Reviews

Rehabilitation or the gallows? When dealing with serious felons, it’s a question pondered by far more civilised and recent societies than that of early Australian penal colonies.

Timberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 play Our Country’s Good is set in Governor Arthur Philip’s penal colony and poses the execution vs rehabilitation dilemma through a familiar theatrical device, a play within a play.

If you love a good farce, especially one that’s done well, then this production of Boeing Boeing will be just your ticket - and despite the fact that the plot might seem  politically incorrect, it’s not impossible that you’ll get lots of laughs.

Goldsmith’s classic comedy, commissioned to revive a dying genre and completed in 1771, takes a couple of love matches and throws in their path obstacles arising chiefly from the human need to be sure of the suitor’s suitability.  In this universality of motives, it translates successfully as comedy for modern audiences.  Relying less on linguistic cleverness than on straightforward deceits of universal application, the tale leads seemingly inexorably to disaster and disownment before resolving with a satisfying twist.

Jessamae St James, in a spangled frock and platforms, plays piano, kazoo, electric ukulele and some kind of weird electric keyboard on her knees.  She claims that she cannot play any of these instruments very well – but, hey, it’s cabaret – right?  - and a kind of rambling, confessional address is integral.  She also uses an electronic ‘effects station’ to make loops of her own voice.