By Peter Maddern
Describing your experience as an audience member of Miss Revolutionary is not easy. For those so inclined it is something akin to surviving Bay 13 at the MCG on Grand Final Day – with food and liquid and other objects raining down on you throughout – and Sydney’s Bridge Climb where you strip down and put on provided garments for the ride.
After an interminable amount of Japanese jabber when you arrive, once the show gets started Miss Revolutionary provides 40 minutes or so of intense sensorial overload. Albeit the rehearsal room is not large but it seems there are as many performers as audience members, yelling, singing, dancing, climbing through the chairs – they are everywhere doing stuff. We are warned we will get wet and covered with seaweed but having a pair of girls knickers plonk down on my head was not only a bonus but not something that has happened to this reviewer for a while – another star on the rating for that. If nudity had broken out, then I think we were truly on for an all in orgy.
Just what the story of the production is all about was not clear as well. Life, living but just why it seemed to stop at marriage was confounding. But as director and creator Toco Nikaido states – how we interpret it all is pretty much up to us. But the drive to present how the 20 something generation receive and generate their media – chaotically, piecemeal and yet resulting in some synthesised cohesion – is very strong.
As OzAsia director Joe Mitchell’s show piece of his contemporary festival it was a stunner but spare a thought for those charged with cleaning it all up.
Complete with total immersion and enthusiasm from the cast, even after you have left the performance space; but well beyond and after you have dried off, this is a show that will stay with you.
Kryztoff Rating 4.5K
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