Macchiato or Methadone?

It’s been a pretty amazing week with lots of people in town for a work-related conference resulting in a big night out on both Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday night, I took some visiting colleagues from Darwin out to a seminal Sydney experience: dinner at BBQ King.

Had a funny moment the other day when Yvette and I were on a morning walk. Walking past one of the many methadone clinics in Surry Hills, we noticed a large lineup of people waiting for it to open at 7am. Five minutes down the road and we had to lineup outside Cafe Nikki for our morning cup of coffee. Machiatto or methadone? That’s life in Surry Hills.

Last night, Damien and I went to see “Decent Spinster” at the Opera House. We had decided to see “Decent Spinster” based on her short performance at the media launch of “The Studio” at the Sydney Opera House earlier this year. Our memories of a “mad looking woman” performing bird calls and playing the musical saw remain vivid, although this show bears only minor resemblance to what Christine performed then.

The “Decent Spinster” is an old fashioned, perhaps Victorian woman, dressed entirely in grey, with a wild bee-haircut, who communicates in a mostly non-literal sense through bird calls, operatic sounds and the musical saw, relating to what is now mostly outdated technology such as the overhead projector, slide projector and even one of those 1950s “weight loss” vibrating belts.

Through the “Decent Spinster”, we are taught a completely logical new language, where the written word, images, and the spoken word (both literal and implied) collide.

The show is a roller-coaster of humour and emotion, on the cutting edge of contemporary performance, with a “European” feel, but firmly placed in the suburbia of contemporary Australian life.

The timing was perfect… every time.

For me, it was a seminal theatre experience.