The play that asks: what happens when love, politics and racism collide?

This wrap of shows around Melbourne includes a sweet but heartrending exploration of young love; a visit from Wu-Tang Clan and Nas; a night of music that was unplanned, unrehearsed and unrepeatable; a long-awaited stage adaptation of a revered novel; a five-star performance of an opera about Gandhi; a genre-defying work of satire; and an original production that engages radical theatre history in ways that will surprise and delight.

THEATRE
I Wanna Be Yours ★★★½
Southbank Theatre, until May 27

Haseeb’s a British–Pakistani–Muslim spoken-word poet. Ella’s a white actor from Yorkshire. They fall in love. Can it last?

Oz Malik plays spoken-word poet Haseeb in Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of I Wanna Be Yours.Credit: Tiffany Garvie

The set is minimal, the cast confined to the two main characters, the play concise at 1 hour and 20 minutes. The script skips through vignettes of Haseeb and Ella’s life together, who both narrate their actions instead of acting out scenes with the aid of a supporting cast. This enhances the whirlwind feel of their budding romance, while the jarring transitions feel intentional – a fraught moment is often followed immediately by a lighthearted one, as tensions are unresolved and resentment starts to fester.

Race is the looming spectre against which Haseeb and Ella’s relationship unfolds, but it’s not the only source of tension between them. Much is made of their North-South London divide. Ella yearns for the slower pace of her childhood home, while Haseeb’s discomfort at being outside a big metropolis is heightened. The precarity of working in the arts exacerbates these negotiations of home and place – Ella works three jobs to stay afloat, while Haseeb questions if he can call himself a poet if it doesn’t make him money.

Eleanor Barkla and Oz Malik play Ella and Haseeb, whose relationship plays out in I Wanna Be Yours.Credit: Tiffany Garvie

Eleanor Barkla plays the big-hearted northerner Ella with a wide-eyed naivety, her clumsy comprehension of racism evolving as the play progresses. Oz Malik plays the sweet, fumbling Haseeb with a combination of optimism and resignation.

Before we know it, several Eids and Christmases have passed, multiple festivals, club nights and house parties have occurred, and a third unseen character arrives – a literal (on-the-nose) elephant in the room.

It’s a testament to poetry-slam champion and playwright Zia Ahmed’s lyrical, quick-witted script that we become deeply invested in Haseeb and Ella’s relationship, even when it’s unclear if it will withstand the competing pressures of their cultural and geographical differences. Ensconced in their love bubble, they’re mostly fine. But once within family homes, public spheres where Haseeb is constantly mistaken for a drug dealer, and public debates on the politics of interracial relationships, their delicately forged idyll crumbles.

In a particularly tense scene where Ella’s mother asks Haseeb what he’s “doing to address the problems in his community”, an electric spoken-word monologue by Haseeb coupled with the menacing pulse of a quickening heartbeat and ominous lighting culminates in one of the play’s more visceral depictions of how corrosive and violent racial microaggressions can be.

Ahmed doesn’t situate the play at a particular time. At one point, Haseeb’s community is rocked by a mosque attack – but in a sad indictment of life as a persecuted minority in London, this could’ve happened in 2017, 2021 or 2023.

Treading well-worn territory, I Wanna Be Yours is nevertheless a sweet, heartrending depiction of young interracial love “going into battle” against societal forces.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

MUSIC
Wu-Tang Clan & Nas ★★★★
Rod Laver Arena, May 14

As the lights of Rod Laver Arena dim, the beat for the ’90s classic Cash Rules Everything Around Me (C.R.E.A.M.) by Wu-Tang Clan kicks off.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that a year before the record was published in 1993, America witnessed the Los Angeles race riots and the NYPD city hall riots.

On stage, Raekwon clenches his fist, “I grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side, staying alive was no jive.” The crowd, a cultural melting pot of marginalised Australians, bounce with the weight of the rapper’s suffering.

Wu-Tang Clan perform at Rod Laver Arena, May 14, 2023.Credit: Jonathan White / Rod Laver Arena

Raekwon howls, “No question I would speed, for cracks and weed, The combination made my eyes bleed, No question I would flow off, and try to get the dough all, Sticking up white boys in ball courts.”

The tour NY State of Mind features a collaboration of two pillars of East Coast Hip-Hop, Wu-Tang Clan and Nas.

​​Since its inception, hip-hop has cultivated street slang as an exercise in giving voice and truth-telling.

