Reviews

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.

This distinctly contrasting double-bill staged as part of Frisk, a festival of new performance works cocooned within Melbourne’s Fringe Festival, showcases some of the emerging talent of the VCA.