It takes a lot to keep a gloriously body-positive, anarchically queer feminist cabaret queen down. Tragically, a lot, in this instance, is a particularly heinous blast of pneumonia that ripped through the entire cast of outré creative company Fat Fruit. With the illness hitting Sarah Ward hardest, she’s had to temporarily pull out of F Christmas, the dashingly irreverent and indecently undressed seasonal hullaballoo she penned and planned to perform in.
Powerhouse director Susie Dee (Runt) – who co-created the work with musical director Bec Matthews, Ward’s partner in life and stagecraft – announces the bin-able news next to a skip at the edge of the Malthouse’s Merlyn Theatre. Designer Romanie Harper has transformed the space into a slightly skew-whiff Santa’s grotto set ablaze by Monique Aucher’s blood-red lighting. Torn wrapping paper ribbons adorn a gigantic, stage-spanning garland that utterly dwarfs Dee. It takes her a couple of coughs – hopefully not lurgy-related – to grab everyone’s attention, announcing that the magnificent Milo Hartill will step in.
The show must go on, and unfortunate theatrical mishaps have a funny way of working out way more than okay. Despite having less than a week to rehearse, Harthill, the glorious mind behind button-pushing solo show Black, Fat and F**gy, is glitter dust personified in a gold-sequinned dress. She brings an extra spicy tickle to her role as Geraldine, playing on the trope that any generic woman will do to host a dazzlingly white and pretty sexist Australian commercial TV station’s annual Christmas carol concert.
Cheekily effervescent Filipino-Australian performer John Marc Desengano depicts Geraldine’s sassy co-host Andrew, tartly underlining that the pair would be unlikely to get a go on a network show like this. That his sparkly black tuxedo jacket gapes louchely open at the back, held together by hair clips, signals that the mayhem about to unfold will burst all the seams.
I say about to, but in truth, the show begins before we’re seated. The Fat Fruit ensemble works the Malthouse foyer in their dollar shop-inspired attire conjured up by costumers Zoë Rouse, Jo Foley, Jodi Hope and Nathan Burmeister. There’s a cranberry saucy Santa photo op and some romp-a-pom-pom drummer girl joy. Circus star Seth Sladen stands out not just because he’s sporting a skintight red PVC elf on the shelf lewk, but also because he never breaks from a deliberately creepy dead-behind-the-eyes performance that makes him look for all the world like M3GAN’s artificial intelligence doll gone murderously awry.
It’s down to irrepressible Bad Boy star Nicci Wilks to officially start the show, haltingly and hilariously descending from the rafters on a rope tucked around her calf muscles, wearing an enormous blonde fuzzy wig that gets stuck in the garland and almost flies free. She delivers a content warning of sorts – if you’ve come this far, it’s probably too late to run. The salient point is made that punching up may require the privileged to cushion thyself with a sense of humour. And just why is it that rich kids get more presents, she asks?
What follows includes Harthill in a Mrs Claus dress, spinning through a Busby Berkeley-style number, Jess Love drunk-diving into sparkly hula-hoops, circus star and Kamilaroi man Dale Woodbridge-Brown’s baton-twirling and aerial swirling from Sladen, who regularly appears around the edges of F Christmas flopped in a sherry-drunk pose on the oversized toy train set that rings the stage. Wai-Zea Man and choreographer Gabi Barton join a side-splitting Salvation Army spoof set to a seminal Electric Six banger, with dancing funeral celebrant Joh Fairley also in the show’s fruit and nut mix.
As corralled by Dee, set to Matthews’ band and led by Hartill and Desengano, it’s gloriously gay in every meaning of the word, whipping an alternative Christmas message into a creamy anti-capitalism lather. A bedazzlingly blasphemous reenactment of a nativity play punches three very unwise men where it hurts, attracting the biggest laugh of the night. But in amongst all the tinsel-twisted silliness, there are starker moments designed to rip us out of our roaring reverie, like Hartill’s aching elegy for a polar bear rapidly losing its habitat all thanks to our monstrous consumption of this planet’s dwindling resources.
Clothing also rapidly dwindles in this show, so if you’re easily off-put by actual pubic hair, best clutch your pearls at home. This one’s for the ho ho hos.
F Christmas is playing from November 27 to December 15 with tickets ranging from $35 to $69. Get yours here.