MAN ABOUT TOWN

At 10.30am today myself and three colleagues - three of us queer, coincidentally, and three - though not the same three - serious Doctor Who fans - sat down in a VIP suite at ABC Television's Elsternwick studios for a preview screening of Matt Smith's first proper outing as the Eleventh Doctor. I've spent the last few hours alternating between gleeful joy, critical thought, and wondering how best to post a review without including major spoilers. Let's give it a whirl, shall we? But before we go any further, it must be said: MILD SPOILERS LIE AHEAD if you know nothing about the new episode. That said I won't be describing plot details, rest assured. * * * Written by new showrunner Steven Moffat, the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who begins pretty much where The End of Time Part Two left off, with the TARDIS out of control and the Doctor (Matt Smith) very recently regenerated. Very much a new man, Smith's Doctor spends much of the episode discoverin...

A man walks into a shop and is touched up by the shop assistant. So begins this surreal exploration of masculinity and men’s insecurities by Sam Simmons and David Quirk. Not for the easily offended – there’s mimed masturbation, swearing, and sexual references aplenty – The Incident successfully uses adult-themed humour to mock men’s sexual obsessions, not celebrate them. Nor is this a comedy show for audiences who are seeking undemanding stand-up. Instead, this collaborative production fuses Simmons’ unpredictable absurdist humour with Quirk’s pitch-black observational comedy, to great success. Braggadocio, boys and their toys, and buddy movies all cop a serve, interspersed with mock ad breaks and a satirical take on current affairs; but the show is at its best when Quirk and Simmons crash through the divide which separates homo-social behaviour from homosexual activity, to frankly explore the difference between mates and mating. Male bonding has never been funnier. Four s...

A new initiative at this year’s Comedy Festival, Headliners features a rotating triple bill of US comedians, reflecting American comedy traditions, where individual 20 minute sets rather than one hour shows are the norm. Opening Saturday’s proceedings was Todd Barry, a master of the Pinteresque pause, whose dry wit occasionally baffled the crowd but whose material – ranging from the enviable ability of Swedes to create new English words, through to a gag about lemongrass-scented deodorant – was always incisive. Next was the endearing John Mulaney. His professed fear of possums resulted in a protracted exchange with the audience and generated gales of laughter. Mulaney’s observations on pop culture, from the success of Avatar to a childhood jukebox incident, were equally well received. Making his Melbourne debut, rockabilly comic Greg Behrendt wrapped up the evening with a splendid series of anecdotes about aging and relationships. At Headliners , gales of laughter ar...

Self-described ‘Lego-haired English shit’ Russell Kane arrived on stage over 20 minutes late due to a curtain malfunction, and after apologising, launched into a series of anecdotes and observations so quickly delivered they almost collided coming out of his mouth. His manic delivery continued as Kane juggled observations connected to his theory of ‘human dressage’, the social training which conditions our behaviour – especially where dating is concerned. From generational and class differences to emotional literacy and reality TV, Kane presented a bewildering array of topics to support his theory, and at least half the room responded well to his shtick. Unfortunately the laughs faltered when Kane’s argument became bogged down by tangential material, such as observations about English regional accents, which failed to translate locally. A lack of research into Australia’s binge drinking culture further detracted. The hyperactive Kane needs to slow his delivery down for his material to...

Opening with incense and Indian music, Asher Treleaven’s audience could well be forgiven for thinking that the gifted and gangly comedian was about to induct them into a cult. Instead, resplendent in a white suit, Treleaven takes the audience on a hilarious tour through the knuckle-dragging world of Australian masculinity, complete with a slide show featuring ‘Poisonous Personalities of the Day’ (Senator Steve Fielding, take a bow). From a satirical take on the tired dick jokes which are as close as some comedians get to enlightened sexual politics, and Treleaven’s absurd advice – inspired by our native fauna – on how to avoid a fight, through to a good cop/bad cop take on cunnilingus, there is not a flat moment in this entire show. Subtly expressed and perfectly timed physical comedy underlines Treleaven’s quick wit and keen intelligence. Cerebral, sublime and wonderful work from a comedian at the top of his game. Five stars Asher Treleaven - Cellar Door Tues-Sat 9.45p...

