Melbourne Reviews

The silly season approaches, and Melbourne’s theatres have joined in with the spirit. You could go to A Christmas Carol’s return to the Comedy Theatre – I saw it last year, it was a good production, and there are fruit mince pies before the curtain rises. But company Fat Fruit and Susie Dee have some saltier treats on offer in their variety offering F Christmas – a show with the tagline: “It’s queer. It’s comedy. It’s Christmas reimagined”.

Thanks to Designer Romanie Harper, F Christmas offers its audience various gifts of surprising visual elements. So, if you want to appreciate these or see what the live band (led from percussion by Musical Director Bec Matthews) is doing, avoid the side-on and partially obscured view given by seats in row L of the Merlyn’s dress circle.

As is appropriate for a show with such a confrontational title, the acts across the 75 minutes often channelled an energising “punk” spirit, felt through raucous music and high-energy spots decked with unpredictability and bursts of less-than-decorous behaviour. We shouldn’t be so surprised, as the show’s promo materials offer descriptions like: “This isn’t your grandma’s Christmas show”.

Highlights included a very original use of a particular circus apparatus, chaotic elves, and suggestions (through a dance routine) of how to manage the demands of the festive season when short of cash.

The co-creator/performers on the bill here (including Circus Oz alumni such as hoop performer Jess Love, and Dale Woodbridge-Brown, known for gross or cheeky acts) presented a veritable cornucopia of (somewhat) yuletide-themed goodies. Mostly these had the promised comedic slant. Also, synchronisation in ensemble routines was laudable, showing the talents of Choreographer Gabi Barton.

The experienced directorial hand of Dee ensured that the spots were snappy and transitions crisp. This influence may have also been responsible for limiting the political comment to digestible chunks, in recognition that too much is worse than having “meat sweats”, and it’s become “futile” these days anyway.

There’s some darker content here too, although some was given a somewhat superficial treatment. At other times there was a more serious attempt to brush aside the tinsel and give us something of greater substance to ponder, such as through a snippet of The Coventry Carol (nothing to do with the WWII bombing). I remain unsure about how this fit within the show’s ideas. Pre-show, Dee informed us that a virus had swept through the company, which may have explained some irregularities in how the show was wrapped.

However, as was typical on this opening night, the carol was performed well by Milo Hartill (credits include Yummy), particularly impressive as a last-minute cover for Matthews’ Fat Fruit partner Sarah Ward. (It is hoped that Ward will be back for the work’s second week.)

Hartill also did well wringing laughs from their spots with John Marc Desengano, parodying the conventions of Australian televised carols, where even without snow we get a “white” Christmas.

Oddly enough, the show’s anti-capitalist messages are quite compatible with the big lesson Scrooge learns in A Christmas Carol. If we could get off the corporate treadmill, we’d realise that we can’t benefit from funding more landfill, we need to spend more of our limited time on our relationships. Despite our short visit with the cast of F Christmas, they certainly gave us a festive stocking stuffed with diverse entertainments, with far more surprises than a tin of Quality Street. Thank you, Santa!