Review: Blaque Showgirls, Malthouse Theatre

Blaque Showgirls is a merciless interrogation of Australian racism in the form of a stage parody of dance movies, including, of course, Showgirls (1995). Written by Nakkiah Lui, the acclaimed Aboriginal activist and playwright who recently worked on the ABC’s Black Comedy, it’s a play that mocks and borrows from film and tv in equal measure. Eugyeene Teh’s set design even resembles a television set as well as a theatre within a theatre, something that director Sarah Giles takes full advantage of. Voiceover abounds instead of theatrical asides. Jed Palmer’s musical score provides the cheese while the cast brings the delicious ham. Humorous captions race above the actors’ heads, and are easy to miss unless you’re paying close attention. Naturally, it ticks of all the obligatory dance movie scenes, albeit with more than a slight twist: a “montage of moderate success”; the arrival-in-the-big-city scene; the audition poster that blows into our protagonist’s face at just the right moment (here the wind is a stagehand carrying a pole); the jealous antagonist dancer throwing a tantrum at her dressing room mirror just before she hatches her third-act scheme.

Lui’s story follows the blundering young Ginny Jones (Bessie Holland) an orphan from the town of Chitole (pronounced shi-toll). She dreams of moving to Brisvegas and joining the Blaque Showgirls. She might not be black, but she refuses to let that stop her, no matter how much people mock her for it. Apparently her mother was the best Aboriginal dancer in the country. She is adamant that she can remember looking up at her brown face when she was a baby, just before she was accidentally killed during smoking ceremony that apparently gave Ginny brain damage. In any case, the local Indigenous community are happy to see her go. One elder in particular, her would-be mentor figure (Elaine Crombie) is fed up with her thoughtless lack of cultural sensitivity and is happy to let Brisvegas knock some sense into her. It doesn’t.

The moment she steps in to audition, she is brushed aside by the indomitable star of the show, Chandon Connors (Crombie again) and her arrogant but airheaded manager, cheekily named Kyle MacLachlan (Guy Simon). This is when the sprightly Molly (Emi Canavan) comes to her aid. She is the Japanese hostess of a club called the Kum Den, and, just like the Blaque Showgirls, she has had to make a living off selling her culture to white people, most of whom assume she’s Chinese and refuse to be corrected on it. She offers to help Ginny if she will later help her.

All Ginny needs now are some culturally appropriative dreadlocks and an Aboriginal dance teacher. She finds one named True Love Interest (Simon again!) with crudely painted-on abs. Of course, all of their scenes together are built from the worst “dramatic” dialogue ever written for the screen.

This part of the satire is probably the most fun to laugh at, since it makes everyone in the audience feel smart and sophisticated. Ginny is just generally good for a laugh right from the beginning, although, for the white members of the audience, the amusement turns to more of a self-reflective cringe once you realise who she really is. She’s not just clueless, she really is selfish and wilfully ignorant. As much as she might seem like one, she’s hardly an underdog, given that all the real power over the Blaque Showgirls is held by the unseen, ghostly white board of directors.

Surprisingly, even True Love Interest has more substance than she does, and unsurprisingly, the formidable Chandon turns out to be much more than just a self-obsessed diva. As the most powerful Aboriginal woman in Brisvegas, poised to rise up through the ranks of the company just before Ginny showed up, she is actually the closest thing we have to a hero here.

However, in writing this sly revelation of our racism past and present, there is one trap that Lui very nearly falls into: she does make more than a few jokes at the expense of Ginny’s supposed brain damage and speech difficulties, enough for the audience to start linking it to her social ignorance. Of course, fighting racism with ableism basically defeats the purpose, though fortunately she doesn’t dwell on it too much. Also, towards the end of the play there is a priceless gag attacking wheelchair inaccessibility that is rather redeeming.

The lasting feel left by Blaque Showgirls is one of utter frustration with the way things have been, still are and probably will continue to be for a while. It’s a hard-bitten, feel-good and then feel-bad comedy that tricks you into caring.

Written by Christian Tsoutsouvas.

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