Image: Elaine Crombie; Photo credit: Pia Johnson.
Writer Nakkiah Lui has taken the 1995 film Showgirls as her inspiration for Blaque Showgirls.
Lui adapts the story of a small town girl who moves to the big city to become a dancer, and runs it through the lens of contemporary Australia and its complicated racial politics.
The resulting play is hilarious, cleverly discomfiting, and subversive.
Blaque Showgirls creates a new tone for the discussion of white privilege and Aboriginal culture and identity. You’ll laugh, and then you’ll cringe.
The central character is Ginny Jones, played by Bessie Holland. Holland doesn’t miss a step in her role as the inept dancer who moves from Chitole to Bris-Vegas to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a Blaque Showgirl.
The plot revolves around Ginny’s experience as a fair-skinned Indigenous woman whose cultural ‘authenticity’ is continually questioned. This is the central provocation of Blaque Showgirls.
As Nakkiah Lui said, ‘I wanted to create a play that was entirely disingenuous. As a young Aboriginal woman, a lot of the criticism that I receive from outside my community is questioning authenticity. This idea of what’s an authentic Aboriginal and whats not an authentic Aboriginal. What’s authentic culture and what’s not authentic culture. I think Authenticity becomes this tool to police aboriginal identity.’
You can’t take your eyes off Elaine Crombie, who plays rival Blaque Showgirl Chandon Connors. Draped in fur (or feathers), her sharp delivery really drives home some of the best lines – like, her chastisement that the show will end up with “a whole fucking chorus of Iggy Azaleas”. Co-stars Guy Simon and Emi Canavan also impress.
Blaque Showgirls Interview with Nakkiah Lui from Malthouse Theatre on Vimeo.
Set design worked very well as a simple white square that could be quickly arranged by the cast with the addition of a few props. A clever addition is the subtitles that run above the stage, providing many humourous notes for the audience and also an avenue for some of the homophonous connections that run throughout the script – like the town name, Chitole (pronounced, shit-hole).
The production isn’t long at 85 minutes. But it’s a short, intelligently written and directed work that points the finger at cultural clichés and the complications around identity and race in contemporary Australia.
5 stars out of 5
By Nakkiah Lui
Direction by Sarah Giles
Cast Emi Canavan, Elaine Crombie, Bessie Holland and Guy Simon
Dramaturg Declan Greene
Contributing Dramaturg Louise Gough
Set and Costume Design Eugyeene Teh
Lighting Design Paul Jackson
Composition and Sound Design Jed Palmer
Movement Director Ben Graetz
Malthouse Theatre
11 November – 4 December
