Hello, Gaz Rhumbo! | Lightning Bolt Creative & Willem Whitfield

A fascinating play, with a whole lot going on. Hello, Gaz Rhumbo is a bizarre and fun-filled trip into the life, and untimely death, of our title character. The entire affair is reminiscent of a slightly perturbed gameshow, wherein the contestant gets a short recap and then has to fumble his way through a series of zany questions he is woefully unprepared for.

I liked the patchy way that only highlights and seminal moments are picked out, it felt real, because that is what we do really. Discard the chaff in our heads ‘til only the brightest or most brutal memories remain. The demarcations between surreal dreamscape and ‘ordinary’ trip down memory lane were quite blurry at times, with one not quite knowing if the supporting characters are truly three-dimensional, or merely figments of the protagonist’s imagination.

Image + cover image: Stuart Hirth

Writer and performer Willem Whitfield does embody his character fully. He wrote it and clearly had the vision to push the production into life. It’s a solid performance, occasionally mesmerising, occasionally half a beat behind himself. I like to see a creative stretch themselves, and this is a passion project of great ambition, so power to him for pulling off a very complex role in an equally complex production.

There were several moments of nudity, which was not as effective as it might have been, being rather of a gimmick rather than a necessary stylistic tool to move the show along, perhaps in part to the performer’s slight yet obvious shyness. I have a preference myself, if you are going to go all the way, then do it; commit one hundred percent. We are only nervous if you are, so luxuriate in your unadorned self, Gaz. I think with another run or two this stature will grow; it would have been made sense n a way for the entire scene in purgatory to be naked as a ghost, as a lost soul.

Image: Stuart Hirth

There were some marvellous performances from the supporting cast, I was delighted with Trevor Macmillan and Brenton Smith as they assumed many of the extraneous characters in Gaz’s past, and Brittany Taylor Hetherington was smashing as Mother. I loved her mixture of 80s socialite mother that was made occasionally eye-twitching perturbing with a bow-legged stance, and the excellent ‘last phonecall’, done with gusto three times in perfect repetition. Ghoul Shadows’ Father was a pleasing caricature out of some pulp fiction detective novel. Strong performances from both of the love interests, played by Marisa Bucolo and Tenielle Plunkette, although I wondered why Phoebe was written ‘straight’, at least compared to the surreality of the other characters, especially the madness of the Asshole, a frenetic performance played with relish by Virginia Gray.

Image: Stuart Hirth

The show touches on some pretty hardcore themes, and I am as yet unable to decide if I thought they were treated with too much brashness. Dan (Joshua Mclean), a one-time best friend, is perhaps the character that undergoes the most disturbing experience and the biggest transformation. Sexual assault is performed as comedy, yet treated as serious, yet responded to with black humour and deadpan satire… it’s still repeating on me so I guess job well done. Maclean’s performance was strong but the writing or the direction meant that the reveal was not as punchy as it could have been, the kiss that ended the friendship should have been instantly tied to that earlier assault, but, like other elements in the show it was just a little too cloudy to put the pieces together all at once, the connections came slower, on reflection.

I was thoroughly absorbed by the absurdist styling. I loved the foray away from realism and into the weirdness of the deliberately two-dimensional memories of Gaz’s key influences. I felt the whole thing could have been stripped down by a good fifteen minutes, just to run the knife over the fuzzy edges and really tighten the whole ship. But I am a jaded theatre hack, who wants to make every minute over the 55 minute mark really work for its place under the lights.

But this is all just quibbles, cause I did enjoy myself thoroughly, and I suspect much of my nitpicking will be ironed out in a second season, which this show definitely deserves, along with a large stage, a full set of stage lights and effects, and a great big audience to roll with the gags and lunacy. The madness of the purgatory scene with Gaz versus the Asshole deserves a full rainbow of stage lighting.