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Sydney Morning Herald Review | Revolver Review

Sydney Morning Herald Review

Palaver, the fourth show from Urban Tales, is an entertaining procession of sketches linked by a reality television gag (actors competing and being tossed off the island/pub). It's topped and tailed with testicles.

The opening: three women in a pub doing elaborations of "corr, look at the balls on that bloke". The sketch gets detailed (wrinkly v veiny, shaved or not) before the gazed-at bloke's mate complains about the offence the staring is causing. After all mate, it's objectification.

The closing sketch moves beyond this "if testicles were treated like tits" idea. At the Wet Y-Front Competition, both genders develop absurdly proportioned appendages between the thighs. There's much more in between these two genital moments. Crude? Sure. Funny?

I thought so. The crowd liked it, and it's good pub theatre: energetically and brightly performed, an excellent example of the "have a couple of beers and a giggle" show.

But this is not satire about famous people or public figures. It's about cultural traits, stuff-ups and contemporary life, about geography, gender, late-night TV ads, drunken socialites and films about dancers. Bedroom furniture sales people and the idea of socially-transmissable homosexuality ("Yeah, I shook his hand. So I'm gay now") also feature.

The least-successful sketch involves two drug-snorting NSW coppers, but it does have the evening's bleakest joke, a "who am I" about shooting a French bloke on Bondi Beach: "bang, bang, bang, bang ... Stop!"

Palaver scores much higher than a pass, for sharp writing, very strong performances and a pleasingly wicked outlook...

Palaver runs until July 26.

Stephen Dunne — Exchange Hotel Balmain, July 4

 

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Revolver Review

Rocking up early to the Exchange Hotel in Balmain to see some pub theatre, I decided to do the bar fly thing in the front room and catch some of Big Brother. This particular stint of quality television turned out to contain nothing more titillating than fifteen minutes of Ben sweating like a pig on a walking machine. However, as it happened, the real reality programming shenanigans were not to be found in the box but rather awaited me out the back of the pub in the theatre space where eight actors were to be locked together to compete to be the ultimate Pubstar. This is the concept behind Palaver, the latest offering from the talented and undeniably twisted individuals known as Urban Tales.

And they have once again proved themselves to have their finger well and truly on the perverse pulse of pub theatre. The challenge for the contestants of Pubstars is to demonstrate their acting dexterity in a variety of different skits playing everything from the arse end of a horse to an absolutely fabulous rendition of plastic-faced Eastern Suburb socialites. Also close to my leg-warming-loving-heart was Rebecca Tully’s spoof of an eighties dance flick. While not all the skits were equally engaging, the quality of the performances was always high and there is enough variety to suit most connoisseurs of the sick, wrong and ridiculous.

But the acting that the audience is privy to behind the scenes is equally as dramatic as that taking place on stage. For being actors (thus deceitful and hysteric by vocation) the reality-competition conspiring, fondling, backstabbing and temper tantrums become even more heightened than usual. Don’t forget to factor into this unfolding debauchery, one born-again-Christian deflowered of her virginity, a Survivor obsessed sociopath and a self-mutilating performance artist. But the performance that will most likely linger longest in the audiences mind was Trudi-Ann Tierney’s "Wet Y Front Competition" which involved the superb choreography of a number of pairs of pineapple sized testicles. But you need not worry about the Urban Tales crew being accused of discrimination, because their crudeness always comes in two sexes. Thus for every big-balled guy there is an equivalent groin-enlarged girl. Palaver was good fun reasonably sober, so I’m willing to wager it is probably even more funny sloshed.

Jesse Garron