The Homosexuals or ‘Faggots’

Two privileged white male gays are outraged when they see faggots listed in a pub menu.  Never mind it’s that old English dish of meatballs.  Set in their cramped if million door Darlinghurst flat, with a view of the Mardi Gras Parade tonight from their bathroom, Declan Greene’s furious farce is a very funny attack on PC preciousness around LGBTIQA identities. 

Warren (Simon Burke), publisher of the online Daily Bulge, is hotly pursuing a gorgeous male model (Lincoln Younes), while his unknowing husband, Kim (Simon Corfield), a gender studies lecturer, is terrified of offending an influential transsexual blogger who is due soon for an interview with Warren.  Warren’s trans mate, Diana, (Genevieve Lemon) has meanwhile arrived, dressed as Bill Crosby, restless to get him to the night’s Non-PC Costume Party.

Cabaret artist Mama Alton plays the seriously disapproving blogger as well as a wonderfully androgynous, bogan crim doing over all the flats.  A bag of coke disappears, doors slam, near naked people hide in cupboards or strut inexplicably in new costumes. These are the staples of farce, but the subject here is language, urban identities and powers of cultural self-determination, and offence.  Sort of.

Under Lee Lewis’ precise direction it all builds to an explosion of chaos, smoke and hurled food, which somehow fits into designer Marg Howell’s groovy if restraining apartment.  

It’s a fabulous cast with Burke a master of timing and physicality and Corfield perfect as his whining partner, and Lemon perhaps best of all as the droll butch Di.

When the madness ebbs and jokes sometimes miss, the thin skeleton of Greene’s constructed situation and character motives begin to show, and the ending is more portentous than thoughtful.  But for the right audience – and that’s me – this is hilariously camp theatre that the Griffin is now well-skilled at delivering.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Brett Boardman