4.5 STARS – Must See
FRONT, is a rowdy, comical collision of egos that pits friendship against fame through the exploits of fictional band Rough Cut Punt. The rise and fall of the band’s four arrogant, fun loving trash bags plays out in rehearsal rooms of an unspecified Australian city, but its bogan-glamour scene of red cans and rollies, bass and backwards caps could easily be Perth, where writer-director Michael Abercromby began his artistic career as a musician.
The play is a reflective exercise: a story of hard work, sacrifice and ego. ‘Music transcends,’ the band’s vocalist and frontman (Isaac Diamond) muses in one of the play’s opening scenes, before Rough Cut Punt shoots to fame and just as swiftly self destructs over everything but the music: hookups and meltdowns, recognition and royalties, a backstage brawl and an absent erection.
The characters are well developed and glance off one another with a credible kind of charisma. They’re young and dumb and over sure of their own importance – and the fact that all the actors really play their instruments adds to their authenticity. Adam Marks mines sex, drugs and rock and roll stereotypes for his beer-and-cocaine soaked lead guitarist, winning the show’s biggest laughs, while band manager Mikayla Marks’ exasperation with her bawdy charges is utterly believable. Tone deaf (both musically and otherwise) Oscar Harris’ mic – hijacking bass player makes the play’s main antagonist, 
while Mary Soudi caricatures the music executives and TV presenters that orbit the band as well as Rough Cut’s babe-like replacement bassist in impressively quick succession. The single-minded hunt for a following by Diamond’s frontman satirises his earnest opening assertion that “It’s all about the music”, showing Harrison Targett’s starry-eyed young drummer as the only band-member who’s truly in it for the music.
Packed into less than 90 minutes, FRONT is fast and exuberant. Some flashbacks jar with the play’s narrative cohesion, and -perhaps by design- it feels at moments like there’s a little too much happening on stage at once. But the writing’s clever – and the play’s funny. Lit cigarettes, cut-offs, Australian iconography and retro pop gear help manufacture the headiness and romance of the city’s live music scene, and there’s an undercurrent bleakness Harris and Diamond bring to the search for stardom – and its impact on their friendship – that give the play some emotional weight. An affectionate parody of a scene and the ethos and egos that fuel it, FRONT also ends up being a meditation on the uneasy score that often must exist between friendship and fame.
Kim Kirkman – Theatre Now Perth
FRONT is showing at the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia until 26 January 2019.
Tickets can be purchased here.
