More MIFF 2010: From drag queens to Dante

TO DIE LIKE A MAN

The latest film from Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues is, like his first two features, O Fantasma (2000) and Odete, a queer-themed drama that borders on melodrama; but unlike his earlier films, To Die Like a Man is filmed in such a stylised and fragmented way as to drain almost all emotion from the story in progress.

It opens with a group of camouflage-clad soldiers on a night-time training exercise in a forest. Two of the men creep away from their comrades, and once alone, fall into a passionate embrace which leads quickly to sex, and then to violence.

Next we meet Tonia (Fernando Santos), an aging drag queen dealing simultaneously with two major dramas: his loss of status in the nightclub where he has worked for years, and a highly strung junkie boyfriend, Rosario (Alexander David), who is young enough to be his own son.

At Rosario’s insistence, Tonia is contemplating having a full sex change; a procedure which is explained to viewers in detail early in the film through the inventive use of origami, but we are given no indication that gender reassignment would bring any form of stability to the pair’s relationship, even once Rosario gives up using heroin. Instead we explore the petty details day-to-day of Tonia’s life: her falling out with an old friend, her fights with an up-and-coming young drag queen at work, and her infected, pus-leaking left nipple.

Just when it seems we are going to be witnessing a mundane domestic drama (well, as mundane as any drama can be whose main character is a highly strung drag queen), the film takes a twist by reintroducing the murderous young soldier we met in the first scene. He is, of course, Tonia’s son.

Before we have even had a chance to process this revelation, the film swiftly enters road trip territory – and very trippy territory it is, with Tonia and Rosario encountering a reclusive transsexual couple living in the forest who take them snipe hunting (despite the fact that snipe are apparently extinct). It’s at this point that things get seriously fragmentary, with a sepia-toned, magic-realist musical sequence by an Antony and the Johnsons sound-alike sweeping up the characters for several minutes, after which we’re back to the action, and indeed, back to melodrama.

Of all the films I have seen at MIFF to date, To Die Like a Man is the most baffling and frustrating. Like a deranged cross between Fassbinder and Almodovar, Rodrigues introduces plot elements only to discard them minutes later; embraces melodrama only to abandon it in favour of formal abstraction; and coaxes both magnificent and scenery-chewing performances from his cast.

There is a heartfelt and poignant drama buried somewhere in To Die Like a Man, but unfortunately it is lost – no doubt deliberately – amidst the fragmented, arch and dry film that Rodrigues has crafted.

Rating: Two and a half stars


HOME BY CHRISTMAS

A fascinating, beautiful and affecting film based on the memoirs of the filmmaker’s father, the New Zealand film Home By Christmas is a docu-drama utilising a judicious blend of archival footage and re-created scenes to explore one New Zealand family’s experiences of World War II.

In 1940, on his way home from rugby practise, 28 year old Ed Preston (Martin Henderson) and his teammates joined the army, with Ed telling his pregnant wife Tui (Chelsie Preston-Crayford, the filmmaker’s daughter) not to worry, he’d be home by Christmas. Instead, after only a month’s active service in North Africa, he was captured and made a prisoner of war, spending the next two years interned in Italy, and a further year following his escape in neutral Switzerland. Eventually Ed returned home to New Zealand’s South Island, but in his absence, Tui had fallen in love with another man...

Shortly before he died, an older and wiser Ed Preston told his story to his daughter, veteran filmmaker Gaylene Preston, who has now turned his reminiscences into this charming film, employing Australian actor Tony Barry to play her father and bring his words to life.

The artifice of this framing device – having an actor play the now deceased narrator of the story we’re watching unfold – is quickly forgotten thanks to excellent performances throughout and the pitch-perfect production design by John Harding and costumes by Lesley Burkes-Harding. Vintage steam trains and carefully dressed existing locations are employed to recreate the look and feel of wartime New Zealand, while Ed’s experiences overseas, and the parallel narrative of Tui’s anguish as she waits at home for news of her husband, are brought to life via a wide array of family photographs, and archival footage sourced from a range of institutions including the Istituto Luce Film Archive, Italy; the Australian War Memorial; and the National Army Museum, New Zealand.

