Above: Jack Calver as Lucas and Mark Salvestro as Ryan. Featured image: Ryan (Salvestro), Lucas (Calver) and Maggie (Kath Gordon) in Cooma’s Community Radio studio. Images: Bojan Bozic.
Walking through the sobering queer history exhibits at Qtopia’s renovated former Darlinghurst Police Station cells and spaces, we may be excused for thinking that the horrors of the 78ers arrests or early HIV treatments could never be topped or ever repeated.
However, the newest piece by acclaimed queer playwright Mark Salvestro, currently in its premiere season at the Loading Dock Theatre, turns such a comfort zone fabulously on its head.
On one level, The Queen’s City of the South is a touching tribute to gay men growing up in or returning as unique and entertaining celebrities to regional towns such as Cooma.
Above: Kath Gordon plays Maggie. Image: supplied.
It is an endearing salute also to regional gays’ creative, effervescent contribution to smaller city or town environments and the patterns or pressures of close friendships with other (mainly female) locals as they exist away from the city.
On a darker level, so appropriate for a Qtopia exposé, this play re-enacts another slow awakening of human truths.
The 2022 podcast The Greatest Menace revealed that the Cooma Gaol reopened in 1957 at the direction of NSW Attorney General Downing, as an internment, experimentation and conversion therapy hub for arrested gay men, often the victims of entrapment by disguised NSW Police officers.
These offenders were then transported to the hydro-electric, Snowy Mountains gateway town. In the gaol they were subjected to experiments for unethical research, to electricity of the sinister, aversion-therapy type, plus a dark holiday from the evil menace of the city.
Above: Playwright and actor Mark Salvestro. Image: supplied.
Cooma-born Salvestro’s play has at its slow-build epicentre, some deliciously scripted anger and disbelief from the prominent local gay radio jock, when the use of his heritage hometown gaol is uncovered. The pivotal frustrated monologue losing it live on air is a compelling theatrical moment, virtuosically shaped and paced.
The trifecta of talent that introduces this disbelief operates with considerable chemistry. This cast of Ryan (played by Mark Salvestro himself), his friend Maggie (Kath Gordon) and city slicker Lucas (Jack Calver) works on his quest for the truth about his grandfather’s time in Cooma with energy, contrast and important questions.
There is a clever quick-change sharing of roles as scenes from past tortures, by police, by do-good politicians hauntingly lit, are flicked to within the modern story for flashback seconds at the back of the stage.
Lucas bursts with generation-now confidence onto the stage. Calver’s layered performance presents the character successfully, being as lithe in body as in mind, and something of a moral compass and bravery barometer for the other two protagonists
This uncovering of Cooma Gaol’s secret past, spurred on in the play by Lucas’ ancestry research, unfolds in parallel to the shocking reality of a challenge to the Cooma Historical Society presidency. Very old-school country NSW indeed.
Maggie (the extremely warm and watchable Gordon) is the voice of the local status quo, with skeletons and men in the closet trying to promote the wholesome and positive despite history.
Her commentary on the boys’ investigations about the gaol, her presidential campaign and fierce friendship with Ryan are delivered with impeccable timing and huge, well-measured emotional range.
Above: Actor Jack Calver, who plays the character of Lucas. Image: supplied.
This range is shared by Salvestro, delivering his own script in satisfying arcs of exposition, shock and reaction.
As the secret unfolds of gay men hunted in public city places and sent away from their morally deficient metropolis, of Lucas’ grandfather’s possible plight, the challenges of the town’s multicultural Snowy-Hydro origins are seen in interesting parallel.
Themes of difficulties for immigrant workers of the scheme are present but dwarfed by this latest chapter in NSW’s maltreatment of queer people.
This play does not sugarcoat this facet of anti-queer history as it introduces this scandal anew to so many. It sinks the situation beautifully within the regional scene, treating the city as ‘other’ and regional areas as tight-lipped keepers of secrets and devoid of the disgusting.
Above: Jack Calver as Lucas and Mark Salvestro as Ryan, with Kath Gordon as a police figure from the past. Image: Bojan Bozic.
On the 40th year anniversary of decriminalisation of homosexuality in NSW, in Qtopia’s new bastion of strength through exhibition, storytelling and the arts, this entertaining piece packs quite a punch.
Humour, banter and endearing, fallible characters work their way into our hearts and this new queer history. Song choices for the many community radio studio scenes were so fabulous, sarcastic, well-timed and appropriate.
All the accessible, well-structured, effectively programmed moments of this show on offer in the important Sydney venue are real and easy to process even despite the horror. This worthwhile viewing and learning experience motivates us to embrace truth.
What should be an enduring life in city as well as regional theatre spaces will entertain as it assists preventing cruelty from the self-professed mainstream being acceptable in the future.
