The Ten Best Things To See At Midsumma 2015

An annual celebration of queer performance and culture, there was a time Midsumma was one of the only opportunities for the city to quench its addiction to culture over the sleepy summer. Now hemmed in closely with SummerSalt and White Night, Midsumma offers up a heady mix of live performance, public events, talks and parties. This year's program is especially cabaret-heavy, but its eclectic mix of visual art, live music, and cutting-edge performance work keeps Midsumma’s summer festival crown firmly in place.

Midsumma Carnival

As always, the festival kicks off on January 18 with the free, open-air Carnival in Edinburgh Gardens, featuring sets from festival performers such as Abbar and Dolly Diamond. Other highlights include the annual Midsumma Dog Show and James Varnish singing 'Connect', a track taken from his V EP and recently chosen as Midsumma's 2015 anthem. There will also be well over 140 stallholders in the Festival Village. 2015 also sees the fifth instalment of Miss Gay and Miss Transsexual Australia; it's the best kind of pageant, one that not only rewards beauty but also the competitors' advocacy.

January 18, Edinburgh Gardens, Free.

Affluenza

Since the age of fourteen, young man about Melbourne, Will Hannagan-McKinna, has racked up an impressive number of original projects and performances to his name. He’s snared a spot in New York’s prestigious New York Musical Theatre Festival for HouseWarming, co-created the web series Melbourne Black and even won an unlikely shout out from Julian Assange. His solo cabaret shows have been a series of completely distinct, freshly reinvented pieces, now his latest, Affluenza, sees Will trade in his innate Fitzroy hipsterhood for the role of a Disney-corrupted former pop star. "[It's] LiLo meets Miley, only gayer". His trailer alone — seamlessly inserting himself into a promo for Hannah Montana — makes Affluenza essential watching for Melbourne cabaret fans.

January 22 - February 8, The Butterfly Club, $25 - $32.

Black Faggot

For those who missed Victor Rodger’s award-winning Black Faggot at last year’s Melbourne Fringe, Midsumma’s a welcome chance to catch the playwright/performer’s work before it goes on to continue its meteoric rise. Rodger wrote the show as a reply to the Destiny Church protests against New Zealand’s Civil Union Bill, in which thousands of members marched on parliament, led by conservative Bishop “We have had enough of liberal behaviour in this country” Tanaki. Since its Auckland premiere, the show has found acclaim across the world, most impressively at the Edinburgh Festival, with punters and critics alike being blown away by Rodger’s ability to combine manic, sketch-type comedy with poignant reflection.

February 3 -7, Gasworks Arts Park, $22 - $32.

Jumpers for Goalposts

Tom Wells drew heavily on his own experience as a young gay man to write Jumpers for Goalposts. "A lot of plays about gay people are about people in a bar, being hedonistic, not being supportive of each other, and that's not what my experience of being gay is like, it just isn't," he said. "What you write is the play you want to see in the world." And, after the runaway success of its Melbourne premiere directed by Tom Healey late last year, the show — about Team Barely Athletic, who compete in a LGBTI football league in Hull – returns to Red Stitch for a season in Midsumma.

Read our review of the 2014 production here.

January 19 - 25, Red Stitch Actors Theatre, $25 - $30.

Sissy Blvd

Devotees of Australian lit mag The Lifted Brow will probably recognise the work of the four queer cartoonists on show in Sissy Blvd. Merv Heers, Sam Wallman, Lee Lai and Katie Parrish have all contributed work to the magazine, but together the exhibition makes for a diverse offering. Some of Sam Wallman’s work – like Ashtrayan Hishtry Thru Political Cartoons – reminds us of a really messed up Larry Gonick mashed with the calculated weirdness of Married to the Sea, while Lai’s work traverses transient and constructed notions of identity in portraiture. Together, the four artists make up some of the most interesting and original graphic storytellers kicking around the country.

January 15  - March 15, The Substation, Free.

Show Stopper

It’s a big call, but Agent Cleave might just have the best hair of in Melbourne. Maybe it's just a bonus that he’s also one of the city’s most captivating drag performers. Besides his past appearances onstage in smash hits like Sisters Grimm’s Summertime in the Garden of Eden, Cleave’s certainly got the best bio of anyone in the Midsumma program: "The body of a panther and the eyes of a crocodile, with tears to match". Hopefully his solo cabaret Show Stopper at Howler lives up to this formidable reputation.

January 21 – 23, Howler, $22.

Bad Adam / PONY

Theatre Works has a reputation for presenting some of the city’s edgiest queer theatre throughout the year, playing host to indie companies like Little Ones and Sisters Grimm. Now, to kick off the new year, they’re featuring a double bill of contemporary performances that interrogate narratives of male sexual experience. Bad Adam, by Dosh Luckwell, is a meditation on the sticky intricacies and complications of gay pleasure, attraction and cruising, while Jay Robinson’s PONY is a contemporary dance work that draws on a transformation from pony into stallion as he navigates the fraught landscape of trying to construct a male, sexual identity growing up in Australia.

Febuary 4 - 7, Theatre Works, $18 - $22.

Edi Donald and the Transients

While Midsumma certainly has enough cabaret to spare, there’s not a great amount of live music on offer. Edi Donald and the Transients come as welcome relief to those who might prefer a little less schmaltz and a little more sincerity. This six-piece band hailing from Alice Springs give us epic, genre-splicing songs which conjure up a vision of Australia’s desert heart that enfolds questions of gender, privilege, and identity within Donald’s searing voice and reflected audio-visual projections.

January 29 - 31, Footscray Community Arts Centre, $15 - $20.

The Jacobeans

Hannah Malarski and Jack Richardson make up Bagabus Inc, a partnership that’s borne “supple fruit”, including shows like Bushpig, a 2014 hit across Australian fringe festivals in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne, and their genre-busting monthly sketch show podcast, Faces for Radio. The pair’s latest live show The Jacobeans aims for a satirical romp through time, one that throws up their signature blend of humour and surrealism in stark juxtaposition.

January 22 – February 7, Club Voltaire, $15 - $20.

Finucane & Smith's Caravan Burlesque... Wilder West!

Finucane & Smith have single-handedly redefined burlesque in Melbourne and across the world, elevating the form to a place that occupies the perfect mix of populist entertainment and political edge. Since its premiere in 2005 their Burlesque Hour has been seen by nearly 50,000 punters, selling out shows across Australia, and their work has traversed right around the globe, from Tokyo to Sao Paulo. …Wilder West is the latest title to add to the company’s impressive repertoire.

Febuary 5 – 14, The Substation, $25 – $57.