A Boy Named Cash

A Boy Named Cash

Henrietta’s at The Henry Austin, Mon 20 Feb

Johnny Cash is another music legend whose legacy is being kept alive by a generation who weren’t born when his songs were played on the radio. In A Boy Named Cash Monty Cotton does a fantastic job of bringing Cash’s music to a modern audience. He has the deep resonant vocal tone that was Cash’s trademark, and I suspect he may be a far more accomplished musician than Johnny Cash was.

This show is slick and pacey. Cotton rips through all the expected hits with a virtuosic ease. From Folsom Prison Blues to Ring of Fire and everything in between he plays everything Cash fans from the past might want to hear. And truth is he plays them all better than Johnny Cash ever did. With a deft touch on guitar and an array of loops and pedals he turns every song into a showcase of his exceptional ability and in the process elevates every song to a new high.

I doubt that Johnny Cash was funny on stage, but Cotton sure is. Goading the audience to participate at frequent intervals he gets everyone singing along and laughing at themselves in good natured fashion. Not only is this show great to listen to but, and perhaps in contrast to the serious persona Cash cultivated, there are plenty of laughs. A segment where he asks the audience to nominate songs for ‘a Cash conversion’ is very clever and really funny.

Cotton has taken the legend and the music and made it his own. His singing is great but if it lacks anything it’s that gravel edge that characterised Cash’s vocals – probably a consequence of hard living and a lot of drugs and alcohol – and Cotton might be better off without it!

A Boy Named Cash is almost the complete package. The hour flew by in the hands of a very talented musician/performer, and should guarantee that Cash’s music will last a good while longer yet.

(This review also published on The Clothesline.)

A Blot on Our Cultural Landscape

Bucks (or A Bag of D*cks)

Mainstage in Bakehouse Theatre, Mon 27 Feb

The scariest thing about Bucks (or A Bag of D*cks) is it’s very close to the truth. Anyone who has spent time in male dominated sporting environments for example, may well recognise many of the behaviours in this menacing show. The uncontrolled substance abuse, the bullying, the fake bravado, the repressed gay character, and the reluctance to genuinely confront issues with honest conversation is a sad reflection on Australian male culture that one hopes is becoming less prevalent.

The bucks party though is still alive and well, and in this instance involves subjecting the buck to a range of demeaning behaviours in some weird twis­­ted idea of being a good mate, being a good sport, being willing to have a laugh where in fact it is a degrading exercise in ritual bullying.

The 5 male cast members run amok in Bucks, and create a sense of mayhem and chaos with high energy drug fuelled dysfunction. Old scars resurface from unresolved differences and disagreements are met with denial or attacks on the accuser with little regard to the truth of a matter. It’s all about being tough, and it’s a toughness born of fear – fear of being vulnerable, or looking weak or sensitive. A fear of honestly confronting reality and dealing with opposing views in a rational way.

Bucks (or A Bag of D*icks) is a great combined performance as they generate a sense of palpable fear. There is a sense of relief as things come to a close even though everything is still unresolved. You can imagine the characters meeting again months later and having a laugh about ‘that crazy bucks party’ while still not confronting the issues of fear, repressed sexuality, and the bullying it revealed.

This show should be shown in schools across the nation for boys to examine and question what is going on and why, and for girls to get a glimpse of just how ugly and threatening the macho world of the Australian male can be.

Not all Australian men are like this of course, but these types do exist. Hiding behind notions of mateship and with misguided ideas of what it means to be a man, they’re a blot on our cultural landscape.

(This review also published on The Clothesline.)