Not Now, Not Ever:
A Parliament of Women
Margaret Thanos’ hilarious, insane, provocative, insane rendition of Aristophanes’ ancient Greek comedy The Assemblywoman is a glitzed out, genderbent marvel performed by, funnily enough, glitzed out, genderbent marvels. Not Now, Not Ever: A Parliament of Women achieves an incredible feat, walking a tightrope between absurd, raunchy humour and remarkably insightful critiques of Australia’s occasionally wobbly parliament (to put it delicately). You will spend 90% of this show’s runtime doubled over in laughter, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a show with something to say. Some considerable liberties have been taken with the Greek playwright’s original work, but the core of the two plays are the same: a hilarious, unapologetically sexual, over the top satirisation of democracy’s greatest pitfalls and blunders.
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It’s a show that is so delightfully glamorous despite (or perhaps due to) the set and almost all the props being made exclusively out of cardboard and held together with duct-tape. Athena, played by the incredible Richard Hilliar, matches her glittering dress and diamond earrings with a sparkling beard and bright red lipstick. Her ambitions, pit her against her father, a sleazy, macho Zeus, who brought the house down thanks to the incredible comedic work of Rachael Colquhoun-Fairweather. Knocked back and forth between these ruthless schemers in Olympus like a socially anxious ball in a hellish pinball machine is Hermes, the messenger god, played with remarkable sympathy and humanity by Clay Crighton.
While the play might feature the lofty schemes of the gods and their bids for power, it’s true focus is on a single eager, idealistic, gold-hearted manure merchant named Prax. One of the few character holdovers from the original play, Prax is made to look like a man (sporting a sensational mullet and facial hair) as a way of boosting her odds in getting voted into parliament as Prime Minister.
This is a stroke of genius on Thanos’ behalf. Aristophanes’ protagonist dressed as a woman as part of the play’s farcical story showing the flaws of Ancient Greek democracy, and now, we have Thanos’ Prax reversing that gender-swap, but for the exact same effect, pointing flaws in our democracy, showing that the notion of an elected female prime minister sitting in parliament is so distant, the only way she even has a chance is if she becomes a man.
Prax herself, played by Emma O’Sullivan, manifests the incredible tonal balancing act of the show. O’Sullivan channels nothing but pure, raw emotion, utterly compelling beyond fault, as she reels with the stress of the election season or comes to grips with the nature of her role in the machinations of Olympus. She is this show’s heart, steadily pumping beneath its bedazzled exterior. Beyond the awe inspiring and grandiose designs of Zeus, Athena, and Hermes, what Not Now, Not Ever is really about a checker-shirt wearing manure farmer who thinks that our country could be doing so much more for so many more.
Every actor in this show has their standout moments, from Matt Abotomey’s hilarious performance as Prax’s dimwitted Husband, or Idam Sondhi, who plays Prax’s Yiayia with an incredible mix of absurdity or authenticity. Ava Madon creates an entirely different dimension in the play’s story with her fantastic improv and audience interaction scenes as she plays Prax’s prophetic Aunty, and a cynical, cigarette touting Dionysus ties together the cast of the gods thanks to Hannah Raven’s incredible, dry-humour fuelled take on the god of festivity.
But I couldn’t finish off this review without also mentioning Lib Campbell, who plays a talking goat named Gora. It’s sublime. It’s terrifying. It’s insane in the best way possible.
Everything about this show is sustained on raw emotion. It bleeds out of every single cardboard-forged setpiece, it vibrates off every line from every actor. Not Now, Not Ever has something it needs to say, and it’s going to say it with as much glitter, as much grandeur, and as much pageantry as its all-too-slim 105 minute runtime will allow. Parts of this show will stick with me for the rest of my days, and while a good deal of them will involve the utterly stunning twice-gender-bent Athena, or the immense gender envy Crighton’s non-binary Hermes put in me, most of what I’ll remember about this show comes from its message about the failures of our current democracy.
It’s an incredibly pertinent, wonderfully constructed ode to the ways we can be making this country better, delivered directly into our hands, straight from the messenger god themself.
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Now Now, Not Ever: A Parliament of Women runs with 25A Belvoir St Theatre on the 31st of March! Book tickets here.
