Revenge is a dish best served hot in this exhilarating Australian debut

This wrap of shows around Melbourne includes the haunting, yet devastatingly funny Is God Is, and a powerful yet vulnerable gig by one of the finest performers in the country right now.

THEATRE
Is God Is ★★★★★
Melbourne Theatre Company, Southbank Theatre, until July 15

On a barely lit stage, a woman cradling two babies to her bosom appears, a house taking the place of her head. Behind her, a larger-than-life shadow of a man looms. This haunting opening scene hints at the themes that drive Is God Is: motherhood, domesticity, family violence, love and accountability.

Masego Pitso and Henrietta Enyonam Amevor in a scene from Is God Is.Credit: Pia Johnson

If all of this sounds heavy and traumatic, it is and it isn’t. The play catapults 18 years into the future to a light-hearted scene featuring inseparable twins Anaia (Henrietta Enyonam Amevor) and Racine (Masego Pitso) – the former the soft-hearted and emotional one, Racine plucky and fiery – receiving a letter from a mother they long thought dead. Family traumas are relived and tears are shed as the twins learn certain truths about themselves and embark on a mission to “make their daddy dead, really dead”.

It’s a tale as old as time – the unquenchable desire for revenge – but the setting is contemporary, the all-black production MTC’s first.

A simple wooden house is the lone set structure on stage but under Renée Mulder’s exceptional set design, it assumes a capacious, mythical quality. It morphs from the twins’ ailing mother’s eerily lit deathbed, to the blinds flanking a seedy lawyer’s office and to a certain yellow house with teal shutters. To illustrate the passage of time and the bridging of distance as the twins travel from the American South to California, the characters turn the house on its axis as it spins into new locales, new pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of what really happened to them and their mother.

A simple house assumes a capacious, mythical quality in Is God Is.Credit: Pia Johnson

Much has been made of the different modes of storytelling Is God Is combines – from Greek tragedy to Spaghetti Western to Afropunk – and for good reason. Aleshea Harris’s award-winning script is unabashedly black, undoubtedly American and under the direction of Australian power duo Zindzi Okenyo and Shari Sebbens, the play seamlessly shifts between comedy and calamity. You’ll laugh out loud at a funny turn of phrase before the laughter catches in your throat and you’re left agape.

Just as impressive is the play’s further melding of supernatural elements, tenets of the bumbling buddy cop genre as Anaia and Racine attempt to extract information out of the hapless lawyer Chuck Hall (Patrick Williams), and body horror as the play depicts stylised violence.

Exhilarating, devastatingly funny and a rollicking good time, Is God Is chronicles the cyclical nature of violence with a superb cast – each actor steals the show irrespective of their onstage time.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

MUSIC
Cash Savage and the Last Drinks ★★★★★
Corner Hotel, June 23

“What a moment,” Cash Savage says as she looks out onto a sold-out hometown crowd. She’s in great spirits, belying the crushing content of her band’s latest album, So This is Love, which charts a marriage breakdown.

Cash Savage is one of the finest performers in the country right now.Credit: Rick Clifford

The frontwoman has all the swagger of the prototypical rock star, but strikes a balance between bravado and vulnerability: on stage, she describes the album’s contents as “opening up a chest cavity”.

Over 90 minutes, she shares that intimate world in the flesh, backed by two guitarists, a bassist, keyboardist, drummer and violinist. It’s a big setup that makes for a big sound, and Savage’s powerful vocals are elevated when her bandmates join in on backup on Keep Working At Your Job and Good Citizens. On the album’s atmospheric title track, the instrumentals bloom, the band’s sound cavernous and luscious.

Savage is a formidable performer, a magnetic leader. She stalks the stage as she sings, unencumbered by any instruments herself, and steps over the foldbacks to lurch over fans in the front row and snarl her lyrics.

Power and vulnerability: Cash Savage and the Last Drinks perform at the Corner Hotel.Credit: Rick Clifford

On the frantic Push she jumps off the stage, getting up close and personal as she spits its refrain: “I’m not feelin’ too hot today …” There’s a doggedness in the delivery that is almost frightening.

But there’s joy to be found through the sorrow – the band is clearly having a blast, and Savage’s rapport with the crowd and her bandmates is easy as she bats jokes back and forth.

The musician is adamantly anti-encore, so as the set creeps towards its conclusion there’s a sense of urgency that’s captured perfectly in the speak-singing closer Fun in the Sun. It’s a fitting end to a blistering set that proves why Cash Savage is one of the finest performers in the country right now – what a moment, indeed.
Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

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