THEATRE
ASTROMAN ★★★★
By Albert Belz, MTC
Arts Centre Melbourne
Until December 8
This big-hearted coming-of-age story is as cheesy and colourful and easy to love as the decade in which it’s set.
In Astroman, Albert Belz takes us back to the video game parlours of the 1980s with a play that will appeal to teenagers (no mean feat) but also have the generation now entering middle-age brimming with nostalgia for the culture of their youth.
Calen Tassone and Kamil Ellis in Astroman.Credit:MTC
Jiembra Djalu is a 13-year-old boy living in Geelong with his fraternal twin Sonny, snarky sister Natalie and their mum. The twins are chalk and cheese: Sonny’s sporty and a footy star of the future, while Jiembra is a maths whiz who’s clocked most of the games at the local arcade.
The Indigenous family has moved to Geelong from far north Queensland to keep Jiembra out of trouble: he’s on his last life with the law, and when he gets up to his old tricks, his mum makes him work for Mr Pavlis, a local arcade owner who becomes a father figure to him.
It’s a move that uncovers Jiembra’s gift for electronics. He promptly fixes all the broken games in the place, and Mr Pavlis gives him a job before organising a “world video game championship” in his honour.
Unfortunately, his nemesis, the bully Mick Jones, is determined to spoil the party. Pointless destruction leads to the family banding together to help a friend, as Jiembra confronts a difficult decision as he faces a whole new level in the game of life.
Lively and likeable performances, especially from the juvenile leads, make Astroman a lot of fun to watch. Kamil Ellis is effortlessly convincing as an undiscovered teen genius, and you’ll be barracking for him all the way. Calen Tassone as his brother gives a light touch to the rambunctious humour, and both performers channel the luminous vulnerability of adolescence.
Elaine Crombie as the harried mum and Tony Nikolakopoulos as Mr Pavlis are memorable and understatedly funny, while Tahlee Fereday relishes the spiky role of Natalie. Nicholas Denton as the villain is cartoonish and a touch forced – this kind of bogan lampoon doesn’t strike me as his forte – but he does submit to the ridiculous with aplomb in the hilarious group choreography, which includes a spot of amateur break-dancing.
Indeed, every '80s fad and fetish you can think of has made its way into this production. Break-dancing, roller-skates, acid-wash jeans, mullets, the whole disaster. The play might be billed as a love letter to the '80s, but the design really slips the tongue in.
It’s deliriously tacky, and the sheer comic profusion of period references (including a soundtrack that doubles as that most '80s of musical phenomena – the mixtape) will force you to surrender whatever good taste you possess and laugh at the excess of it all.
Sarah Goodes’ direction is solid, getting performances that, for the most part, draw comedy from character as easily as water from a well. The show does have pacing issues in the second half. You won’t mind, though.
Astroman is Australian comedy with such vividness and warmth and poignancy (no surprise that Tony Briggs, of The Sapphires, is associate director on this one), it should appeal to everybody.
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