By Malthouse Theatre
Audio version online. Tickets from 30 October 2020
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ***1/2
This short review published only on this blog. KH
Set in Melbourne in 1995, Christos Tsiolkas’ novel, Loaded, was a transgressive, subversive and grungy view of Ari, a young, Greek gay man’s adventures with drugs, clubbing and sexual hook-ups.
Malthouse Theatre’s cancelled its stage adaptation of Tsiolkas’ 1995 debut novel and has now replaced it with an audio version adapted by Tsiolkas with Dan Giovannoni, directed by Stephen Nicolazzo and featuring Roy Joseph as Ari, self-narrating his story.
This adaptation is like listening to an audio book with soundscape. It is a collision of 1995 and 2020 cultural references.
Ari still plays a mix tape on CD while other references are updated with 2020 lingo, including ‘hipsters’, ‘Woke’, ‘swipe left’, mobile phone playlists and other delights unavailable in 1995.
Much has changed since ’95 in the arenas of sexuality and gender, drugs, music and partying, but Ari’s world is still lurid, graphic, provocative and probably still offensive to some.
If the four, one-minute videos on the website are any indication of the stage production, there would have been an abundance of mirror balls, vivid and violently flashing lights, loud club music accompanying graphic, physicalised sexual activity.
There is plenty of sexual imagery in the language of this audio version, but the listening audience is not confronted with visuals of writhing, groping and hooking up that might feature in the live production.
By Kate Herbert
No comments:
Post a Comment