Musical comedy is strongly represented at this year’s Comedy Festival, ensuring that punters seeking a song as well as a laugh are well catered for. Adding their considerable skills to the mix are the deadpan duo Smart Casual , half brothers Roger David and Fletcher Jones. At the heart of their new show is the duo’s slowly simmering sibling rivalry, brought to a head by a series of tape-recorded messages from their mother, Rhonda, about the fathers the boys never knew. Increasingly improbable stories about their respective dads soon follow, interspersed by sketches about bullying seagulls, and an excellent and topical Shirley Temple cover. Through short pithy songs such as ‘Why is There a Polar Bear at My Party?’ and ‘Please Don’t Dance, Ellen DeGeneres’, Smart Casual provoke sporadic, staccato bursts of laughter rather than continued hilarity, but their carefully constructed shtick and wry, winning humour ensures audiences are constantly entertained. Three and a half stars Smart Cas...

A night of Indigenous sketch comedy, The Black Sheep’s Glorious Baastards is the fourth Comedy Festival show produced by Australia’s leading Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander theatre company, Ilbijerri, and follows in the footsteps of last year’s highly successful A Black Sheep Walks into a Baa . Opening with a not-so-traditional, pointedly non-token, rapped 'welcome to country', Glorious Baastards is performed by two young comedians, Mia Stanford and Cy Fahey, and two older actors, Melodie Reynolds and Lisa Maza. The latter pair’s experience and confidence on stage somewhat overshadows their younger colleagues, with Maza particularly outstanding. Her over-the-top performance as an opera singer, complete with a possum, wattle and banksia hat that would make Dame Edna envious, was not just a brilliant satire of exoticised Aboriginal stereotypes; it also brought the house down. While not every sketch hits its mark, when the Black Sheep are on fire, they’re blist...

I've only seen nine sessions at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival so far this year, which is pretty poor by my usual standards. There were a couple more sessions today that I wanted to see, but ironically I missed out on them as I've been sitting in front of the computer all day writing reviews (my first Comedy Festival piece for The Age this morning, followed by several other reviews for this here blog this afternoon). I may as well continue in that vein, with a brief summary of the remaining sessions I've attended. Hopefully I get to see at least one more film tomorrow, before the Comedy Festival eats my life... SHORT FILMS I've seen three short film packages this year: Sex Drives and Videotape , a selection of edgy gay shorts exploring fetishes and the dark side of sexual desire; another collection of gay shorts, Short & Burly , and the lesbian shorts selection, Short & Girly . As always, an ecclectic range of films, none of them bad (in my opinion) but o...

Dead Cat Bounce Roxanne, Coverlid Place March 25 - April 18 Tues - Sat 9.30pm, Sun 8.30pm A full-blown rock'n'roll comedy act from Ireland, Dead Cat Bounce are four talented musicians - Mick Cullinan (keys), Demian Fox (drums), Shane O’Brien (bass), and James Walmsley (guitar, lead vocals) - who are also skilled comedians with a firm grasp on timing and song writing. Visiting the Melbourne International Comedy Festival as part of their first ever Australian tour, they're playing a classic Melbourne venue, ie a bar that you have to venture down a seedy laneway and up several flights of stairs to find. Their repetoire features everything from a homoerotic piss-take of rugby players, and a mock boy-band ballad (complete with choreographed dance moves) to a kid's song about learning to differentiate between good touches and bad touches; and their between-songs banter is as strong as their grasp of a range of musical genres. Tight leopard-print trousers, props, and four str...

