SOME FILM MUSEUMS I HAVE KNOWN

I so wanted to like this. No, I so wanted to love this. Because I did like it. I liked the dusty DIY set, around which a tiny camera-strapped locomotive shunted, showing us the ghost trains, the popcorn stands, the broken-down remnants of the Barumpool Film Museum, a fictional rural outpost. I liked the delusional, skivvy-wearing host (played by the adorable Nat Randall), her glossy-eyed obsession with Morgan Freeman, her zealous promotion of the museum’s potential to an imagined board of RTA members (aka the audience). It was impossible not to like Nick Coyle as the holographic representation of twin brothers August and Louis Lumiere, the founders of film, unrealistically smitten with Randall and realistically aware of the museum’s fading relevance. Some Film Museums … was a clever, teched-up take on the consequences of our marauding visual culture, with none of RhubarbRhubarb’s (Mad Max Remix, Wonka!) winning cards left unplayed: a charming assumption of shared pop-cultural memories; a nostalgia-laden humour; a willingness to take risks and try something new (Mad Max re-imagined as a tap-dancing Tina Turner acolyte, or the pin-drop precision required of the production in Some Film Museums … both good examples). All added up, there is a lot to like. Too much maybe, and so the heart of the story – witnessing a solitary woman warming herself with cold, celluloid dreams –is strangely empty.  Much like the 2-dimensional characters she is haunted by, the only human onstage ends up lacking depth. Maybe that’s the point.

Until Mar 12, Old Fitzroy Theatre, cnr Cathedral & Dowling Sts, Woolloomooloo, $25-40 (beer, laksa, show), rocksurfers.org