Black is the New White

Christmas – that joyful time of family and togetherness we spend with people we didn’t choose and would rather not, when antipathies and resentments erupt and when hangovers of different kinds ensue.  Thus, the potential Christmas contrived by Nakkiah Lui in her play, which brings together two families, one indigenous – the Gibsons - one white – the Smiths - each with their own secrets, delusions and entrenched prejudices.

Presided over by a hip and charming Narrator (Luke Carroll), who fills in some backstory when required, we meet Charlotte Gibson (Miranda Tapsell), a sweet but tough, smart and successful lawyer, and Francis Smith (Tom Stokes, revealing a fast mouth and a talent for physical comedy), an experimental cellist.  They’re in love.  She’s just won an important land rights case and he’s… well, he’s an experimental cellist.  They arrive early at the Gibson family’s spacious holiday home (a big, naturalistic, detailed set by Renée Mulder) with a plan to get their families together.  They expect some problems, but, after all, it’s Christmas, and it has to happen sooner or later…

Ray Gibson (Tony Briggs), Charlotte’s Dad, is an ex-Labor politician with delusions of importance – he imagines he is the Australian Martin Luther King; wife Joan (Melodie Reynolds-Diarra) is the warm-hearted realist who actually wrote Ray’s stirring speeches; their other daughter is Rose (Tuuli Narkle), given to malapropisms, a fashion designer with her own label, expanding into LA, but adamant about ‘black identity’; and her husband is Sonny (Anthony Taufa), a sweet-natured evangelical Christian, first Aboriginal captain of the Wallabies, now a merchant banker.  This family is part of the new indigenous middle-class – and doing quite nicely thank you – materially speaking.

Charlotte and Francis know that their respective fathers are ex-politicians but are unaware of the enduring enmity between Ray and very right-wing, very sour, very wealthy Liberal Dennison Smith (Geoff Morrell) who arrives with his perfectly coifed but somewhat robotic wife Marie (Vanessa Downing).  And so the lines of conflict are drawn.  It’s Meet the Fokkers (an admitted influence for playwright Lui) plus Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? – in reverse.

The cast, encouraged by director Paige Rattray, revel in their larger than life characters and leap unfazed into sometimes stretched thin and ridiculous antics – such as Ray and Dennison competing with dance moves (although Mr Briggs and Mr Morrell do this brilliantly) or the all-in food fight that caps off a later sequence.  There is just a touch in the writing here of ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if…’ or ‘We need a gag now’.  Things happen because they’ll get a laugh – but they do such is the gusto with which the cast goes at it.     

Black is the New White tries on something difficult: a combination of farce with some serious and at times iconoclastic racial and political argument.  The latter is mostly inherent in the action, but there are pauses in the laughs and the slapstick for explicit raising of some serious issues: identity politics, black pride, knee-jerk racism (that cuts both ways), bourgeois entitlement and (for some) the guilt that goes with success, plus feminism and sexual expression.  If these issues are raised in a somewhat didactic manner rather than explored or dramatised and are without much consequence, comic momentum is maintained, and the pauses are short. There’s so much in the air that even the play’s over-long running time can scarcely accommodate it all - and the play wisely leans on laughter to make its points. 

The laughter can be at pointed bon mots that punctures pomposity, or at exaggerated, wince-making faux pas, or at sheer slapstick.  (Francis, for instance, not knowing that Charlotte’s family has arrived, runs on stage stark naked and then tries to ingratiate himself with some excruciatingly wrong jokes.)  There is discomfort for both racial ‘sides’ of the audience as Ms Lui satirises the stubborn pretences and pretensions of black and white.  And there is the reveal of long-held and embarrassing, even mortifying secrets.  When Vanessa Downing’s Marie gets her chance to dominate the stage with a few choice reveals, dominate she does and very satisfying it is too. 

The opening night audience responded to the play’s daring, sharp but warm humour and the cast’s portrayal of such recognisable types with constant laughter.  Ms Lui clearly writes from the inside and is boldly, slyly subversive.  The play has already been a huge success in Perth and Sydney and no doubt will be so in Melbourne too – and Adelaide next.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Jeff Busby