Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Apr 3 – 13, 2024
Creator: Milo Hartill
Cast: Milo Hartill
Images by Abraham de Souza
Theatre review
In her provocatively named Black, Fat and Fa**gy, Milo Hartill reflects on her twenty-three-year-old life, at the intersections of marginalisation that relate to all the identity markers, so vividly described in the title of her one-woman show. The presentation is a statement spawned from radical acceptance and defiant joy, of an individual overcoming obstacles of prejudice, and who has found success as a performer, influencer and model.
Hartill’s writing may not be the most inventive, but her skills and charisma for the stage are undeniable. Collaborator Robin Goldsworthy is credited as “head chef”, on hand to ensure that the star is never to be perceived as anything but delightful and scintillating. Music direction is provided by Lucy O’Brien whose piano accompaniment on songs from Sinatra to CupcakKe, imbues additional spiritedness to an already irrepressible force of nature. Also noteworthy are lights by Isobel Morrissey delivering unexpected atmospheric transformations that help us tune in, to every shifting nuance of what Hartill intends to convey.
Black, Fat and Fa**gy is about the indomitability of an artist who understands intimately and comprehensively, the nature of violence in all its forms. From the perspective of someone who embodies all that is antithetic of hegemonic power, Hartill demonstrates how a person may thrive in spite of forces that intend to be exhaustively annihilating. We are graciously spared having to delve too deeply into her spaces of trauma, but in the witnessing of all her celebratory assertions, it is clear what the darker dimensions of her, and by implication all of our, stories are.
Suzy Goes See 