Next century, if there is one

January 20, 1993
Issue 

See Ya Next Century
Chrissie Parrot Dance Company and Robyn Archer
Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, until January 23
Phone 699 3444 or festival Ticketek
Reviewed by Anne O'Grady

The performance of this "funny bitter cabaret" is difficult to describe — this is both the show's weakness and its strength. There are both unexpected moments of delight and times when the audience is left hanging, unsure of how — or even whether — to respond.

The separate elements of the cabaret — the dance, music, song, spoken word and design — are all admirable. Archer's professionalism in particular is a notable strength. Yet an element of cohesiveness is somehow missing.

The story line revolves around four cabaret performers who, as they disperse at the end of 1992, promise to come together for a reunion on December 31, 1999. "See ya next century."

We are given the sense that the intervening years pass swiftly, yet this is where the performance tends to drag. Once a reunion of sorts does eventuate, Archer's political sentiment comes through clearly. She eloquently describes capitalism's decaying state and its need of a full-scale war to boost its ailing fortunes.

She is also rather despairing of the "baby boomer generation", which she feels blew it. In fact, she rather scornfully notes, they now make up the audience sitting in comfortable, air-conditioned theatres watching her perform. Hence Archer's frustration with the future and her view that there's not much point attempting to come together again.

It's true that the majority of the audience were of Archer's own generation, but was this sufficient cause for the certain sense of dissatisfaction we were left with? For the rather bleak and slow-moving picture of the future presented?

Archer herself raises the questions and provides her own answers. If it is primarily the baby boomers of the '60s in the heyday of the anti-Vietnam War movement to whom Archer looks for inspiration, then the bleakness is understandable.

But it is not to this generation that the future belongs. The future belongs to the young people of today who are extremely concerned about the future of the planet and the human race. Here is where hope lies and where "See ya next century" is far more than a flippant refrain: it's an urgent plea for action.

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