ELEGIES for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens

Inspired by the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, Elegies was forged in the late 80’s hothouse of American denial and discrimination against those with AIDS. Staged on a giant looped red ribbon of remembrance, thirty actors enter one by one with their own short poetic soliloquy on what their life – and death – meant to them. They’re all there, some stereotypical, others with high drama, most with ordinary powerful stories from the apocalypse.

The raging queens are joined by a country boy, unemployed actor, the junkies and whores, professionals, infected wives, devoted carers and lovers, the nurse caught by a careless needle, the straight black guys, the bathhouse demon who fucks on regardless, the priest in denial, the haemophiliacs, drag queen and working class granny, the girl who jumped six storeys and didn’t have it after all, and many more.

What begins as a small gay ensemble swells to a mass event as each new character gathers on stage, the rollout punctuated with sophisticated musical moments from singers Belinda Wollaston, Jason Te Patu, Paul Whiteley and Lucy Maunder. Musical director Chris King is on piano with backup from cello and harp. Director Brett Russell has assembled a large and remarkably consistent cast although some are hobbled by the required American accent or Bill Russell’s sometimes stilted rhyming text.

Elegies builds to a breathtaking, almost revivalist climax of celebration; this is healing theatre, vital to its time and place when it premiered in 1989 Soho in NYC. Now in 2012, and especially in Australia, its declamatory positivism, its American sentimentality and Broadway sweetness reads as a little artificial.

What still redeems Elegies, staged here as part of Sydney’s Mardi Gras, is the grand cacophony of voices and experiences and the musical professionalism with which they are knitted together.

Martin Portus

Images: Paul Kelly & Jason Te Patu, Cass Joslin and Paul Whiteley