Grey Arias

Adrienne Truscott and Let Gateau Chocolat are two renowned artists in their own right. Historically they both draw on often highly confronting material for their shows. As artists who have forged a career in working in the grey areas of performance art this show seems an inevitable collaboration and consolidation of the oeuvre that binds them together. The imagery is often crass, the content is always brutally honest, and the eclectic style of performance is equally brash.

The show combines singing, movement, garish costuming, and a multitude of references to revered and renowned texts that tell some very questionable stories. At the centre of this critique is Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly. Here the artists use some effective devices both theatrical and non, to draw attention to the idea that the story centres around the rape and exploitation of a 15-year-old girl. This kind of critique is made explicit in the dialogue, the music and the singing but is also often executed via clever use of juxtaposition of imagery.

The two performers raise questions around both racial and sexual oppression. Their exchanges or arias become the most confronting when the performance ventures into less theatrical territory and becomes more like a window into their personal musings and exchanges. The witty banter that fuels their bond is quite powerful and provides a level of intimacy rarely seen on stage. These exchanges, and their extremely sardonic reflections on regimes of oppression, are the greatest source of the humour in the show.

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Patricia Di Risio 

Photographer: Tamarah Scott