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Written by Anita Heiss. Sydney Festival. Belvoir St Theatre. 12-28 Jan, 2024.

When Anita Heiss’ Tiddas is funny, it’s damn funny, and when it’s didactic, it’s like having wikipedia recited to you. The two tones struggle to co-exist in Heiss’ stage adaptation of her 2014 novel about five friends whose book club becomes a meeting place for ideas, angst and more over the years of their friendship.

The VIXENs (an acronym for Veronica, Izzy, Xanthe, Ellen and Nadine) are a book club of five friends, all with a connection to Wiradyuri country. They are a tight unit of female friendship, lovingly teasing and supporting each other. At least, they usually are. But tensions have started to creep into the group. Nadine is an author herself, who is starting to wonder why her books are never discussed in the book club. Meanwhile one of the group has unexpectedly fallen pregnant threatening her ambition to be “Australia’s Oprah”, and another is struggling to conceive. Is a love of books (and wine) enough to keep them all together?

Perry Mooney is excellent as Ellen, the youngest of the group, unapologetic about her sexual freedoms and place as a young Aboriginal woman. Roxanne McDonald is wonderfully refreshing playing both mum and grandmother with a cheeky spring to her step. Sean Dow creates a series of memorable moments playing every male character in the story. But other performances felt one-note and threatened to tip into melodrama. Unfortunately Louise Brehmer missed opening night due to illness (Co-director Nadine McDonald-Dowd bravely stepped in as Nadine on short notice and acquitted herself admirably).

Zoe Rouse’s set and costumes are stunning (I’m a sucker for a wall of bookshelves), giving each woman a colour palette of their own. Similarly lights by Jason Glenwright and sounds by Wil Hughes, produce depth and variety when it’s most needed. 

The collision of comedy and issues in Tiddas can be rather hit and miss. When it blends well, it elevates with gags that have a bite (like a sequence where the ladies break down the various terms ‘indigenous’, ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘BIPOC’), but when the exposition gets more technical it strains the ears and loses the rhythm of the play. Good intentions don’t smooth over awkward dialogue. 

But as I said at the beginning, when Tiddas makes you laugh – you really laugh. There is an authenticity to the observations that feels fresh and audacious. It offers glimpses into the world of contemporary Aboriginal women and is happy to laugh at and with their foibles. It’s in its admirable desire to educate the audience that it gets bogged down. 

Written by Feidlim Cannon, Gary Keegan and Adrienne Truscott. Sydney Festival. Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre. 12-16 Jan, 2024.

Brokentalkers (with comic Adrienne Truscott) show Masterclass slowly skins its topic, layer by layer, till it revels in its startling conclusion. Feeling the energy in the theatre shift from gleeful laughter to uncomfortable tittering to bewildered joy and finally buzzing chatter is simply delicious. This is a brilliant example of how theatrical forms can be used to enlighten and subvert. Yes, it’s a two hander about sexism in the arts, but that description barely scratches the surface.

It’s almost hard to believe the play only runs 60 minutes considering the ground it covers and how much it evolves. Starting off as an absurd and hilarious TV interview with a feted, misogynistic playwright (half the fun is imagining who they may have based him on), the story dances around gender issues like a boxer circling their opponent, throwing jabs at opportune moments, coming back round on itself again and again. Slowly but surely it starts to challenge the platitudes and accepted truths we, the middle-class, liberal, art-loving audience think we know and leads us to a very different place.

We know, for all the positive messaging, there is a deep-rooted problem with gender equality in the arts. The 2022 report Culture and the Gender Pay Gap for Australian Artists found that female artists were paid 25% less than men (a greater differential than the rest of the economy). Research released in 2023 by the University of Melbourne concluded “Despite its otherwise progressive reputation, the arts and cultural sector remains a problematic industry when it comes to the relationship between labour and gender.” These results are echoed around the world.

[Warning: Mild spoilers ahead] 

From here, Masterclass starts to twist the knife. After skewering the stereotypical machismo of toxic male creatives the story takes an intriguing left turn that reveals its true motives. Striping back all its artifice and presenting a harsh, raw truth. It dresses down the practice of theatre making with a sharp critique of access. I’ll be honest, the gear change isn’t the smoothest, but considering the gold it delivers, it’s worth going along with.

There is a thrill in watching Masterclass start saying the unspoken bit out loud and discuss the logical, uncomfortable interpretation it reaches. It pushes the polite artifice of “the theatre” aside to interrogate our true thoughts on equality. Even when the actors have reached their stinging conclusion, they refuse to end on a mic-drop. Instead the piece continues to push and prod at each sliver of hypocrisy. It will divide the crowd into those who find its boldness cathartic, and those who think it is simply absurd.

To its detriment, Masterclass slips into the trap those of us on the Left always seem to fall into – attacking our allies and judging “good” people for not being “good enough” (to be fair, it’s not only the Left, I’ve seen hundreds of faith-based organisations shoot their own wounded rather than try to heal them etc). There are moments of self-righteousness as the play contrives to lampoon the “nice guy fallacy” but the creators seem to recognise this within themselves and acknowledge, in the final moments, that things may not be as clear cut as they present. Ultimately, we all act in our own self interest.

Whether you agree or disagree with the storyteller’s verdict is not really the point, the play forces you examine your intentions and your own ethical foundations. Wickedly funny (with some nice localised moments for the Sydney audience), this is the kind of show that has the audience discussing big topics all the way home.