How much would you be willing to sacrifice for the greater good? Would you forsake your principles? Your mental health? For overworked, underpaid publicity managers Peta (Isobel Ferguson) and Nick (Lisa Davidson), desperately trying to keep their party member in power and eke out a tiny victory for the little guy, no cost is too great.

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Image by Grant Leslie 

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At the core of Cassandra-Ellie Yiannacou’s The 13th Month is the story of these two tired friends, pushing against our tired country, inevitably drawn into the whims of the billionaires who run it. It’s also a story of a rather ingenious plan to add a 13th month to the year. No, that’s not sarcasm. They make a pretty damn compelling case in this show, the cynical Nick’s one glimmer of positivity remaining in how she talks with sparkling, optimistic prose about how much more efficient it would be to evenly sort out 52 weeks into 13 months instead of 12.

 

I think that the play’s concept, hilarious and absurd while also surprisingly grounded and mired far more in reality than you’d like, is reflected in just about every other aspect of the show. Director Madeleine Diggins is absolutely not afraid to have a hilarious scene (of which there are countless) collide right into a sombre realisation of just how far gone Australia’s news or politics has become.

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The billionaires in the show are machiavellian and sinister, each with a chokehold on their respective industries, cutthroat and unflinching in their ambitions. But they’re also prone to breaking out into dance to explain corporate sabotage, switching from egregious to gormless at the drop of a hat as they slink back into a more parodical form of their billionaire archetype.

 

Lotte Beckett is “Two”, a sleazy real estate mogul and “#Ally” stuck with a napoleon complex. Beckett does more than just kill it. She knocks it out of the park (if you’ll pardon my mixing metaphors). Her every line drips with either contempt, or sleaze, or both, and she’s not even the first person I’ve seen this year to be a woman playing a violently horny man whose open shirt is bursting with chest hair! (Thanks, Not Now, Not Ever!)

 

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Images by Grant Leslie

 

Anna Clarke, as the only female billionaire among the cabal, radiates that potent, hokey aussie mum energy, saying goodbye with “hoo-roo!” and awkwardly breaking out the jazz hands during the many insane bouts of dancing in the show.

 

Ashyr Mason-Kaine as “ten” takes the cake as the most frightening of the three, easily sliding into this very human, very grounded persona of the tech-billionaire in a hoodie. She brings her role to life, a ‘new-money’ force of change and madness against the two ageing elder oligarchs, whose fortunes combined don’t hold a candle to his.

 

This show is insanely quotable. Insanely funny. And at moments, just insane. Ferguson and Davidson shine with the chemistry unique to a pair of tired friends in a job they hate, with their quip-a-minute back and forth constantly keeping the show on pace. Even when a line was missed or a bit was fudged, there wasn’t a single time they couldn’t bring the show back on track and earn a laugh while doing it too.

 

Shows like this are a reminder for why I’m an absolute fiend for Australian absurdism, and indie theatre to boot. A fantastic, poignant, hilarious show.