Daniel Vigilante
Sandra 1
Michael ItaliaTheatre: I Am Glace Chase
Theatre Review
The Butterfly Club, South Melbourne - Jan 2008
As a self-proclaimed ex-child star, peace activist, and saviour of humanity, Glace Chase has quite a profile to live up to. But if you add to those: trash-bag, scum-bag, rat-bag, and maybe dope-fiend, a slightly better subtraction can be made about the character who proudly proclaims to be Glace Chase.
Essentially a solo-performance (though it is backed by a ‘sole-person band’, deceitfully called The Management), Rick Viede’s creation of the coked-up, faux-glamorous iconoclast with a shameless extravagance and shameful existence, Glace Chase, embodies all the things gone wrong with today’s media culture. But he knows why, and is here to tell the secret of how we can make it all better with just 4 little words: “Blame your fucking parents!”
Touching on contemporary theme’s such as the Iraq War, Bindy Irwin, and Britney’s general biography, this “drag-boy” narrates his way through his own pathetic story through song, banter and the occasional motivational lecture, all with some very hilarious moments of cringe-worthiness.
The performance is as strong as the character is cheap, but it veers off only slightly from some classic transsexual clichés (drugs, sex, alcohol, vulgarity), and at times the sheer difficulty of sustaining a solo-performance on the substance of shock-tactic and crudeness wears a little thin.
The unique take on some classic songs (combining Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Disarm’ with ‘Zombie’, or ‘Stairway to Heaven’ with ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’) are clever insights into music time signature theory, and when they’re performed with suburban-trash assiduity (such as the sleazy rendition of The Brady Bunch), the show comes across as not only well thought out and entertaining, but also as a commentary on all things fucked up in society—that is, fucked up by our parents.
The Butterfly Club, South Melbourne - Jan 2008
Touching on contemporary theme’s such as the Iraq War, Bindy Irwin, and Britney’s general biography, this “drag-boy” narrates his way through his own pathetic story through song, banter and the occasional motivational lecture, all with some very hilarious moments of cringe-worthiness.
The performance is as strong as the character is cheap, but it veers off only slightly from some classic transsexual clichés (drugs, sex, alcohol, vulgarity), and at times the sheer difficulty of sustaining a solo-performance on the substance of shock-tactic and crudeness wears a little thin.
The unique take on some classic songs (combining Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Disarm’ with ‘Zombie’, or ‘Stairway to Heaven’ with ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’) are clever insights into music time signature theory, and when they’re performed with suburban-trash assiduity (such as the sleazy rendition of The Brady Bunch), the show comes across as not only well thought out and entertaining, but also as a commentary on all things fucked up in society—that is, fucked up by our parents.
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Thanks,
Jon.