Donna & Damo: An Asexual Love Story The Arts Centre, Black Box March 24 - April 17 Tues - Sat 8.30pm This quirky comedic theatre show about Donna (Sarah Collins), a recently dumped call-centre worker, and Damo (Justin Kennedy), a self-appointed spellchecker, won rave reviews at last year's Melbourne Fringe Festival, and deservedly so. A triumph of low-fi charm, Donna & Damo: An Asexual Love Story sees both performers playing numerous roles, with Kennedy also doubling as the narrator of the show, against an ever-changing backdrop of hand-drawn and rear-projected scenery. Telemarketer Donna sells glamour photography sessions to unhappy women across Victoria, in between striving to please her self-important film blogger boyfriend. Damo is a genuine eccentric for whom a poorly-placed apostrophe is a thing of horror; he spends his days visiting shops and restaurants in order to correct their mis-spelled signs and menus. When the two meet by chance, it is the catalyst for a wo...

Matt Wilson - Memoirs of a Human Cannonball At the Arts Centre, Black Box 24 March - 17 April Tue-Sat 7pm, Sun 6pm A painfully funny theatre show, Memoirs of a Human Cannonball sees 'The Singing Stuntman' (circus performer Matt Wilson) joined by Shirley Billings as popcorn seller P.K. ("as in the chewy) in an autobiographical production about the horrific accident that put an end to Wilson's cannonballing career. Through a skillful combination of clowning, comedy, songs, slides and home movies, the show explores Wilson's childhood desire to jump off things, and how he channelled that energy into a highly successful circus career. Along the way we're introduced to the Zacchinis (the famous circus family credited with establishing the human cannonball act) through some deft, daft cod-history; and entertained by some charming tunes and melodious harmonies in such songs as 'Hot Buttery Popcorn' and 'It's No Accident'. The show culminates in ...

BANDAGED (Dir. Maria Beatty, Germany, 2009) Oh dear. The first train-wreck of a film at this year's MQFF was this German-made, English language psychodrama which was advertised as a 'lesbian horror' film in the festival program. The only horrific moments in Bandaged were generated by the sheer awfulness of this film, an overwrought melodrama that tipped over into truly camp territory. When you're one of dozens of people in the cinema not even trying to stifle your giggles during the truly bad sex scenes, you know you're watching a real stinker. Lucille (Janna Lisa Dombrowsky) is a home-tutored student whose father, Arthur (Hans Piesbergen) a brilliant but smothering surgeon, refuses to let her leave home to study poetry, preferring that she stay and do home-tutored science instead. In a moment of destructive teen angst Lucille pours acid over herself. Ouch. Enter her nurse, Joan (Sussane Sachse), who gradually realises that Arthur is trying to restore Lucille's...

Wah! Where did the week go? One minute it's Saturday and I'd just finished blogging about seeing the excellent Children of God at the 20th Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and the next minute it's the following Friday and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival has already begun. Argh! So, time for a rapid run-through of what else I've seen at the MQFF over the last week... DARE (Dir. Adam Salky, USA, 2009) Following the success of their acclaimed 2005 short film of the same name (which I described as ' a fresh take on the coming out film, which effectively communicates that fraught moment when you first put your desire on the line' when it showed at the MQFF in 2006) director Adam Salky and writer David Brind have reworked and expanded their mini-drama about a gay teen and the straight-in-theory jock he desires into an enjoyable but unremarkable feature film. The story follows three teenagers, the wanna-be-theatre-diva Alexa (Emmy Rossum), her shy best fr...

You've got one weekend left to catch Moira Finucane & Jackie Smith's Triple Bill of Wild Delight! at Carlton's La Mama Theatre , and you'd be a fool to miss it. Three shows in one night might seem like a hard slog to anyone who's not a hardened festival-goer, but the energy generated by these three excellent productions will keep you awake and alert all evening. The first cab off the rank is The Feast of Argentina Gina Catalina , a one-woman show written and performed by Finucane and directed by Smith, and ably presented with the invaluable support of a small army of waiters, who serve up delicious snacks between each chapter of the show. This cornucopia of fanciful imaginings featuring pirates, killer whales, opera and blood oranges, is a series of dramatic monologues performed by an immaculately costumed Finucane in character as the impossible Argentina. Between each set the audience dine on chorizo and grilled corn, white wine, mussels, cured meats, chocolate...