In Winter Warz, Ghostface Killah spits, “In Born Power, born physically, power speaking / The truth in the song be the pro-black teaching.”

RZA from Wu-Tang Clan performs in New Zealand earlier this month.Credit: Tom Grut

Rappers speak out about the world around them and within them, in order to question what it means to survive America. The answer is inked into the title; a state of mind.

While Wu-Tang deploys comic book allegories and Kung Fu wisdom as methods of empowerment in their raps, Nas drags listeners in close with grave realism that feels only a street away.

On stage, Nas is calm and collected. Peering off to the sides as he yells, “Police watch us, roll up and try knockin’ us / One knee I ducked, could it be my time is up? / But my luck, I got up, the cop shot again / Bus stop, glass burst, a fiend drops his Heineken.”

He describes his music as, “Street scriptures for lost souls, in the crossroads.” Whether it’s teaching empowerment, or lyrics that feel like a hand on your shoulder, the story of the show is one of resilience, community and hope.
Reviewed by Mahmood Fazal

JAZZ
The Necks ★★★★
Brunswick Ballroom, May 16

After 35 years together, you’d think the modus operandi of The Necks might be starting to wear a little thin. Yet every concert by the trio still feels startlingly and resplendently fresh. The only constants are the three players, their instruments and the silence that bookends each improvised musical journey. Everything else is unplanned, unrehearsed and unrepeatable.

As part of their 2023 tour, the trio is performing a run of sold-out shows at the Brunswick Ballroom – a much more intimate space than the Recital Centre (which hosted the trio on their Melbourne visit last year). Happily, the acoustics at the Ballroom coped exceptionally well with the dynamic extremes a Necks concert can embrace, from barely-there pinpricks of sound to ferocious waves of intensity.

Tuesday’s show began with the former, courtesy of Chris Abrahams’ delicate piano clusters. Accompanied by drummer Tony Buck’s restrained brushwork and a series of slow, repeating notes from Lloyd Swanton’s bass, the effect of this opening was hypnotic and almost dreamlike. Then gradually, imperceptibly, the dream descended into darkness, with thickets of bristling piano, angrily buzzing bass and dense percussive surges conjuring a sense of unstoppable momentum, before glimpses of space and light heralded a return to tranquillity.

The Necks have been performing together for 35 years.Credit: Ric Brooks

The second set followed a similar arc, but with each stage of the journey somehow magnified and intensified. The introduction brimmed with beauty: glistening piano, reverberant bass and Buck’s bare hands dancing on cymbals.

As the energy built, clouds of resonance and overtones created the effect of a helicopter propeller or a deep industrial hum, Swanton’s arco bass drone merging with Buck’s thudding kick drum while Abrahams pummelled the keyboard with clenched fists. The impact was as unsettling as it was gripping, and when the storm finally subsided, it was like waking from a strange but enthralling dream.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

The Necks perform again at Brunswick Ballroom on Thursday, and at the Sydney Opera House on May 30 and 31.

THEATRE
Loaded ★★ ½
Malthouse Theatre, until June 3

Caught between two worlds. This theme is a preoccupation of many artists from various diasporas, so much so that it has become somewhat trite. Yet, despite it being well-worn territory, it remains compelling. There’s a natural narrative tension, and the conflict makes for a good arc. To resolve or not to resolve?

Christos Tsiolkas’s 1995 novel Loaded is chock-full of this; you could call it seminal, even. The book follows a day in the life of Ari, a 19-year-old gay Greek man as he travels to all four corners of Melbourne looking for a good time, not to mention the ultimate escape from the straitjacket that is traditional Greek culture, one that his first-generation parents cling to.

He meets with friends along the way, they party lots, and the tensions that come with coming of age as a queer man of Mediterranean heritage are viscerally felt. A film adaptation, Head On, was released in 1998 to critical acclaim, and Loaded the audio play followed in late 2020 at the height of the pandemic. The latter was meant to be staged, but we know what happened.

Dany Ball as Ari in Loaded at Malthouse Theatre.Credit: Tamarah Scott

Two years later, the staged version is here. The homonymous play is a monodrama with Danny Ball as Ari, directed by Stephen Nicolazzo (Looking For Alibrandi). At times Ball switches to Johnny, a.k.a. Toula, his drag queen buddy, or to Maria, his friend, but it is largely Ari. We see through his eyes as he dances, cruises, sucks and f---s all over Melbourne while grappling with his sexuality in the context of being Greek-Australian.

