Reviews

Just as Eva Peron was a deeply polarising political figure, so too is the latest production based on her life. On one hand some members of the audience rose to their feet at the end of the musical to salute the brilliant individual performances and spectacle. On the other hand, I spoke to a couple as they were walking out at interval, frustrated at the lack of pace in the first act.

The world of ballroom dancing has never been more accurately or lovingly portrayed as in the iconic Aussie movie Strictly Ballroom, with its splashy routines, larger-than-life characters, and endless sequined costumes.

HOME starts, fittingly, with its creator and main performer, Geoff Sobelle, nailing together part of the structure that will become the house and setting for an extended one-act performance. In an entertaining use of black screen and lighting, the set is built before our eyes. Multiple characters then populate the stage, appear from nowhere, pop out of cupboards and refrigerators, share beds and then disappear. They perform the same actions – wake up, shower, go to the toilet (!), pass each other on the stairs, take out laundry baskets and get ready for the day.

The sting in this mad buffoonery from Italy’s Dario Fo is that all of it had just happened.

An anarchist had plunged to his death from the fourth floor of the Milan police station in 1969, likely thrown out by cops during a long interrogation, following a bomb attack probably planned by fascists. 

Corrupt police and extremists, fake news and the distracting power of scandal are as familiar to us as to Fo’s audience.  The challenge today is to refresh the farcical carry-on with which Fo tried to rouse Italian workers to activism.