Reviews

Three characters connected by chance to a murder – in a play in which the murder itself is a McGuffin, a device to question the subjective nature of truth and all the forces that distort our sense of it.

The virtue of this pared back, ‘poor theatre’ production of Julius Caesar is its simplicity – and therefore its clarity.  The cast is young – or seems young – and they wear what look like op-shop clothes – that is, an everyday hotchpotch of contemporary no style. 

This piece was first conceived (pardon the pun) for Melbourne’s Midsumma Festival in 2013 and performed as a moved reading to rave reviews. Not unlike The Vagina Monologues in tone, the text was similarly derived from a multitude of interviews with children (aged 4-40) of same-sexed couples. To emphasise the authenticity of the dialogue, the cast maintain a book-in-hand prop throughout.  This updated version also includes reactions to the landmark political events of the past year.

The show begins, appropriately, with an immobile, monumental female figure seated on a podium.  This is, after all, a show about queens – or Queens - every kind of queen: ‘royal’ queens, film star queens, queens of pop, drag queens, warrior queens, even queen bees….