Instead of the ’90s, however, the audience is taken to the present, where Ubers, Spotify playlists and terms such as “check your privilege” exist.

The expensive-looking yet sparse set — comprising a rotating stage made of stone and two arched entrances, one tiled in a glorious blue — is all Ball has to work with. He sustains it fairly well across the 95-minute runtime, but the highs and lows are inconsistent. For a story inherently imbued with manic energy, Ball at times appears rote as he switches between Ari’s contradictory demeanours and feelings.

There is a tender moment when Ari finally catches the eye of George, his brother’s friend, and they have frenzied sex before a vulnerable, angst-filled conversation about their shared identity, but generally the cruising and partying scenes are lacklustre.

The stage version of Loaded updates the story from the ’90s to the modern day.Credit: Tamarah Scott

The same thing could be said about the music. Composed by Daniel Nixon, its mutedness is a curious decision: after all, this is a narrative about a disenfranchised young man where music is the only real thing.

Perhaps this is why Ball sometimes seems anguished when he is experiencing pleasure and vice versa.

That said, Ball is luckily quick with the character transitions and the script is paced well. But I could have just as easily listened to this as a book on tape.
Reviewed by Cher Tan

OPERA
Satyagraha in Concert ★★★★★
Opera Australia, Hamer Hall, May 13

I don’t think I’ve ever so enjoyed an opera in which I hadn’t the faintest notion about what was going on as I did Opera Australia’s concert performance of Satyagraha, Philip Glass’s story of how Gandhi became known as Mahatma (great soul).

Shanul Sharma ahead of his performance of Satyagraha.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Sung in Sanskrit, the only text is taken from the holy Hindu text Bhagavad Gita, which bears only the most tangential relation to what is happening on stage. The story one is supposed to discern is of Gandhi’s early years in South Africa, which transform him into the inspirational leader he became – but the only hint of this is in the program synopsis. Other characters are Gandhi’s wife, secretary, various supporters, plus Lord Krishna and the warrior Prince Arjuna.

The opera is minimalist, which means that rather than arias and duets there are subtly shifting patterns of music that gradually evolve along with often semi-vocalised singing from the chorus. The effect is powerful, hypnotic and, at times, ethereally beautiful.

Satyagraha is also the perfect vehicle for Indian-Australian tenor Shanul Sharma (Gandhi) with his superb purity of tone, lovely sound throughout the range and almost mesmeric stage presence (yes, even in a concert performance).

Visibly moved by the rapturous applause, Sharma briefly broke into tears, a touching moment.

The supporting cast was extremely strong, especially the ever-reliable bass Richard Anderson and soprano Rachelle Durkin but Andrew Moran, Olivia Cranwell, Agnes Sarkis, Sian Sharp and Alexander Sefton were all excellent. The volume they produced in tuttis was overpowering, and their ensemble was flawless.

Opera Australia’s head of music, Tahu Matheson, conducted Orchestra Victoria in an accomplished demonstration of precision, balance and sensitivity in what must be a particularly challenging score. Hamer Hall was gratifyingly full.
Reviewed by Barney Zwartz

THEATRE
A Nightime Travesty ★★★★
A Daylight Connection, Meat Market, until May 12

Yirramboi means “tomorrow” in the languages of the Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung people. As a platform for First Nations creatives across the performing arts, the Yirramboi Festival has a fearless, forward-looking cultural energy that shows up just how timid and moribund a lot of mainstream performance in this country has become.

Carly Sheppard and Kamarra Bell-Wykes in a scene from A Nighttime Travesty.Credit: Gregory Lorenzutti

A Nightime Travesty is a case in point. This genre-defying satire furiously dismantles life-denying forces at work in Australian culture. Patriarchy, colonial genocide and stolen generations, white supremacy and white guilt, wanton environmental destruction – not to mention the sins and inequities of the theatre world. You name it, the show eviscerates it.

Indigenous Australian flight attendant Angel (Carly Sheppard) serves aboard The Last Fleet, a spacecraft ferrying cashed-up souls away from Earth (now a smouldering hellscape on the brink of human extinction) to some not-so-great beyond.

Tough gig … and Angel has had to compromise herself to get it. All survivors aboard (Kamarra Bell-Wykes) are hideous lampoons, and when Angel isn’t coerced into providing sexual favours to the phallocentric Captain Gift, she’s dealing with an infuriatingly calm AI colleague, or a motley cast of entitled passengers.