My second film at this year's Melbourne Queer Film Festival was the US independent feature American Primitive , directed by Gwendolyn Wynne and written by Mary Berth Fieldler, based on events from Wynne's own childhood. Set in 1973, the film tells the story of the recently widowed Harry Goodhart (Tate Donovan), who has moved to Cape Cod with his two teenaged daughters, 16 year-old Madeline Goodhart (Danielle Savre) and her slightly younger sister Daisy (Skye McCole Bartusiak), who fancies herself as a bohemian poet and litters her sentences with words straight out of the dictionary. The film is told from Madeline's point of view as she struggles to fit into her new school, where she is drawn to the handsome but shallow tennis jock Sam Brown (Corey Sevier), seemingly unaware that scruffy local boy Spoke White (an excellent performance by Josh Peck) may be a kinder, more honest suitor. The film's drama is driven by Madeline's discovery that her father's 'busi...

Directed by Min Kyu-dong, Antique ( Sayangkoldong yangkwajajeom aentikeu ) was a brave choice by the Melbourne Queer Film Festival programming team, which usually shows relatively safe crowd-pleasers on opening night to assist in fostering an appropriate vibe at the party following the screening. Unlike the usual bland fodder sometimes screened at opening nights (such as the dreadful Canadian feature Breakfast with Scot , shown two years ago; ironically, the year prior was one of the best opening night's ever, the excellent Truman Capote biopic, Infamous ) Festival Director Lisa Daniel and her team went with this high quality but more challenging film from Korea. Consequently, numbers were definitely down at the Astor on Wednesday night (some 200 less tickets were sold than in previous years), a situation which reinforced my view that - generally speaking - the gay community is inherently conservative (a view that's further bolstered by the domination of drag and house music...

Dear Fiona, As a journalist, broadcaster and avid consumer and fan of the arts; as someone who has volunteered for numerous arts organisations over the past 20 years; and as someone who is well aware of the positive economic impact our many excellent festivals such as Melbourne Fringe, Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Next Wave, Melbourne Queer Film Festival and Big West bring to Melbourne; I feel obliged to say, in response to your article about the City of Melbourne's arts funding program in today's Herald Sun newspaper: shame on you! By demonising the artists concerned and failing to accurately and fairly present their viewpoints - indeed, it failed to present their viewpoints at all - your article failed to present both sides of the story. It took a deliberately emotive and biased stance that skewed what should have been an impartial article into a piece of inflamatory and reactionary rhetoric, which appealed only to your reade...

Habitat A Mutation Theatre Production Written and directed by Patrick McCarthy Co-devised & performed by James Tresise & Matthew Epps There are several similarities between Habitat , which I saw last Wednesday, and MEN (reviewed below) which I saw the night prior. Both concern themselves with contemporary expressions of masculinity, and both are (or in the case of MEN , were) works by young playwrights. But whereas MEN was Brendan Cowell's first play, Habitat is the third play by writer/director Patrick McCarthy, whose two previous works were one man plays - Fluorescent Facade and The Corpse of Hamlet - w hich he himself performed. A gentle, introspective exploration of what it means to be a young man in the 21st century, Habitat avoids emotional pyrotechnics in favour of subdued humour and wry realism. Set in the loungeroom of an inner city share house, the play is a character study of two friends, James (James Tresise) and Matthew (Matthew Epps), who identity as members ...

