Concrete Playground

Page 8 is an autobiographical one-man show about growing up black and gay in 1970’s Australian suburbia. It could, potentially, be awful when you think about it. The "Growing-Up-Gay One-Man Show" is one of the most painful theatrical genres ever created. Up there with French-Canadian puppetry.

Luckily for us, this one-man show comes from David Page, one of the driving forces behind acclaimed indigenous dance company Bangarra and the eighth of twelve siblings. David's younger brother Stephen Page directed the show and it seems like the Pages want you to view their family as a sort of Koori Jackson 5. But they’re more like a dirt poor Royal Tenenbaums. Troubled, close-knit and all incredibly gifted. In other words, there are no LaToyas.

This is a great show, produced with a lot of restraint. David Page's performance is stripped back and unpretentious. He has a great amount of natural warmth and ease on stage. The set design is similarly simple and elegant.

A lot of the clichés we’ve come to expect from the genre are still there. Old home movies, costume changes to switch between kooky characters and camp nostalgia (Hey guys, remember Countdown? Remember bellbottoms?) But you forgive all of it, because this is such a touching story and so well told.

The Pages have wisely chosen to omit their international successes and instead focus on the early years of David's life. His dad's alcoholism, how he sacrificed a musical career to care for his sick grandparents, got up at 4 in the morning to lay concrete while doing drag shows at night and generally carried himself through a tough upbringing with an incredible amount of self-sacrifice and dignity.

At one point he leaps on top of the kitchen table to do an imitation of Michael Jackson's dance sequence from Billy Jean. Then, when the bassline kicks in, he seamlessly moves into a Corroboree. A moment later he drops the whole thing and continues on to another thought. It’s not just good, it’s virtuosic.