Preston’s 1995 documentary War Stories (Our Mothers Never Told Us), in which the director’s mother provided her own account of her wartime experiences, informs this already remarkable story, which is all the more powerful for being subtly underplayed, focussed on small details rather than epic events.

Life on the home front in wartime is rarely explored on screen; and nor are we accustomed to such an honest look at the misery and banality of war as depicted in Home by Christmas. Subtle, gentle and powerful, this is a remarkable cinematic achievement.

Rating: Three and a half stars


HOMECOMING

Screening as part of Dante’s Inferno, the festival’s retrospective celebration of the work of US filmmaker Joe Dante, Homecoming was commissioned as part of the 2005 Showtime cable TV series Masters of Horror, which also featured works by such master genre filmmakers as George Romero (Night of the Living Dead), John Carpenter (The Thing), Stuart Gordon (Reanimator and Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

Despite being only an hour long, Homecoming was praised by the New Yorker as the ‘best political film of 2005’, and deservedly so. It’s a biting satire in which the presidency and policies of George W. Bush, and the self-serving attitudes of outspoken Republicans such as Anne Coulter and Karl Rove are mercilessly satirised, via a plot in which the bodies of soldiers killed in Iraq return to life as zombies in order to vote Bush out of office: their revenge for being sent to war based on a false premise.

Unlike traditional zombies, these reanimated soldiers are strangely peaceful, but that doesn’t stop the government – frightened that it might lose power at their decaying hands – rounding them up and interning them, in Guantanamo-style orange jumpsuits no less. “Why don’t we treat them like normal veterans,” one character protests: “Ignore them?”

The satire of Homecoming is admittedly heavy-handed, but for this left-leaning film reviewer, it’s an absolute delight. After all, who needs subtlety when you have zombies?

Screening on the same bill are two other Joe Dante shorts, the mediocre Lightning (1995), a cautionary tale of greed and gold-lust set in the USA’s Wild West; and the far more successful It’s a Good Life, Dante’s segment from the 1983 film anthology Twilight Zone: The Movie.

Based on a screenplay by Rod Serling (which was in turn based on an original short story by Jerome Bixby, voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1970 as one of the 20 finest science fiction stories ever written) this entertaining tale of a mutant child with mysterious powers who terrifies his family is most notable for its crazed chiaroscuro lighting and some delightful special effects.

Homecoming: Four stars

It's a Good Life: Three and a half stars

Lightning: Two and a half stars

2009 MIFF Diary part the ninth

POST-PUNK MIX TAPE #2
(Various directors and years)

The cinematic exploration of the punk and post-punk era in Australia, and especially in Melbourne, is the focus of a central programming stream at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival.

Curated by Michelle Carey, Punk Becomes Pop: The Australian Post-Punk Underground consists of three feature films and over 40 shorts documenting the vibrant inner-city scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, where music, art, film and fashion fused together in a raucous and chaotic whole.

Post-Punk Mixtape #2 is the second of five short film screenings programmed as part of Punk Becomes Pop. This diverse array of film clips and experimental shorts included a hilarious, drunken interview with Boys Next Door members Rowland S. Howard and Nick Cave; a film noir inspired music video for Sydney band Frontier Scouts, When Daddy Blows His Top, directed by Kriv Stenders; the hallucinatory and surreal short drama by Swinburne student Hugh Marchant, Meanwhile Elsewhere; and a short but fascinating film documenting Melbourne’s inner city music scene by the late Mark Zenner, Big Risk, featuring live performances by The Negatives, News, and The Boys Next Door.

A remarkable insight into the era, and a rare glimpse at an under-documented moment in history. The three remaining Mixtape sessions this Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday night should not be missed by film buffs or aficionados of Melbourne’s vital music scene.

Rating: Three and a half stars


BRONSON
(Nicolas Winding Refn, 2008)

With Bronson, Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn (best known to date for his Pusher trilogy, which has previously screened at MIFF) has created a remarkably vivid excoriation of life in the British prison system as seen through the eyes of the UK’s most notorious inmate, Michael Petersen.

