Malevo is a high-energy exhibition of Argentinian folk dance and circus skills.Credit: Jordan Munns

It works well enough in the State Theatre, but it’d work even better in a stadium. This is, after all, a troupe that first found fame on America’s Got Talent. Since then, they’ve toured from Las Vegas to Moscow to Riyadh. They even made an appearance at the Dubai Shopping Festival.

Yes, all that rugged masculinity and flamenco beefcake can seem a bit ridiculous. And you may wonder if the show has exhausted its theme when the gauchos start cracking whips and juggling with their horse blankets. And yet, with its eye-filling displays of bootwork and rope tricks, Malevo does ultimately deliver on its promise to amaze, delight and divert.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

MUSIC
Gracie Abrams ★★★
Forum Theatre, January 21

You’d be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered into a cult meeting by the number of white ribbons hanging from heads at Gracie Abrams’ debut Melbourne show.

Like contemporaries Phoebe Bridgers, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift (whom Abrams recently supported in North America), the singer-songwriter inspires a kind of breathless fanaticism once reserved for floppy-haired boy bands. It’s nice, actually, to see young women direct this kind of hero worship towards people a little more like them.

Gracie Abrams performs at Forum Melbourne.Credit: Richard Clifford

Abrams – the daughter of Star Trek director JJ – trades in the soft, sensitive folk-pop that is steadily gaining traction among the younger crowd.

The songs from her breathy debut album, Good Riddance, are about relationships and misunderstandings; they’re much more full-bodied and robust in the live sphere, backed by a three-piece band. Abrams stands in the middle of the stage, occasionally picking up an acoustic guitar (I Should Hate You) or sitting at the piano (Amelie).

Gracie Abrams interacts warmly and responsibly with the crowd.Credit: Richard Clifford

Abrams is a confident and able performer. She interacts warmly and responsibly with the crowd – it’s a common occurrence for fans to pass out during her shows, and she’s got the speech down pat to prioritise safety.

Her vocals sound great live, but are almost entirely drowned out by the all-ages audience singing every word back at the top of their lungs. There’s a sense of catharsis in the way punters close their eyes and feel these songs of heartbreak, while communally gathering with people who feel the same (and ringing their equally excited friends in on FaceTime). Still, it’s a shame to not hear more of Abrams’ voice, as it gets lost in the commotion.

With the rise and rise of girlhood as a musical aesthetic, Abrams is looking to be one of its brightest stars. Where she leads, her loyal fans will follow.
Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

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