Australians love to refer to this land as “the lucky country” out of some kind of misplaced belief that we should be grateful for what we have. In that offhanded way, it casts us as enviable in the kind of patriotic way we’d roll our eyes about if anyone from overseas said the same thing about their country.
Most people
don’t know that the phrase comes from the 1964 book by Donald Horne, which uses
the phrase in a disparaging way:
“Australia
is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It
lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable,
most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround
them that they are often taken by surprise.”
Vidya Makan’s
musical, The Lucky Country, first produced at the Hayes Theatre in 2023,
uses it in a satirical way, knowing full well that a country that treats its
First Nations people and recent immigrants so appallingly is only “lucky” for
some.
The song
cycle is a series of vignettes that deconstruct Australian society in a humorous
and sometimes cutting way. A young Aboriginal boy sings about country, while
his classmates only recite European colonial history. A Chinese Australian guy
wants to leave the restaurant his family have run for generations and escape to
be a nudist in Byron Bay. Two Aussie travellers find later-life love in Morocco. An
aspiring actress is ecstatic to be in a new movie with Hugh Jackman, but
struggles with cultural appropriation, even though she’s a brown woman herself.
Two guys wrestle with the hetero-patriarchal norms of watching footy and
drinking beer while trying to confess to their love for each other.
Makan, who
starred in Hamilton and SIX, has crafted something in the same
vein as those two shows – a cultural reckoning with history and the present,
using the vernacular of modern pop and rock music. With nods to Jimmy Barnes,
Kylie Minogue, The Seekers and Baker Boy, amongst others, the show swings from
song to song, modulating through a myriad of tones throughout.
The ensemble cast come together over and over for rousing choruses, though there are standout solo moments for Makan herself, Jeffrey Liu and Gija performer Naarah. Director Sonya Suares, best known for her work on the shows of Stephen Sondheim, crafts a beautifully tight show that has the canniness and flexibility to make the audience roar with laughter one minute and then be silenced in a snap. The final song, where the audience joins in, is unexpectedly moving – a perfect tribute to the very long history of this sunburnt country.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
The Lucky Country is playing at MTC’s Lawler space
until Oct 18
Photos: Jodie Hutchinson
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