Petersen, who changes his name to ‘Charles Bronson’ partway through the film at the urging of his boxing manager, is endlessly brutalised by prison officials after initially being sentenced to seven years for a post office robbery that netted less than £50 and in which no-one was hurt. Their violence feeds his, and vice versa; an endless feedback loop of brutality and suffering.

Part biography, part operatic fantasy, the film has been aptly described as ‘a Clockwork Orange for the 21st century’, featuring as it does numerous scenes of extreme violence set to beautiful music, including Verdi, Puccini and Wagner; as well as extended direct-to-camera monologues by Bronson himself, who is always aware of his audience, and indeed often pandering to them.

The violence in the film is carefully choreographed so as to always appear staged; and set to majestic bursts of music as if to celebrate Bronson’s growing prison notoriety. Gorgeous cinematography, and exquisite lighting and composition ensure that even at its most brutal, the film possesses a sublime beauty in every frame.

Dark humour also permeates the film, such as a grotesquely funny scene in an insane asylum where a drugged-up Bronson and his fellow inmates flail and sway to Pet Shop Boys’ ‘It’s A Sin’. A later scene, where a newly released Bronson visits his uncle and his drag queen friends, is also played strictly for laughs.

At its heart, Bronson is the story of a man struggling to stay afloat in a sea of shit. His violence, Refn seems to be saying, is a means of self-expression that would later be channelled through poetry (for which the real-life Bronson has won numerous awards) and art; a quest for self-expression that was challenged and assaulted at every turn.

Rating: Four stars


DOGS IN SPACE
(Dir. Richard Lowenstein, 1986)

The centrepiece of the festival's Punk Becomes Pop: The Australian Post-Punk Underground program is this digitally remastered edition of Richard Lowenstein's cult masterpiece, Dogs in Space, set in an anarchic Richmond share house and closely based on Lowenstein's own life and the lives of his friends and housemates - especially, and notoriously, the experiences of Melbourne playwright and musician Sam Sejavka, whose life and loves are exploited for the sake of the film.

Made at a time when the Australian film industry was largely concerned with national icons and an exaggerated sense of what it meant to be Australian (Crocodile Dundee was made the same year, and The Man From Snowy River just a few years earlier), Dogs in Space was radically different - an almost plotless film about the lives and times of a group of young people living in inner city Melbourne in 1978.

The film is episodic, fractured, moving in fits and starts towards its tragic conclusion, which is based on the overdose of Sejavka's real-life girlfriend at the time.

But while it may not be dramatically satisfying in the traditional sense, Dogs in Space is an enormously rewarding film in so many other ways. This remastered edition reveals the complexity of the sound design, and the rich cinematography that takes in everything from ticket queues outside Festival Hall to gigs at the now-lost Champion Hotel in Fitzroy (the home of the 'Little Bands' scene) and St Kilda's infamous Crystal Ballroom. The inclusion of bands of the day such as The Primative Calculators and Thrush and the Cunts, as well as songs by The Boys Next Door and Iggy Pop on the soundtrack make for a richly rewarding viewing and listening experience.

Performances vary, with the film's star, rock singer Michael Hutchence as Sammy in his first dramatic role, ranging from wooden to excellent, depending on the demands of the scene. Saskia Post as Sammy's lover, Anna, is superb throughout. Other actors vary enormously, but for me the performances matter less than the era they evoke, and for the passion with which the film is made. It's also fun spotting people such as filmmaker Tony Ayres making cameos at various points in the film.

Dogs in Space is an exercise in nostalgia about an influential but poorly documented period in Australian (un)popular culture, made less than a decade after the time in which it is set, by which point the time it evoked had already faded into drug-hazed memory. Seeing this immaculately restored edition, instead of a crappy old video copy, is both a delight and a priviledge. Seeing it makes me wish more than ever that I'd been born a few years earlier, so I could have experienced the time it documents first hand.

Rating: Three and a half stars

MIFF Diary Part the Sixth

LOUISE-MICHEL
(Dir. Gustave de Kervern & Benoit Delepine, 2008)

Screening as part of the festival's 'Vengeance is Mine' stream, a program of films about retribution, is this macabre French-Belgian comedy about a team of female factory workers who hire a hitman to take out their boss when he closes their manufacturing plant down.

