Image by Daniel Boud
Behind the closed doors of ​an unassuming marriage, there is a tightly guarded secret: domestic abuse. Entwined in the silence of the victim is an even more guarded secret: that every victim in the depths of their imaginations longs to be a hero. And so B-Girl (Blazey Best) escapes her reality by conjuring up Clifford North (iOTA), the fabulously outrageous rock star ​who epitomises the strength and power that she lacks. B-Girl and North tag-team in the telling of a story about a violent silence, which can be imploded by ferocious music.
The glam rock aesthetic has a long history of subversion, so it’s an obvious choice to use as a vehicle for inverting power structures. Originally a means of subverting concepts of masculinity by appropriating the constructs of femininity such as costume and make up, it lends itself nicely to explorations of gender and sexuality. Surprisingly though, considering the subject matter of B-Girl, the feminist perspective is sadly lacking. In escaping from one powerful man in her life (her husband), she channels yet another powerful man (Clifford North) as her saviour. Despite the publicity buzzword ‘gender bending’ that has been flapping around this production, all characters’ maleness or femaleness is pretty cut and dry. The image of B-Girl standing, vulnerable and underdressed, between her domineering husband and the attention grabbing North, does not exactly scream female empowerment.
However if you can forgive the lack of feminist input, there’s a hell of a lot of fun to be had. Its always a pleasure to enjoy the Playhouse’s high production values and acoustics, but when the music is this good, it’s downright orgasmic. A four-piece band keep time in the background, stepping up only for the occasional guitar or drum solo. They are tighter than Clifford North’s’ star-spangled pants, playing good solid rock tunes without the whistles and bells their over-the-top costumes might lead you to expect.
The costume design, with its overt star theme (crotch and nipple stars) is a clear nod to the Seventies, but has become a bit of a generic cliché, not the edgy subversion it had the potential to be. Everything about iOTA, clad in make up, spandex, and knee-high platform boots, screams ‘look at me’. But when he sings… that’s when you really see him. Wrapped in artifice but performing with the intensity of truth, like all good musical performances, it’s a little heartbreaking.
Rocking even harder than iOTA is Blazey Best. Simmering with sex appeal, she lets loose an unprecedented voice and rock star presence and is unblinkingly watchable. She may be having a bit too much fun with it all – her presence and vitality during the musical numbers makes it hard to buy her as her abused and dominated alter ego, but that is probably more a writing or directing issue than a performance one.
This production is quite an achievement for iOTA, who not only plays Clifford North, but also wrote the entire soundtrack. The story is told mostly through iOTAs unpretentious lyrics, with a bare minimum of non-musical scenes between B-Girl and her husband depicting her real life situation. The story itself is pretty thin – the domestic violence issue wraps up all too neatly and quickly and is hence oversimplified. The characters are undeveloped so this isn’t something which will give you any insight into the minds and motivations of domestic violence perpetrators or victims. But it passes the cardinal rule of musicals – as long as the music is good, it doesn’t matter how silly the story is. The main theme running through the production is freedom, and implicitly, entrapment. Music has always been a powerful means of expressing this struggle, and this production is, more than story or character, simply an ode to the sublime honesty and liberating power of music.
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
B-Girl
Sydney Opera House, The Playhouse
Until 21 June
