Triple X

My sister reckons that contemporary plays, especially Australian ones, rarely tell happy love stories. I’ll suggest she go to Triple X for an update on the genre.

Like any good rom-com, transsexual performer, and now celebrated playwright, Glace Chase begins her tale in an opulent New York apartment. Scotty (Josh McConville) is a big city finance man on the eve of a high society marriage; he seems to have everything. But on yet another coke and booze bender, he’s rescued by Dixie (Chase), a downtown trans-queen – and so begins ten months of love, tenderness, shared anxiety and far more explicit sex than your average rom-com.  McConville and Chase bring great chemistry and truth to this arc of growing intimacy.  

But the bite of Chase’s impressive comedy is in the reactions to the happy couple.  Contessa Treffone anchors the production as Scotty’s lesbian sister, delighted by her newly “activist” brother.  Up the other end of the spectrum is their Texan mother, fraught and cocooned, and Scotty’s best mate Jase who thinks he knows Scotty backwards. These roles were ably understudied by Cheree Cassidy and Anthony Taufa on the night I saw it – in a new normal for COVID-era theatre.

Triple X is richly honest and involving in the personal and societal challenges of love between a man and a trans woman, spliced with wit and unforced insight into sexual identity, gender expectations and lessons on human frailty. 

Paige Rattray’s fine production sits well in Renee Mulder’s tall warehouse style apartment.

It’s a truly modern love story – and perhaps an eye (and heart) opener for some – but it echoes similar landmark rom coms written three decades ago about gay couples.  And that’s hardly shocking today.

Martin Portus

Images: Glace Chase and Josh McConville; Contessa Treffone and Josh McConville; Glace Chase and Josh McConville; & Glace Chase, Anthony Taufa and Josh McConville. Photographer: Prudence Upton.