MEN A Straightjacket Production Written by Brendan Cowell Directed by Sarah Hallam Written in 2000, MEN is the first play by Australian actor and writer Brendan Cowell, and it shows. Generally strong performances and competent direction cannot hide the fact that the script lacks depth. Its characters are poorly developed and Cowell's voice is inarticulate. Staged on a single set, the play introduces three male characters trapped within a limited space boasting basic amenities: a bar fridge, a couch and a collection of pornographic magazines. A mysterious woman, Haizel (Georgia Bolton) watches over them at a remove, her regular announcements reminding them that the clock is ticking down to some unknown deadline. Towards the end of the play she finally interacts directly with Guy (Samuel Johnson) a drug-abusing emotional wreck, the arrogant and aloof Jules (Jay Bowen), and Bob (Justin Rosniak) a cocksure Casanova who only stops boasting about his sexual escapades to give Guy more...

So on Friday afternoon I'm doing the usual freelancer thing of anxiously checking my bank account every hour or two, to see if the money I was owed by the National Gallery of Victoria for a two-hour DJ set a couple of weeks ago had been deposited yet. Eventually it was - followed immediately afterwards by an additional NGV payment of $15,000! To say I was flabbergasted is an understatement. Fifteen grand? Fuck! As you can imagine, I had a moment of temptation where I thought 'Spend it! Pay off all your debts and spend it!' I didn't of course. It would have been wrong, and also, sooner or later, someone at the NGV would have noticed the mistake, and I would have had to pay the money back. But it was bloody tempting all the same. I could have visited friends in Ireland and Scotland and Sweden and Berlin... Ah well. This morning, having been emailed the NGV's bank account details, I strolled down to Smith Street and the local branch of my bank to work out the easiest w...

I've seen four different shows since last Wednesday, and there's not even a festival on - just Melbourne being its usual creative self. Some brief thoughts about two of the four shows I've seen in the last week, with the remaining two productions to hopefully be blogged about tomorrow: SELF TORTURE AND STRENUOUS EXERCISE By Harry Kondoleon Directed by Ben Pfeiffer Presented by The Artisan Collective Presented in the loft of Guildford Lane Gallery in the CBD, Self Torture and Strenuous Exercise is a black comedy of middle class manners which unfolds over a single evening, and concerns two middle class American couples: the complacent and forgiving Alvin (Mick LoMonaco), and his wife Beth (Kristina Brew) a failed poet; and the suicidal Adele (Marissa Bennett) and her unfaithful husband Carl (Josh Price) a popular but unimaginative novelist. Opening at a dinner party at which under-the-table flirtations soon become obvious, events quickly unravel, with infidelity, angst, bore...

I grew up watching Hammer horror films on late night television, back when there was a Late Movie, and a Late Late Movie on Channel Nine. Often, thanks to the blessing of my imagination-encouraging parents, I'd set my alarm clock for 2am or some-such so I could watch such delights as Dracula A.D. 1972 or Oliver Reed in the 1961 flick The Curse of the Werewolf . Sometimes there would be other delights from different studios: the truly trashy Billy the Kid versus Dracula (1966) was one memorable highlight, and the dinosaurs vs cowboys delight of The Valley of Gwangi (a 1969 film featuring a T-Rex animated by the great Ray Harryhausen) another. But mostly it seemed to be Hammer horror films that I grew up with, featuring Technicolour gore, blue filters and heaving bosoms aplenty. But one Hammer film I always wanted to see, but never have until tonight, was the 1966 classic, The Plague of the Zombies . Released as the support feature to Dracula Prince of Darkness , this is a true B...

As you may have noticed I've been blogging rather sporadically of late, but I really do hope I can get back into a more regular rhythm in the coming weeks, especially with both the 20th Melbourne Queer Film Festival coming up, and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival . There will be lots to cover, so I hope to be posting plenty of micro-reviews of the films and gigs I see once both festivals kick into gear. For now, though, let me briefly recap some of the things I've been up to over the last couple of weeks. As discussed in a post earlier this year , the closure of the Tote Hotel and the community's growing concerns about the impact of the state government's liquor licencing laws (which were supposed to address alcohol-related violence) on the live music scene culminated in a massive rally in the city a couple of weeks ago. Between 15,000 - 20,000 turned out to voice their feelings about the issue on Tuesday 23rd February, making it the largest rally I've b...