Review: The Placeholder at fortyfivedownstairs

Review by Greg Gorton

The Placeholder is a piece of quintessentially Australian theatre that will have at least one moment leaving you impacted by it. For most audience members, there will be resonating scenes, some which may have you feeling a little uncomfortable. This is a play with important things to say, and comes closer to presenting truly humane discussions in modern queer discourse than any other piece of theatre I’ve seen.

The Placeholder is set in Rural Australia, in a kitchen/dining room any middle-class kid from the country will recognise immediately. It’s a powerful setting, being a place traditionally seen as communal, but also often ruled (as in this play) by a kindly matriarch. The set design here is perfect, from the booze on the highest shelf to the working kitchen faucet (it made one audience member’s night). Everything in the room, from a partially-worked on quilting project to the paraphernalia magneted to the fridge, is essential to making this world one lived in specifically by these characters. Tim Bosner’s lighting design here is especially impressive, giving the impression of that unflattering domestic lighting while doing a superb job in giving the actors what they need to bring their characters to life.

The story, written by Ben MacEllen, revolves around five women who meet once a month to continue working on a charity endeavour. While some are related, some work together, and some are friends, they are all connected by the person in the empty chair, Barb, who recently passed away after a fight against breast cancer. It’s here the story takes place, in a meeting not too far after the funeral, on the eve of the marriage plebiscite, where one of the women has an announcement to make: they are a transgender man.

The strength of this play comes from finding the right characters, the right pot, and just letting it cook. MacEllen has found some great characters to play with, including the out-and-proud lesbian, the conservative but promiscuous cis-het kinder teacher, and the butch lesbian footballer who is coming to terms with the fact that they are not a lesbian, they are a man. There are some amazing conversations to be had simply by letting these characters speak, and the moments in this play where this happens are breathtaking. Obviously such a task requires highly skilled actors, which this show has in spades. I do, however, have to explicitly name Rebecca Bower as Keira and Brigid Gallacher as Jo - their scenes together spark and fizzle and sing, and it is akin to watching a beautiful train crash to the sounds of Tchaikovsky.

If these are the strengths of the play, then, the weaknesses can be evident to the point that I was surprised they were not avoided. To extend the cooking metaphor, there were simply too many added spices (be they sudden and inexplicable story-lines or new characters that added little), and the entire meal was cooked too long. In fact, until the final five minutes of the first act, I was thinking this was the perfect show. I was on the edge of my seat wondering what the resolution would be. Was it creative entropy, the second act a result of writing that wasn’t sure where to go? Or was it simply that I had too much to pay attention to and missed important aspects in the beginning? As the second act continued, I no longer had a firm hold on who the characters were, why they were saying what they were saying, and even if the basic plot made sense chronologically. There were still powerful debates to be had about important issues like deadnaming, gender-image, and relationships with transitioning people, but they now felt only like debates. To take the metaphor too far, I no longer tasted any ingredients, only something bland and overcooked. 

Despite what damage I feel the second-half of the play does to the first, I must still recommend this show. While it is not perfect in doing so, it makes a sincere effort to understand where personal bigotries can come from, to help the audience understand the struggle faced by transgender people trying to communicate who they are, and to simply entertain us with a story about very real people facing a very real issue the best way they know how.

It’s rare you see naturalistic theatre like this at Midsumma and I’m all for it. For someone who wants to support great transgender creatives but feels a little uncomfortable away from “traditional theatre”, this is the perfect show for you.

Image Supplied