September 11 conspiracy theorists, people smuggling, the green movement and rampant capitalism all cop a serve along the way, as a bumbling pair - Louise (Yolande Moreau), an antisocial and illiterate man who is pretending to be a woman in order to find work after serving 15 years in prison; and Michel (Bouli Lanners) a woman living as a man after taking too many hormones as a child in order to become a champion hammer-thrower - try and track down and kill the man responsible for the factory's misfortune.

This comedy is as black as it gets (as evidenced by a scene where the bumbling and slovenly Michel weasels out of shooting the capitalist responsible for the factory's closure by talking his cousin, who is dying of cancer, into doing the job for him) although an all-pervasive melancholy also infuses the story to strong effect.

The film's acerbic tone won't be to everyone's taste, nor will it's occasionally uneven pace, but I was delighted by Louise-Michel, laughing uproariously throughout.

Rating: Three and a half stars


KISSES
(Dir. Lance Daly, 2008)

This simple indie charmer - written, directed and shot by Lance Daly and set a few days before Christmas - is the story of two not-quite-teens, Dylan (Shane Curry, who was 12 at the time of shooting) and Kylie (Kelly O'Neill, 11) who flee their abusive homes in a grim estate where dead dogs and broken bikes lie scattered beside the roads, in order to scour the streets of Dublin in search of Dylan's older brother.

Kylie fights with her sister and lives in fear of her abusive uncle Maurice; Dylan tries to drown out his father and step-mother's fighting by playing computer games. But when he tries to stop his dad from hitting his step-mother, Dylan's father turns on him.

The dramatic and dynamic sequence in which Kylie helps Dylan escape his dad by climbing through the bathroom window and down a ladder is superbly shot, staged and edited; one of several beautiful sequences in the film.

Hitching a lift with a canal bargeman (David Bendito), who introduces them to the music of Bob Dylan along the way, once the pair are in Dublin the film skillfully captures the sheer, unfettered joy of childhood; countered with several scenes of high tension which are made all the more menacing by the protagonists' young ages and their unfettered, innocent performances.

Kisses opens in black and white, but colour starts to slowly leach into the film as the kids make their way towards Dublin. In less competent hands this effect could have been mawkish, or an irritating reference to The Wizard of Oz; but Daly plays it so subtly that it works beautifully - especially in a final, magical moment at the film's end.

While one scene in particular - a chase sequence the likes of which I've never seen before - may strain credibility to a degree, overall I found Kisses to be a charming, touching and near-perfect film despite its slight nature and brief running time. An uncredited cameo by Stephen Rea as Bob Dylan, and a great soundtrack, are also among the highlights.

Without doubt, my favourite film of the festival to date, even though I struggled at times to decipher some of the dialogue due to the heavy Irish accents featured in the film (optional subtitles will probably be added for the local DVD release, I'm told).

Rating: Four and a half stars

Ah McCain, you've done it again

Photographer Jill Greenberg, you're a bloody deadset legend! The above, photoshopped image is an outtake from a recent series of shots the US photographer took for Atlantic magazine. You can read the full story here...

Review: TARTUFFE

Kicking off the CUB Malthouse Theatre's 2008 program is Louise Fox's contemporary adaptation of Tartuffe, Moliére's savage satire of faith, power and hypocrisy that scandalised Parisian society when first performed in 1664. Set in the home of the wealthy Orgon and his second wife, Elmire, the play sees the household fighting and falling apart due to the presence of Tartuffe, a seemingly spiritual figure whose devious machinations trick Orgon into banishing his son, Damis; breaking off his daughter Mariane's engagement to young Valère; and handing over control of his assets to the charismatic villain.

Wednesday night's performance of Tartuffe left me cold, indeed bored; at least initially - so much so that I seriously contemplated leaving, as my housemate did, at interval. After interval, however, the production's disparate elements suddenly clicked together, leaving me delighted.

Read on, and I shall explain.

