The Ballad of Backbone Joe

Really silly! Really bizarre and silly! Vaguely organised chaos!
Australian comedy direct from Edinburgh Fringe acclaim.
Backbone Joe is a punch-drunk Aussie bare-knuckle bush town boxer, who fights all comers in a local abattoir, which doubles as a boxing club. Did he kill his wife in a fit of passion? Detective Von Trapp arrives in the remote bush town to investigate.
If that sounds even vaguely logical, I apologise.
Joseph O’Farrell, Miles O’Neil and Glen Walton are the Suitcase Royale - actors who double as the three-piece band, or vice versa.
They play music that’s a little bit bluesy, somewhat folky, rather jazzy, and a touch country, which they intersperse with a sort of off-the-wall Film Noir private detective play, that sometimes behaves a bit like a radio play on stage (involving a great deal of playing, and literally horsing, around, with sound effects).
Suitcase Royale absolutely celebrate low tech and delight in anarchic knockabout Goonish humour, with good serves of vaudeville, slapstick and primitive shadow puppetry.
The production style is deliberately rough and ready, and the design ‘junkyard’ (as if assembled by scavenging the local tip).
The production revels in deliberate, entertaining use of extreme low-tech mixed media – an overhead projector or strip slide projector throws up grainy images onto an improvised looking screen.
The Ballad of Backbone Joe bursts with raucous low comedy.
And as for the suitcase in this Suitcase Royale production, its transformation is a treat I’d really rather not spoil.
Neil Litchfield

Image: Joseph O’Farrell, Miles O’Neil and Glen Walton of The Suitcase Royale in The Ballad of Backbone Joe. Presented by Sydney Theatre Company as part of Next Stage. Photographer: Lisa Tomasetti 2010.