Primarily we meet Jase (Stephen Multari), Simon (Christopher Tomkinson), Tom (Quinn Gibbes) and Dick (John Turnbull). They are ensemble to the featured characters story.
Four actors take on the responsibility of character and ensemble in different parts of the script. The play begins with what is fashionable in some areas of theatre writing at the moment, Chorus Speak: shared lines that give us direct information without the pretence of character. But this play reveals a writer at a much earlier time in his career, still finding his voice, no matter how much recent adaptation has gone on. In this work one can see the origins of what I think is a very exciting writer, based on my memory of his later play COLDER. Originally written for a Melbourne Theatre space, the Builder’s Arms Hotel, in 1999, Mr Philpott and the production company Focus, have reworked the material to bring “it up to date”.
(There is very little in this material to excite a Lesbian audience, it is entirely concerned with the male experience.) These plays in my estimation are of interest to a very small cognoscenti of the public.īISON by Lachlan Philpott is an Australian play. Even certain factions of a Gay audience may find a lot of the material confronting and maybe uncomfortable to watch.
(Witness BLOWING WHISTLES and it’s soft porn memories.) I guess if Channel 9 can score audience targets with similar tactics in both series of UNDERBELLY, let’s go one step further and give the nudity to them: Live! LIVE!!! LIVE!!!!!! Live simulated sex acts on stage!!! (There are various ticket prices available and at $48 dollars for the double bill, $30 a single, you may or may not feel you have got value for money - entirely dependent on what you go to the theatre for.) Definitely the ordinary audience might find the material both confronting and maybe informative.
Both plays have what seems to be a recent Hallmark of Focus Theatre performances, a de rigueur requirement of including “male striptease” and full frontal nakedness, a titillating element of soft porn. Both plays are examples of extreme verbal voyeurism. BE WARNED then, that, these two plays, as performance pieces, have a very specific audience target in mind. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian MARDI GRAS 2009 logo stands beside the FOCUS THEATRE logo at the top of the program. (It is part of The Sydney Gay Lesbian MARDI GRAS 2009.) FOCUS THEATRE present BISON by Lachlan Philpott and NATURAL BORN HOOKER by Konrad Product at the Belvoir St Downstairs Theatre.