Upon entering the theatre, the first thing one sees is Anna Tregloan's superb set, which instantly evokes the Palace of Versailles, with its lawns and balconies and reflective pools. Versailles was both a palace and a secret setting for Louis XIV's amorous trysts - an important reference to keep in mind given the direction Tartuffe's relationship with Elmire (Alison Whyte) the lady of the house, takes as the play unfolds. Simultaneously, the set reminds us of the wrought-iron lacework of Victorian Melbourne's grand terrace houses, in their day the palaces of the rich and powerful - at least until the depression years of the late 19th century.

This production of Tartuffe however is set firmly in the modern day - which too many ham-fisted references to Facebook, etc, painfully reminded us.

As if it were a Bell Shakespeare production, Fox's Tartuffe hammers its contemporary references home with all the subtlety of a Ray Martin interview. Whether it's a ham-fisted rap sequence performed in exagerated wog-lish by Exekial Ox as a Muslim Valère; or dated references to a 'non-core promise' by Orgon (Barry Otto), Fox's adaptation took every chance to remind us that it was too, too modern. In doing so, it felt trite, strident and simplistic.

This painfully earnest aspect of the production wasn't helped by some of the performances. Speaking with an extravagantly exaggerated accent, Rebecca Massey as the servant girl Dorine delivered her lines so rapidly they were sometimes difficult to decypher; while Laura Brent as Orgon's daughter, Mariane, lacked projection.

On the positive side, Tregloan's costumes instantly gave us a sense of who these characters are. In their tight, white, minimal garb, aided by their fashionistic introduction, we instantly saw that these people were as shallow as the catwalk styles they aped; inhabitants of a transient world in which today's high ideals are tomorrow's pop culture detrius.

Adding to this impression were the array of trapdoors around the set: a physical reminder of the shallow, gossip-riddled world our rich and idle characters inhabit.

Of the central performances, Barry Otto's Orgon was both audible and almost three dimensional, no mean feat given the exaggerations inherrent in Fox's script; while Marcus Graham's corrupt Tartuffe was well-cast physically - giving evil a handsome face - though unconvincing both emotionally and spiritually. At no time could I believe his character's Rasputin-like qualities, for good or ill. He was pretty; and toned; but he displayed no depth - none of the apparent spirituality that in the play wrongly convinces Orgon of Tartuffe's higher calling; while his villainy seemed cartoonish.

Like Bratt Pitt in Thelma and Louise, Graham appeared to have been cast because of the way he looks - including his ability to attract middle-aged heterosexual women to the production, judging from a discussion I eavesdropped on at interval: not because of his dramatic abilities.

Yet somehow, despite all these flaws, post-interval I found myself enjoying Tartuffe immensely. I finally started laughing, instead of wincing.

Perhaps the first night nerves had settled, because performances seemed sharper; more intuitive and less contrived (although I am still suspicious of any production that demands Tartuffe reveal his true villainy by reverting to an Ocker accent, while the exaggerated wog-lish of Valère is played so obviously and patronisingly for laughs); while Matthew Lutton's direction seemed more confident, and more in keeping with the play's farcical nature.

Further enriching the production is the ambiguous presentation of Tartuffe, whose actions when we first meet him recall Peter Sellers' final film, Being There; an impression enriched by the play's final moments; while the deus ex machina ending is both hilarious and fittingly enigmatic. Has Tartuffe truly been punished, or is he inflicting a Job-like test upon Orgon and his clan?

Ultimately, however, this Tartuffe struck me as a stablemate of the Malthouse's Sleeping Beauty of last year: potentially great, but ultimately unfulfiling; let down by its performances and its direction; a blunt object which could have been sharp and deadly. Perhaps with time it will improve. For its cast's sake, I certainly hope so.

Tartuffe
At the Malthouse Theatre until March 8.

Wonderfully wicked

I saw, without doubt, not only my absolute MIAF highlight on Monday night, but also the most wonderfully wicked cabaret show I've ever witnessed: Kiki and Herb: the Year of Magical Drinking; at North Melbourne's Meat Market Arts House.