But Angel’s a fighter, and when things get Biblical, she finds herself in a fight to the death against God Himself.

A Nighttime Travesty is a genre-defying satire.Credit: Gregory Lorenzutti

An apocalyptic frame parodies free-to-air TV, from the glossy, whiter-than-white “ordinariness” of morning news hosts to a piss-take of the Red Faces segment on Hey Hey It’s Judgement Day.

Overt meta-theatre intrudes, with self-deprecating quips from the performers about the show itself, and even a pre-emptive roasting of the platitudes and values that critics can regurgitate about First Nations theatre.

Onstage house band smallsound plays responsive incidental music, giving proceedings the air of an improvised counter-cultural “happening”, and rocks out to a range of musical numbers – some inane, some soulful – loosely incorporated throughout.

Sheppard and Bell-Wykes deliver the ferocious script with a compelling command of comic grotesquerie. There’s a Brechtian force to the way their performance speaks truth to power.

They’re also deadly funny, with outlandish visual gags including a costume reveal showing how all this mob wants is, ah, a fair suck of the sauce bottle.

Tasteless moments abound, of course, but “good taste” is political, as are “good manners”. Here a wildly subversive aesthetic deliberately impales both on the blade of satire.

Blue language. A massive dildo. Action that might be viewed by some as blasphemous or obscene. It’s all there, and hardly any of it feels gratuitous. Clutching one’s pearls at rudeness is, after all, the luxury of the privileged and complacent – those of us who don’t want to think about, or to be offended by, how we’re implicated in the real-life injustices the show so blisteringly critiques.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
Cavalcade ★★★★
Wits’ End, The Eleventh Hour, 170 Leicester St, Fitzroy, until May 21

Alone together in this place – Dada is not – When you consider – As art must fall to be – Dead as a – Dada is – Pedalling into a wall – Concrete poetry – No omelette without – Marcel Duchamp is not – the “Real Thing” – Erik Satie is not – Readymade – William Henderson is – Bespoke – World famous in Yackandandah – The real thing – The jacaranda on the veranda – Overegged – As art must fall to be – But so there! – If you look – poetry – If you can be stuffed looking – If only, if only…

Peter Houghton stars in Cavalcade.Credit: Ponch Hawkes

A review of Cavalcade written using the cut-up technique devised by the original dadaists might come closer to capturing its bizarre and brilliant essence than more conventional forms. Alas, there is granular information to convey, should you want to seek out this hidden indie theatre gem for yourselves.

Performed at The Eleventh Hour – a beautiful, privately owned theatre space tucked away on the side streets of Fitzroy – the show resurrects a century-old modernist movement in a distinctly Australian idiom. It’s the unlikeliest flower, the kind that seems to bloom from artists (the novelist Gerald Murnane is a good example from literature) whose eccentricity thrives in an intellectual desert where the cultural topsoil is thin.

Cavalcade resurrects a century-old modernist movement in a distinctly Australian idiom.Credit: Ponch Hawkes

Cavalcade is a biography of a bicycle, or an attempt at one. Two disgruntled jobbing actors (Tom Considine and Peter Houghton) face opening night disaster: their theatre troupe has been delayed by Melbourne traffic and a series of unfortunate events. They crash the bike right away, and although they get on with the show, they’re not happy about it.

Their misery becomes part of the show’s elaborate and consuming whimsy. Scenes are interwoven with meta-theatrical bickering and banter. An amusing sense of comic futility and failure dogs every move. And yet, the scenes themselves are utterly true to the subversive agenda of dada.

A slapstick sack race mocks the inevitability and arbitrariness of male competition. The tale of a dead dog skewers the callousness of the bourgeoisie. A schoolboy runs rings around a martinet teacher, controlling the narrative by shouting a frenzied poem, itself composed of permutations of ugly slogans, buzzwords, and soundbites from Australian politics.

Bedecked in a bowler hat with a piano on top, pianist Peter Dumsday plays Erik Satie’s inimitable Sports et Divertissements – occasionally to odd instructions – providing neat dramatic accompaniment and interludes to the comedy.

And projections disrupt, and deepen the performance, through weird and wonderful concrete poetry, lists of concentration camps, and satirical animations of evil billionaires carving up the world.

Original, smart and very funny, Cavalcade engages radical theatre history in ways that will surprise and delight, without letting the present off the hook.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

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