Mary Coustas - This is Personal

Mary Coustas gets personal in new one-woman show

The woman behind Australia’s beloved ‘Effie’ from Acropolis Now and Wogs out of Work got personal last night at the Arts Centre Melbourne in front of what seemed to be a full house in her new exciting and highly entertaining one-woman show This is Personal. I grew up watching Effie on TV and I have also seen Coustas’s show Effie The Virgin Bride, which toured a few years ago. 

I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the wog comedy of the 80s and 90s. On the one hand the movement was a reclamation, a defiance against the racism experienced by ethnic migrants – they took the word ‘wog’ and shoved it back in Anglo faces. On the other hand, as I grew older, it frustrated me. I found it stereotypical, and it started to feel like the initial positive effects were in reversal. I questioned if wog comedy was, in fact, just serving up art for the Anglo palette how they prefer to enjoy us. It felt claustrophobic, like the wog comedy itself was stopping the culture from progressing, keeping women firmly in the gender roles, living in Effie’s shadow. 

Perhaps it was this feeling that had Coustas drop the Effie curtain and for the first time, show us herself, bare and vulnerable. She did this for a few minutes at the end of Effie The Virgin Bride, but for This is Personal, she is herself for the whole show. 

I thoroughly enjoyed Coustas in this show, a lot more than I thought I would. One minute I was laughing, the other I was crying – this show is the work of a true pro. It was a roller-coaster of emotion as she took us through her life journey, adding a welcomed third-dimension to stereotypical Effie, making me fall in love with her all over again. As a Greek-Cypriot woman, I felt inspired seeing Coustas on stage sharing her story, like anything is possible if you set your mind to it. She had a dream once and look where she is now. I was on the edge of my seat – I really did love this show. 

Coustas silences her naysayers, those who believe she can only play “bimbo Effie”. Stretching herself effortlessly, playing different characters with ease, the writing and narrative was strong, tight and powerful, sprinkled with poetic lines that pulled at my heart strings. The acting and body movement was so believable it was as if those people were actually on stage with her. 

I was not bored for a second. From motherhood, to racism, to being the daughter of Greek migrants, Coustas shares her grief of being a late mother and of losing her father early in life, sharing how her comedy and Effie was born from that grief to help “find the funny in life” as her dad would say to her, but also as a form of activism, it would seem, against the racism she endured, racism she acknowledged, still plays out today. There was also a cathartic energy to her performance, like Coustas had been waiting years for the right time to stake her claim, wanting us (Australians) to understand the essence and heart behind one of Australia’s most beloved characters, and you could feel it in the room, everyone was captivated and with her all the way.  

Highlighting the joy, struggle and drama that is Greek culture, Coustas takes us a few welcome steps away from Effie into another space entirely. She does, however, paint a romanticised version of our culture, a Greek culture that has worked hard, struggled, survived, built wealth and success, where family is about strength, staying together, and being together – and this picture is the one that patriarchal Greek culture likes to hold onto and claim as its truth. The thread running through the whole show was how Coustas has learned to make funny with the pain she has endured. I just wonder how others whose experience of migrant culture has not been so pretty and who has left them estranged from their family will feel about Coustas’s show. Coustas however, does emphasise building your tribe around you through friendships and making your own family, and I feel this sentiment does somewhat counter my point above. We really do need more Greek (and Cypriot) women in the arts though, for their voices to be amplified, to create a dialogue with Coustas, as I feel there is darkness to the culture too that we are just scratching the surface of. Despite this, I still give the show five stars. 

Koraly Dimitriadis

Koraly Dimitriadis is a Cypriot-Australian writer and performer and the author of Love and F—k Poems and Just Give Me The Pills. Her theatre show “I say the wrong things all the time” premiered at La Mama in 2016. Koraly’s opinion articles/essays have been published widely including international publications in The Washington Post. She was awarded an associate artist residency at Theatre Works in 2020.  

Photographer: Cassandra Hannagan.