Kiki is an aging, alcoholic chanteuse; Herb her equally withered pianist and straight-man - an irony given that both are gay men; performed respectively by vocalist Justin Bond (who may perhaps be familiar to you from John Cameron Mitchell's superb Shortbus) and pianist Kenny Mellman.

Part of the point behind the duo's performance is to demonstrate that cabaret need not be stuck in the first half of the 20th century: as demonstrated with versatility, pathos, wit and flair last night, a medly of Velvet Underground songs, and the songs of Jarvis Cocker and Kate Bush have just as much resonance as Piaf or Brecht - and perhaps, for modern audiences, even more relevance.

Equally, though, the pair delight in skewering and satirising the cliches of cabaret, such as a wonderful routine where an alcohol-sodden Kiki staggered around the stage trying to embody the sinuous sexuality of a panther, with a definite, naughty nod to the likes of an aged Eartha Kitt beyond her prime. Mreeow! Just as Judy Garland turned into a tragic travesty, Kiki slurs, staggers and swears beneath the spotlights; in between joking about rape, child abuse ("I always say, if you weren't abused as a kid, you must have been one hell of an ugly child!") and Hitler. Herb, meanwhile, mutters and giggles at the keyboard. Both rise to the occasion when levity is no longer required, twisting laughs into gasps of admiration and disbelief as they take a song like The Eagles' 'Hotel California' and turn it into a magnificently melancholic gothic melodrama.

They were also capable of deliciously dark wit; jokes that teetered on the edge of totally wrong (such as Kiki's comment about Qantas loosing her luggage, only to find her suitcase floating in a Sydney pond a few days later, the body of a dead toddler contained within: looking around I saw smiles sag into sickly frowns, and convulsions of laughter transform into cross-armed frowns at such a point, while elsewhere in the room others shrieked with mirth).

I hooted, I giggled, and I was moved to tears at various times throughout the night. Had I been more financial I would have raced off to the festival's Artists' Lounge after the show in the hope that Bond and Mellman might have materialised, so that I shower them with praise and alcohol. Instead, together with Josh, and my poor tired housemate, who fell asleep on more than one occasion at our table while steadfastly claiming afterwards he enjoyed the show, I walked home through the darkened streets of Melbourne-town, thence to bed; a wry and wicked smile still flickering about my lips when I thought about what I'd just heard and seen.

For presenting such a magnificently macabre and magical evening as part of your third festival, Kristy Edmunds, I salute you - and I shall kiss you the next time I see you!!

A sneak preview of tonight's ep of The Chaser

Oh dear god this is fucking hilarious - not to mention timely.

(courtesy of David Knox's televisual blog www.tvtonight.com.au)

A message from the Prime Minister: "trust me"

Damn you real life

Tonight I saw this headline - 'Peter Andre in brain scare' - and got all excited. People are scared he has a brain? Damn right we are, people - because the brain keeps the fucker alive! Without a brain, that's one less mouth-breather celebrity we have to worry about.

Sadly, real life is much less interesting.

Then again, if you read the article, you discover all manner of interesting titbits:

"Peter's not well at all," said Claire Powell, a spokesperson for Andre and his wife, glamour model Jordan, aka Kate Price.

Not well? Yes, we sort of gathered that. Clearly the poor luv fears his penis is about to wither away and drop off - possibly as a result of steroid abuse, mayhap?

"He's had lots of tests, but nobody's any the wiser.

IE, his IQ is still at sub-moron level.

"He's just really poorly."


Yes, as is his 'music'.


We now return you to our normal schedule.

Meet Dane Swan.

Meet Dane Swan.

See Dane run. Run, Dane, run.

See Dane handball. Handball, Dane, handball.



See Dane stretch. Stretch, Dane, stretch.

See Dane smirk while expressing contrition for brawling at Federation Square.
Smirk, Dane, smirk.

See Dane renew his contract at the Collingwood Football Club for three seasons.
Money, Dane, money.

Carn the Pies!!!!

Dear poets - sorry!

Last week, in my 'Art of the City' column in Beat magazine, I wrote a piece entitled 'Poetry ain't trivial' which attempted to mock some people's poor opinions of poetry and spoken word by using negative cliches about the artforms in a deliberately over-the-top way, and that I thought would clearly be read as firmly tongue-in-cheek.

