The Harbinger's New Clothes

A lanky shape shifter somehow conjures a moustache on his face before turning into David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. A mysterious (pronounced: just plain confusing) man in a cliché Bela Lugosi cape is paralysed (or maybe not) by a photograph that may (or may not) depict a stranger’s father. And a young girl may (or may not) have been attacked by a vampire.
Confused yet?
Welcome to Brink Productions’ Harbinger.

Let me back track.
A few weeks ago, my partner and I, went to see a performance of Harbinger. I have no real qualms with the performance of the actors or the minimalistic stage. As for what the performance was actually about, I’m still trying to decipher. Not only is the blurb on the Harbinger flyer vague and downright confusing, the “boy meets girl, girl eats boy” tagline is somewhat misleading. In fact, the first paragraph pretty much sums up what unfolds on stage. No, really.
By the end of the performance, I was left utterly baffled. An old drama friend I had studied theatre with for years, who also happens to be some sort of physicist, also couldn't decipher what just happened, shuffling along the seats to ask me if any of it made sense to me. My partner, who is involved in the arts and is usually quite philosophical when it comes to meanings and metaphors, seemed just as confused as I was.
Even after staying to listen to the subsequent Q&A session in the hopes of being enlightened, I'm pretty sure the only conclusion we could discern from the director's and performers' vague feedback was that Harbinger is about as confusing as being punched in the face by a giraffe. It was during this discussion between the cast and the audience that we learnt that Harbinger was actually a quick ‘we need a play’ commission piece written over just a few months, with no established theme, topic or message at the time of its creation.
And it certainly shows.

Running into my old Drama teacher and his wife, I asked him what his take was. Being the kind of guy who usually goes into theatre in great detail, I began to suspect the play itself was severe bollocks when my former teacher merely quoted the director's cryptic regurgitation that “a good performance is one that leaves you with more questions than answers.”
Well, pardon me for calling: “Bullshit.”
The Goat or Who is Sylvia leaves you with questions. The movie Inception leaves you with questions. Even Oprah’s Bookclub leaves you with questions.
Harbinger only leaves you with one: “What the fuck just happened?”
The absurdist play Waiting for Godot prompts many interpretations. The Bald Soprano mocks the concepts of language. Harbinger is just so random and void of any discernible metaphor, point or plot that I seriously doubt that the piece, with all of its inconsistencies and slap-dash excuse for a storyline, has any real meaning at all. In my opinion, Harbinger is nothing more than a failed, try-hard attempt at sounding 'deep'.
What really concerns me is that every article I have read and most of the audience feedback I have heard online has praised the piece as some sort of dazzling and enriching masterpiece with some hidden meaning to live itself - although, ironically, no one actually mentions what the play is actually about.
Either there’s something seriously wrong with me and my intelligence is severely impaired, or everyone else is just trying to appear sophisticated and open-minded by playing along and ignoring the fact that the Emperor's walking down the street naked.
Seriously, explain to me the big mystical metaphors and meanings buried deep into the dialogue. Really, I’m genuinely curious. Better yet, admit this play has no meaning at all and the script was just some trash written early one morning between the hours of 2am and 5am between sips of Mount Gay rum and reruns of The Vampire Diaries. But don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining, don’t tell me the Emperor is wearing pants that I'm too stupid to see and don’t give me some completely vague response about how fantastic Harbinger is to appear refined and coincide with everyone else’s view if you can’t back up the claim with some explanation or personal opinion.

Maybe I’m not cultured. Maybe I’m not particularly deep or profound or philosophical. Still, I’m not ashamed to play the part of the child from the tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes, turn to the guy next to me and ask: “Hey, why isn’t Harbinger wearing any pants?”

Giant Douche, Anyone?

So, I’m not the biggest politics junkie out there – I don’t blog about asylum seekers, I don’t plaster other people’s Facebook walls with campaigning jargon on which party they should vote for and I’m pretty sure I was sleeping when Kevin Rudd kissed arse again said “sorry”. But it’s been over a week since we cast our votes for the federal election and I’m still left with the question: So, does anyone know who’s actually running the country yet?

In my opinion, when it comes to democracy, most Australian elections are full of bollocks. But never before has South Park’s “douche & turd” analogy been more fitting than this year’s choice between Gillard and Abbott. Because seriously, who else had this image going through their mind when they stepped up to that little booth to vote?

Ok, so we know they're both puppets, but election buzz phrases like aside - if I hear the phrase "moving forward" one more time, I think I'll puke - , did either Gillard or Abbott actually put forward a single policy worth mentioning? Did either major party confront any big issues to sway our love? Come on, we're Australians, it's not like it's all that hard to swing our vote.

From what I can tell from my short-lived experience with politics, Australian politics runs a little like this:
One party steps up and says, “You don’t like us and we don’t like you. We’re not going to give you as many hand outs or kiss as much arse. What we are going to do is leash up your economy so that by the time you forget why you voted us into power, this country will at least have enough cash horded up to somewhat compensate for our replacement’s excessive spending and debt.”
Years pass, enough rednecks complain about not having enough fun or getting enough of a bonus in their welfare check for that new fully-sick 50 inch plasma, and the opposition party steps up. The opposition claims to be the voice of Australia – that is, if the majority of Australians were hooked on Centrelink handouts. They promise hand outs and one hell of a good time, something that those tight-arses in power would never let you have. Forgetting that no hand out is free and suck ups in power is usually a bad idea, people start to dig this party’s hollow policies of extra red pencils for primary school students while university students get less support than dole bludgers. Out with the old party, in with the new. Dollars from the country’s kitty get thrown into the air or set on fire to light cigars with, a big slap in the face for anyone who actually pays taxes.
Years pass and, like inexperienced teenagers praying to the porcelain god at 4am after a 3 week drinking binge, the public begin to realise there’s a reason why daddy won’t let us drink vodka at lunch time. Sure, it was fun, but now all you’re left with is $35.50 in your savings account and a fake number on a napkin from that girl you met who lied and said she’d love to catch up again sometime for coffee.
Election time rolls around again and the not-so-fun party we kicked out is smelling like roses now as they tower above you in their tailored suits, sour-faced and arms-crossed with that scowl that says: “And what time do you call this, young man?” They offer us a proposition. Nothing fun, nothing fancy, just that they might clean the vomit off your chin and hold on to your cash for as long as they can until you forget just why they’re there. We nod, just a little too hung over to care, and make our mark on that voting ballot in the hopes for some aspirin as soon as we can stumble out of the booth.

So as for this year's election, I don't think I particularly care whether the giant douche or the turd sandwich got in. It'd just be nice to know without hearing jokes about the parliament being hung by equestrian properitons.

As for me? I voted the Australian Sex Party. I liked their policies before, but after seeing this clip, the stupidity of the Family First Party sealed my vote. Thanks Wendy!