Review - All of My Friends Were There

All Of My Friends Were There

Presented by the Guerilla Museum

In association with Theatre Works and Melbourne Festival

The Guerrilla Museum:  Annie Bourke – Producer, John Byrne – Venue Production, Manager and Lighting Designer, D.A. Calf – Technical Production Manager and Sound Designer, Bryanna Lowen and Sarah Hall – Set and Costume Design, Sean Healy – Video Design, Lloyd Marsden – Video Programming

This is a really fun and joyful evening of participatory entertainment.

Pretty much what happens at Birthday Parties transpires at a completely co-opted Theatre Works for the next few evenings.  So bursting to the seams with party preparation and performance spaces - is Theatre Works - that a Porter Loo needed to the flown in!

I took and old friend and had a really great time.  We went with the flow, had silly photos taken, put on make up in a 1960’s malaise, generally relaxed, had a laugh, and went out of our way to cooperate with a large performance audience to celebrate the birthday (not even on the right date) of someone most of us just didn’t know.  And dance – we drank bubbly and danced like we haven’t in a long time.

The audience is all mixed up in designated groupings and some go off to Luna Park and undoubtedly have great fun and some stay and play amusing games like Musical Chairs and Pass the Parcel, a secretly organized group work on a speech, others make lolly bags and there is the opportunity to make Fairy Bread and discuss its cultural significance with Maude Davy as well as do a bit of shared cake decorating.

Some get treated to an awfully raunchy “Girl’s Party” – and blimey does that go off.  Three lovely nubile young women strut their stuff and get most of their audience moving in sync to The Time Warp.

Most instructions are issued non-verbally – which definitely cuts down on unnecessary time wasting and requires everybody to communicate in a more expressive, than usual, way.

You can stand back and be a voyeur or innocent bystander and/or chat to people you have never met before.  But hey our guides, and performers and the band offer engagement in such a light encouraging way it just seems fun to express exhilarating exuberance for the imaginary love of the surprise birthday person. 

A unique and memorable celebration of life!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)