Daniel Vigilante
Sandra 1
Michael ItaliaTheatre: Buyback
Theatre Review
LaMama at Carlton Courthouse, Sept 2007
“3 boongs in the kitchen” is the enticing slogan for this fortnight’s offering at LaMama. And in case you ain’t from around these waters, that’s slang for ‘Aboriginal person’ (albeit derogatorily, naturally).
And don’t you have it confused with ‘bong’ either, oh no sir-ey. They might look similar on paper, but words connote very different hypotheses – and that’s precisely the agenda for examination in this wonderfully entertaining exposition. After all, “you can buyback a lethal weapon, but you can’t buyback a lethal word”.
Writer/director Kathleen Mary Fallon declares this as not an apologist script to tell her own heart-warming/wrenching story as a white adoptee to a Torres Straight Islander boy; though autobiography sure is the prime inspiration.
Dayne Christian astutely plays the charming Jimmy – the TSI boy – who pretends to be partly blind in an attempt to conceal a more sinisterly acquired property.
It’s an upbeat show – tasteful but pressing, hilarious and moving. The set is excellently adorned to represent the faux-class interior of the white Australian household belonging to Jimmy’s grandparents, caricatures of your racist loony neighbours from hell. Grandma’s name is Cake-tin, and is an empty one at that, though performed painfully well by Marie-Therese Byrne.
On the whole, it’s exactingly acted by all, and the colloquial tongue make for some terribly funny gags (unless you’re German, like the friend I took with me, in which case you might struggle to find “friggin mongrel coon shagger” in your pocket Oxford).
The pseudo standing ovation is testament to how some audience members were affected, but I for one applauded loudly from my chair, with goose-bumps running up my arms, which were shared with my half-comprehending German friend.
LaMama at Carlton Courthouse, Sept 2007
“3 boongs in the kitchen” is the enticing slogan for this fortnight’s offering at LaMama. And in case you ain’t from around these waters, that’s slang for ‘Aboriginal person’ (albeit derogatorily, naturally).
And don’t you have it confused with ‘bong’ either, oh no sir-ey. They might look similar on paper, but words connote very different hypotheses – and that’s precisely the agenda for examination in this wonderfully entertaining exposition. After all, “you can buyback a lethal weapon, but you can’t buyback a lethal word”.
Dayne Christian astutely plays the charming Jimmy – the TSI boy – who pretends to be partly blind in an attempt to conceal a more sinisterly acquired property.
It’s an upbeat show – tasteful but pressing, hilarious and moving. The set is excellently adorned to represent the faux-class interior of the white Australian household belonging to Jimmy’s grandparents, caricatures of your racist loony neighbours from hell. Grandma’s name is Cake-tin, and is an empty one at that, though performed painfully well by Marie-Therese Byrne.
On the whole, it’s exactingly acted by all, and the colloquial tongue make for some terribly funny gags (unless you’re German, like the friend I took with me, in which case you might struggle to find “friggin mongrel coon shagger” in your pocket Oxford).
The pseudo standing ovation is testament to how some audience members were affected, but I for one applauded loudly from my chair, with goose-bumps running up my arms, which were shared with my half-comprehending German friend.