Instead it appears that my words have been taken seriously by some people, and consequently I've ended up offending several Melbourne poets who I have nothing but respect for.

Oh dear. That so wasn't meant to be the case. Sorry, guys, it was a joke. Or at least it was meant to be. Maybe I'll just stick to reporting the facts from now on...

Please answer the following questions.

A. B. C.

Q. 1.

Please study this photograph of three babies. One of them will grow up to undermine decent human values and threaten the social fabric of modern Australian society. Will it be:

A) A gay man?
B) A Muslim?
C) John Winston Howard?

Q. 2.

What is 'homophobia'?

A) Fear of mad dogs?












B) Fear of water?












C) Fear of display homes?









Q. 3.

How out are you?

A) Very out.












B) Sort of out.












C) Not out* at all?












D) Straight but 100% supportive?



















*Please note that the use of Brodie Holland's photograph is not meant to infer in any way that he is a closeted homosexual, not that there's anything wrong with that, although he did blatantly check me out at the Black and White Ball a couple of years ago, and then there's the whole Dancing with the Stars thing, and oh, alright yes, a bloke can dream can't he?

Review: Entertaining Mr Sloane (MTC)

There are very few writers whose names become synonymous with the style they championed. The American horror writer H. P Lovecraft is one. Another is the English playwright and social satirist Joe Orton.

Even before his death, at the hands of his hammer-wielding lover, Kenneth Haliwell, in August 1967, Orton’s fame was assured thanks to his savagely humourous attack upon the morals of the day. Through a series of plays, including Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964) Loot (1966) and What the Butler Saw (produced postumously in 1969) Orton mocked the pretentions of British society and the restrictive views of the day concerning sexuality. Today, the phrase ‘Ortonesque’ is used in literary and theatrical circles to describe work that is outrageously or hilariously macabre.

The Melbourne Theatre Company launched their 2007 season tonight with a new production of Joe Orton’s first, full length play, Entertaining Mr Sloane. The MTC describe it as "Orton's classic dark comedy about a handsome stranger with a secret, his libininous landlady, her gender-bending brother and geriatric father."

A typically Ortonesque production, the play is an entertaining period piece, but one which fails to totally stand the test of time, with the dialogue in particular seeming overly verbose. Too, Orton's misogynistic streak is uncomfortably pronounced, and despite its farcial nature, the play's savagery seemed to provoke more than a few winces and sideways glances in tonight's opening-night audience.

Of the cast, Amanda Muggleton as Kath (the landlady) was outstanding, in full grasp of her accent and character. Richard Piper hammed up the role of Ed, Kath's brother, complete with a laughter-milking nervous tic, while Bob Hornery as Kemp, their father, was understated but impressive in his relatively minor but nonetheless crucial role. Ben Geurens was appropriately handsome and seductive as the titular Mr Sloane, a bisexual bad-boy who seduces both Kath and Ed, and who seems to have them both firmly under his thumb, but he appeared to be labouring to maintain his accent; so much so that his dialogue failed to flow, especially in the first half of the play.

As I've previously complained, Simon Phillips, the MTC Artistic Director, directs satire with what strikes me as too heavy a hand. This was, unfortunately, once again evident tonight, with unfortunate results. In addition, his decision to merge the play's three acts into two resulted in the first half of the evening dragging somewhat, although this is also a fault in Orton's immature early text, which only really takes off after the death of old man Kemp, in the second act of this production.

The set design by Shaun Gurton was exemplary, hinting at the restrictive home inhabited by the characters, their social pretentions, and the division between their fantasies and grubby reality, while Matt Scott's lighting design was subdued but effective. Music by David Chesworth was occasionally contrived and invasive, but generally matched the tone of the production well. Overall, a safe and entertaining night out at the theatre, but not one I can fully recommend unless you want to view a production once considered shocking and confrontational, but which today is little more than an entertaining piece of period drama, adequately but unimaginatively staged.

The Arts Centre, Fairfax Studio, until February 10.