Image: John Gaden and Hamish Michael in Straight White Men; photograph courtesy of Jeff Busby.
Entering to the throbbing club like atmosphere under the spell of DJ Candy Beats (Candy Bowers) a tightly packed and supportive audience last night suffered through MTC’s latest offering Straight White Men. By the time it was over I was thinking: what was all that for?
Don’t get me wrong; it’s a comedy and people were certainly laughing in the right bits. But this is essentially a one joke play; one where the punch line comes so quickly you’re left wondering what the next 85 minutes is going to be about.
Three brothers – Jake (Luke Ryan), Matt (Gareth Reeves) and Drew (Hamish Michael) – gather at their widowed father’s (John Gaden) house to celebrate Christmas, adding a few rituals of their own. The brotherly trash talk exposes a fragility in their relationships and they wonder, given that being a straight white male brings so much privilege, why things aren’t working out for them?
The play, by American writer Young Jean Lee, is a painfully overblown piece of fluff disguised as something bigger and grander than it can ever be. Think Emperor’s New Clothes, as one audience member said to me afterwards. There’s really nothing there. Promoted as a ‘razor sharp piece of satire’ there was no punch in the guts moment that comes with genuine satire – the point where you are laughing and winded at the same time. The subversion of exposing white male privilege into a moment of self-actualisation is a neat premise but there was sadly too much vacuity to sustain the piece; it felt like a wasted opportunity.
The performances were adequate with good energy, timing, physicality even a little slapstick. But the emotional moments were taken away from us so quickly there was little left to feel. Even at the point where the play becomes its most violent, the act was too swift to have any real lasting impact. The cast were obviously having fun, however the sibling rivalry and playfighting were a bit too frequent, forced and a bit hammy. Luke Ryan’s Corporate Jake as a domineering Type A(rsehole) personality was the most enjoyable performance of the night. The ensemble highlight for me was a late night homo-ertotic/incestuous ‘white men can’t dance’ interlude to ‘Pump Up the Jam’. This aside, there was a heightened self-conscious affect to the acting that I found irritating and untruthful. It’s part of the joke, I guess, just not a very successful one.
The America suburban sitcom set (designed by Eugyeene Teh) was well used by all.
This was a one joke play that stretched the patience of its audience. The work took far too long to get going and by its conclusion one didn’t have enough investment in the characters to care. It was difficult to decide whether it was the audience or the cast who were being played, but perhaps it’s the MTC for buying into the hype of a play that doesn’t deserve to be programmed.
Rating: 2 stars out of 5
By Young Jean Lee
Directed by Sarah Giles
Assistant Director: Dominic Mercer
Set & Costume Designer: Eugyeene Teh
Sound Designer: David Heinrich
Lighting Designer: Lisa Mibus
Voice & Dialect Coach: Geraldine Cook
Stagehand-in-charge & Music Consultant: Candy Bowers
Cast: John Gaden, Hamish Michael, Gareth Reeves and Luke Ryan
Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio
6 May – 18 June 2016
