Standing to applaud coming of the rains

SHAKE & Stir theatre company has built a niche in innovative productions of literary classics.

Tequila Mockingbird

DURING the past seven years, Brisbane's Shake & Stir theatre company has built a niche in innovative productions of literary classics.

But for all its previous success with Animal Farm and 1984, one could be forgiven for approaching the primarily theatre-in-education company's latest main stage production, Tequila Mockingbird, with trepidation.

Ignoring its almost sacrosanct place in the literary canon, writer-actor Nelle Lee has taken namesake Harper Lee's bestselling novel about the brutality of racism and the moral depths of those confronting it, and adapted it freely to contemporary Australia.

The poster outside QPAC, a cross between a tattoo magazine cover and a domestic violence infomercial, looks like it promises a long night of people screaming at each other.

But that's actually happening next door in the Playhouse with Queensland Theatre Company's Other Desert Cities.

Here in the smaller Cremorne, all initial doubts about Tequila Mockingbird are dispelled from the top of the show, when Josh McIntosh and Jason Glenwright practically ignite their amazing set, the first of many breathtaking demonstrations of the respective stage and lighting designers working to compelling effect.

The term "contemporary relevance" in the marketing of theatrical adaptations is often code for "must miss", but here the opposite is true, as Indian doctor Sameer (Shannon Haegler), a dead-ringer for Mohamed Haneef, arrives in small-town Stanton, to be confronted with the prejudice and fear that both sides of Australian politics hope to harness for political gain in the coming weeks.

With director Michael Futcher's assured hand and Guy Webster's powerful yet unobtrusive score, Lee's 90-minute lean, mean and hungry script has you laughing, gasping, sickened, outraged, uplifted and saddened by turns in a deeply moving night.

Sure, it's up and down in terms of the technical assurance of those onstage, but experienced performer or not, all six cast members give it a red-hot crack, and Barbara Lowing's virtuoso tripling of character roles - barmaid, whining suburban mum and bush-pig drunkard - represents a defining moment in her successful career. As teenage narrator Charlie, doubling as hilariously alarming local barfly Dan, Nick Skubij is another standout.

At the end, two good people stand on stage longing for the "coming of the rains" - the change that will see intolerance and hatred banished, whether from election campaigns or from Australian society at large.

Anyone who witnesses this outstanding production can only reply "amen to that".

Ends September 7. Tickets: $30-$52. Bookings: 136 246 or online. Duration: 90 minutes.

THEATRE
Tequila Mockingbird
By Nelle Lee.
Shake & Stir theatre company and Queensland Performing Arts Centre.
Cremorne Theatre, Brisbane, August 22.