Reviews

Rafael and Sara leave their dirt poor village in Italy for a better life in… Moorabbin.  Their son, Ichlis  [sic] loves his parents and loves his father’s stories, especially the one where Rafael, back in the village, met a dinosaur in a cave – who advised him to move to Australia.  (For non-Melburnians, Moorabbin is not the most salubrious of suburbs.) The move was, of course, ‘for the best’, but Rafael – now ‘Ralph’ - and Sara, in their different ways, burnish what they left behind with a nostalgic glow.  Ichlis

The term ’cabaret’ means room in French. In performance, cabaret loosely means singing, storytelling and/or performance art that need an audience (usually audience participation) to see it through.  Although cabaret is constantly changing and overlapping in form, there are few rules, but two are very clear; 1) it needs an audience/audience participation or the show will fail. 2) It should be transgressive: provoke and challenge our ideas of performance/art/politics/or the subject matter.

Life can be difficult, but there’s always family. Sometimes, though, life is difficult because of family. Writer Jimmie Chinn understood this, better than most. His double monologue two act play is a gentle indictment of communication breakdown in a family, with enough bite and humour to be both thought-provoking and laughter inducing, along with a fair dose of poignancy. It’s not a great play, and Jimmie Chinn is no Alan Bennett, but it’s a good piece and a tailor-made performance vehicle for the right talent.

This is a piece of drama that was first written in Polish in 1990, however, its ability to be redrafted with more contemporary events and themes shows how its fundamental concerns are issues that will never be outdated. The wavering moral compass that guides the musings of the characters ranges from delusions of grandeur to touching and disturbing insight into the flawed and often rapacious character of humanity.