Too Old for TV.

In the basement of an inner city pub, the charismatic Brent Thorpe takes his generation through the experience of turning 50 – “I know, it’s a 100 in gay years” – and a remarkable Sydney gay journey of more than three decades.

While this perfect Mardi Gras show is a trip down memory lane and remembered youth, Too Old for TV is no tedious social chronology or indulgent memoir. Thorpe easily holds us for an hour as he companionably and uproariously shares his early days as drag alter ego, Daily Planet, at the all-night Taxi Club; and segues effortlessly to how he still lives in the same Marrickville street he was raised in, once surrounded by Mediterranean Australians, now by gays, dogs and renovations.

He remembers the huge arc of gay clubs, bars and scenes which before the 1990s made up the then Golden Mile of Oxford Street and in suburbs beyond.  He enthuses about the mad costumes, cultural happenings and theatrics of difference with which gays – and this audience – would step out for a night of celebration. And the astonishing local performers like Michael Matou, Lindsay Kemp, Boom Boom la Burn, Simon Reptile and that angular drag phenomena Theresa Green.

Where is that culture and dress of non-conforming theatricality today, he asks? And while he’s at it, why are there no mature people to be seen on TV? 

Thorpe’s current drag ego of Brenda Trollop doesn’t appear but he does transmute into the hideous Mosman dowager, Deirdre, caught on the talkback with Alan Jones venting an encyclopaedia of right wing bigotry.

This well judged addition does lag a touch, but Thorpe is generally masterful in driving his wild narrative while delighting us with cheap asides, lusty gags and comment. It is a life-affirming experience – especially if you were there at the time.

Martin Portus.