Above: Mama Alto as Pam and Simon Corfield as Kim. Featured image: Simon Burke as Warren and Lincoln Younes as Lucacz. Photo credit : Brett Boardman.
In this hilarious but incisive play we first meet Warren and Kim. They are a modern gay Sydney couple with, by modern terms, a lot to be happy about. Or are they really?
They have been together for several years, are married on a non-legal level in this country and have a labyrinthine studio in Darlo which affords a view of the Mardi Gras parade from the toilet window. They recently closed an entire hotel with an online petition which was serving a traditional meatball dish named ‘faggots’.
This is a fab romp set on Mardi Gras night. Its biting messages about self-control and simplifying identities and feelings hit hard in our own post-Mardi Gras period. Whilst stumbling over political correctness, incorrectness and the perils of online posting, the couple illustrate the minefield that is modern life in the at times dark shadow of the GLBTIQA+ rainbow.
The actors perform hilarious and controversial commentary with strength and clarity in this fun and frantic farce. They offer the material deftly to us before racing on to the next quip or crisis. This energetic and capable cast also work together to seamlessly manage the verbal and physical timing, quick changes and back-peddling which a farce from any century needs.
As a modern example of the dramatic medium of farce, the play employs traditional elements of disguise, situational comedy and deception. We watch bold examples of multiple mistaken identities, cast hiding people, cast finding people, surprise revelations and visual gags galore.
Marg Horwell’s set allows the compact East Sydney love nest to house the crazed comings and goings of six protagonists desperate to keep alive their various hopes. Action sprawls out to a bathroom entrance, off stage to the apartment entrance and kitchen as well as up perilous stairs to the marital bedroom.
Simon Burke’s multi-layered character of Warren the online journalist with Yahoo is energetically drawn. Warren needs to keep his interviewing work for the Daily Bulge site flowing to maintain mortgage payments. He also has to deal with a routine of continuing pre-marital lusts which plague him fuelled by Instagram flirting.
Warren’s partner Kim, is deliciously presented in well-modulated voice and expressive gesture by Simon Corfield. With Kim’s mature-age uni student interest in gender studies he tries to make some fragment sense of the world, hoping also for a traditional marriage in a non-traditional environment or time.
The couple have us laughing immediately as Declan Greene’s script glows on the Griffin Theatre stage. This work is given thoughtful handling in turn by each of the assembled talent. Appropriate weight is given to harsh, no-holds-barred comments carefully woven into the rapid-fire text for full shock value and effect.
Genevieve Lemon and Simon Burke are formidable farce captains here, bringing to the busy stage their depth of experience and skills as they portray genuine and strong yet vulnerable characters.
Lemon in particular as no nonsense ex-drag queen and now trans woman Diana gives a tour de force performance. She is a suitably poignant commentator on relationships in general and the messy status quo of the Darlinghurst and broader gay scene.
Mama Alto performs with tremendous attitude and colour in her dual role as Bey Bey and ex-pub waitress turned criminal Pam. Bey Bey’s hypersensitive online activism is very familiar to us. Quick changes to Pam are managed with knife-edge completeness. This character displays fine precision in the later visual humour elements of the play’s climax.
Lincoln Younes works well with the ensemble as his character of the lusted-after model Lucacz becomes drawn into the tangled web of the work. His variety of expression and comic timing is a worthwhile layer here.
This is a must see for any adult. It is a fine Mardi Gras night farce, that will bring you many LOL and LMFAO moments through its superbly paced direction and Parade boots and all of the performances.
THE HOMOSEXUALS, OR FAGGOTS plays at the Griffin Theatre, 10 Nimrod Street Kings Cross until April 29.