Pretty Boys

Pretty Boys is a new A Capella ‘juke-box’ musical from Adelaide’s Festival Statesmen Chorus.  It concerns the fortunes of a local ‘white’ boy band and their disastrous involvement with the overtly ‘gay’ recording industry and the Russian Mafia.

Whilst some of the singing is good, the acting and movement is not. There is a lot of over-acting, needless shouting, incompetent staging with ridiculous scene changes, and stereotypical characters.

Whilst it may be all ‘just fun’, it is not even good satire.  Kevin del Aguilia’s Altar Boyz (2004) and Stephen Poliakoff’s City Sugar (1975) are much better pieces that cover the same territory.

Unfortunately (and I hope unintentionally) Pretty Boys is one of the most disgraceful homophobic and xenophobic pieces of theatre I have ever cringed through – and there are a lot of cringe moments, including on-stage vomiting.  This may be regarded as just ‘fun’ for many in regard to this already sold out show-and there were many loyal fans in the audience tonight who laughed and whooped, even at a mincing stage crew crossing the stage with a pot plant, or the Arab prince who was wearing a red T-Towel on his head-but not for me, an ex-Sydney Mardi Gras Board member and gay rights activist.

Homosexual men in this work are degenerate figures to be mocked, and scorned, and laughed at. Fine for one or even two passing jokes, but when it becomes a relentless continuous bombardment – no – this is homophobia. – offensive and insulting.

Tony Knight