Life's a drag

Play –

Behind You! Behind You!

Producer/Company –

Outcast Theatre

Venue –

Mechanics Institute Performing Arts Centre

Date and time –

Sunday, 15 April 2012, 6:00pm

Cast –

Mathew Gelsumini, Mathew Dorning, Benjamin James, Iain Murton, Jessikah Brown, Tosh Greenslade

Crew –

Steven Dawson (Writer, Director, Designer), Adrian Corbett (Co-Producer)

Outcast Theatre, Australia’s only gay and lesbian theatre company, celebrates its fifteenth anniversary in 2012. This production of ‘Behind You! Behind You!’, performed as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, was a revival of the original production from 2004.

Stephen Dawson is the author of all of Outcast’s play. A theatre journeyman, Dawson also design, directs, produces and stage manages his plays. ‘Behind You! Behind You!’ was billed as ‘half panto, half comedy and half-cocked’. Act one is a performance of a deliberately, hilariously bad pantomime – complete with songs and choreography – and act two is a behind the scenes story of the cast of the panto between performances .

Most of Dawson’s plays fall into the genre of ‘dramedy’; serious issues intermixed with funny scenes and dialogue. Act one was a laugh-out-loud romp through the staple characters, scenes and storylines of panto, with some very camp twists. Act two, although still replete with humour and devastating one-liners, examined the drama in the characters’ relationships.

In the panto section, Iain Murton, an alumni of Outcast Theatre, stole the show as the grand dame of the piece. Mathew Gemsumini also took an amusing turn as the put-upon Puss in Boots. And in the backstage section, the emotional heart of the piece is effectively played out in several relationships, in particular that of the troubled couple played by Tosh Greenslade and Benjamin James.

Outcast’s plays are always entertaining, and have given myself and audiences many huge laughs over the years, with this show being no exception. I’ve often found that Outcast shows could do with more polishing in terms of dialogue and pacing. I think there’s an understanding from their audiences, though, that a certain roughness around the edges of the production doesn’t detract from a good performance.

I attended the original production of ‘Behind You! Behind You’, and have followed the theatre company’s productions for twelve years now. Outcast plays an important role in Australian theatre, producing theatre by and for a gay and lesbian audience. Outcast is based in Melbourne and, although financing their shows on a shoestring budget, tour both Australia-wide and internationally.

Verdict? – Gay as.

(The Abusicals two-word summary is, of course, tongue-in-cheek.)

http://www.sub.net.au/~outcast/

http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2012/season/shows/behind-you-behind-you/