Mildly Offensive and Mostly True

On Saturday I attended the final performance of "Deeply Offensive & Utterly Untrue", a play based on the transcript of the inquiry into AWB at the CarriageWorks in Sydney. The play was okay and the venue is worth a visit anyway.

The pay consists of selected excerpts from the inquiry into payments to the Iraqi government by the Australian company AWB and the complicity, if any by Australian politicians and bureaucrats. While transcripts were used, there were selective and the playwright clearly was not happy with the outcome of the inquiry, which cleared the politicians, criticized the bureaucrats a little and the company people more.

A combination of acting acrobatics and multimedia are used on a large, mostly bare stage. There were two large screens dominating the room which showed documentary material to link the live material. TV displays showed an actor located out in the foyer at the bar playing the part of a slightly confused minister for foreign affairs (the best part of the performance).

There was a little too much of theater sports type improvisation for my liking. I would have preferred if the action had been grounded in a set designed like the courtroom like hearing room. (which was equipped with video screens and looked a lit like a set).

Some of the content was inexplicable, such as a cage with a mouse trap and an apparently real mouse (zoomed in on screen via a camera).

The action in the foyer of the CarriageWorks was more entertaining than the play. There were WiFi equipped people acting as characters in a video game being remotely controlled by players at flat screen displays, a performance of some sort of sculpture and a hole in the floor through which people kept appearing.