What constitutes an authentic voice? Can Indigenous experience be transposed within a country, let alone between countries? And what exactly is a period piece – what relationship should it have with the actual past it’s depicting? These are some of the questions that arise while watching MTC’s penultimate production for the year, Albert Belz’s Astroman. They’re possibly irrelevant, given this is supposed to be a feel-good knockabout slice of nostalgia with its heart in the right place; but the questions linger, niggle at the edges, well after the “Game Over” graphic has faded to black.
It’s 1984, which we know because it flashes across the 22” TV screens that adorn Jonathon Oxlade’s reverential set. We’re also told we are in Geelong, augmented by the kind of facts you’d find from a visiting international comedian or in a junior encyclopaedia: the Barwon River flows through town, Ford is the primary employer and the Cats are the local footy team. Jiembra “Jimmy” Djalu (Kamil Ellis) and his twin brother Sonny (Calen Tassone) have moved here with their mum Michelle (Elaine Crombie) and sister Natalie (Tahlee Fereday) from Townsville. Jimmy is bright but troubled; the bike he shows off in the opening scene, which is stolen by the local bully Mick Jones (Nicholas Denton), turns out to have been stolen by Jimmy in the first place.
The plot revolves around the local video game parlour, the Astrocade. This is owned by the gruff but kind-hearted Greek widower Mr. Pavlis (Tony Nikolakopoulos), and is the scene of Jimmy’s triumphs and near-humiliations. It’s also where one of the play’s climaxes occurs, a gaming competition that predictably comes down to Jimmy and Mick. If the play had ended there, it may have brought to mind those ’80s teen comedies about the triumph of the outsider and the rallying of community spirit that made Breakdance 2: Electric Boogaloo such a classic of the genre. But those films almost invariably had an 90-odd minute running time, and if they ever went longer, they justified themselves. Astroman runs for almost two and a half hours. It’s as if Weird Science mistook itself for Lawrence of Arabia.
More damaging than an overlong running time is the mishandling of the basic mechanics of storytelling. In a tenuous grasp of dramatic structure, Belz introduces not one but two romantic subplots a good two thirds of the way into the telling. Little scenes that establish incidental mood – like an extended moment when Michelle sashays her way around her workplace – happen so late in the play, arresting any tension the plot might be trying to build, that they’re merely irritating (not to mention the excruciating dance routine between Mick and Natalie in the final 20 minutes that completely jumps the shark). The character arcs are so clichéd that the only characters who convince are the ones who don’t have one.
Despite this, the production achieves a certain level of charm and warmth, just enough to nudge it over the line. This is due less to the guileless nostalgia for a lost period displayed by the playwright than the winning performances of the cast. Ellis is terrific as the bright and burgeoning Jimmy, his surface indifference beautifully punctured by empathy and wonder. Tassone is gorgeous as his simpler but equally compassionate brother, and Nikolakopoulos makes the most of the hackneyed “foreign man” trope. The rest of the cast do their best, but it’s hard to garner much enthusiasm for a bunch of people who’ve been drawn by numbers.
Director Sarah Goodes seems lost at sea – she pushes the material into farce when it needs some grounding and doesn’t go far enough when it needs some sass – and it’s intriguing that Indigenous writer and director Tony Briggs has been brought on as an associate director. The program makes a big deal of the fact that he went to Scotch College, which echoes Jimmy’s trajectory. But what exactly does he bring to the authenticity of the work, given that the private school subplot feels entirely tacked on?
Playwright Albert Belz is Māori, born in Whakatane on the north island of New Zealand. According to the program, he lived for a couple of years in Geelong, but certainly not in the ’80s. The day this play opened here in Melbourne, it also premiered in Christchurch, with a Māori cast and with local references presumably shoehorned in. Maybe even the kinds of references you’d find in a New Zealand junior encyclopaedia. There’s something disconcerting about that, as if specific Indigenous experience was ultimately a narrative plaything that could be transferred, comfortably interchangeable. Like its fetishistic approach to ’80s pop culture, this is a play that is barely even skin deep.