The Earth is burning and the ultra-rich are escaping the doomed planet on a final flight into the unknown – a clear reference to Elon Musk and his plans to colonise Mars. Our protagonists are stewardesses Angel (Carly Sheppard, Takalaka), a young Indigenous woman, and Alexa (Kamarra Bell-Wykes, Jagera/Butchulla), a robot. The plane is piloted by white male entitlement personified, the passengers are rich, vacuous and deliciously loathsome, and the entire production plays out under the watchful eye of Death himself (Yorta Yorta/Wiradjuri man Zach Blampied, best known to date for the Stan streaming series Invisible Boys).
A Nightime Travesty is a Blak, Brechtian, savagely funny vaudeville musical created by Naarm/Melbourne theatre collective A Daylight Connection (Bell-Wykes and Sheppard together with Quandamooka multi-instrumentalist, sound designer and composer small sound) and which premiered at Melbourne’s First People’s festival Yirramboi in 2023.
For this new iteration of A Nightime Travesty at Malthouse Theatre as part of Asia TOPA, guest director Stephen Nicolazzo has tightened the original, louche, late-night production – shaving 20 minutes off the running time in the process – with co-devisers and co-writers Bell-Wykes and Sheppard returning to their starring roles. The expanded production also features Blampied, small sound, a second musician and co-sound designer Richie Brownlee, and Peter Wykes (Bell-Wykes’ father) in a cameo role as the monstrous Jabberwock from Lewis Carol’s 1871 novel, Through the Looking-Glass.
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Opening with an Acknowledgement of Country that swiftly segues into an apology to any young people present for leaving them the gift of a dying planet, A Nightime Travesty thereafter embraces Shakespearean homage and satirises long-running and deeply problematic television variety show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, with Death as the hanging judge on a game show called Hey Hey It’s Judgement Day.
And that’s before we even get to the production’s main plot, involving a pregnant Angel – who’s been conducting a clandestine relationship with the obscenely well-hung pilot, nicknamed God’s Greatest Gift – aboard the billionaire-populated aeroplane dubbed ‘the Final Fleet’ in reference to the British colonisation of Australia in 1788, while everyone else dies in agonised terror on the dying Earth the flight has abandoned below.
A Nightime Travesty is so dense with references and allusions to Indigenous Futurism, Blak pride, colonial history and First People’s resistance to it, and packed full to bursting with original songs and wickedly pointed satire to the point that it simply shouldn’t work – and yet somehow it successfully coheres into a wild, Brechtian rollercoaster ride that works beautifully.
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Speaking with this writer on Three Triple R’s weekly arts program SmartArts on Thursday 20 February, Bell-Wykes said, “I guess that’s the thing about our work as well, we do this thing, like, ‘Yes, we’re telling a story. We’re playing characters,’ but there’s always this kind of wink to each other and the audience, this kind of awareness and irreverence so that, ‘Yes, but we’re putting on a show for you, right?’ So we’re really in the show and then we’ll throw in a little comment and that’s, ‘But also we’re all just here putting this show on together, right?’ And I think the audience loves being in on the joke.”
To which Sheppard added: “Yes, because our shows are so meta and we like to play with that, you know? Being able to step away and go, ‘You know, this is real. It’s very real. And also it’s just not real at all, and we’re us.’”
A Nightime Travesty is meta, real, unreal and deadly – and the audience are in on the joke every step of the way. Reprogramming A Daylight Connection’s Yirramboi work and gifting it with a skilled director, greater development time and simultaneously tightening and expanding the production, has resulted in one of the undisputed highlights of the reborn Asia TOPA 2025. Bravo!
A Nightime Travesty
A Daylight Connection
Co-Creator and Performer: Kamarra Bell-Wykes
Co-Creator and Performer: Carly Sheppard
Director: Stephen Nicolazzo
Performer: Zach Blampied
Performer: Peter Wykes
Musician, Set and Co-Sound Designer: small sound
Musician and Co-Sound Designer: Richie Brownlee
Lighting Designer: Gina Gascoigne
Executive Producer (Bureau of Works): Erin Milne
The Beckett, Malthouse Theatre, Southbank
Tickets: $30 – $50 (Mob Tix $20)
19-22 February 2025
