Who’s the Best

Overview

You can discuss Middle East politics and Lady Gaga's latest ensemble in the same, minty-fresh breath. You drove across Fidel-era Cuba with a cast of unpredictable hitchhikers. You're just one long sauna sitting away from your goal weight. You have more Facebook friends than dollars in credit card debt. You know it's impossible to quantify your value as a human being, that it's probably not the point of the game, yet, in a dark corner of your mind, you do it anyway. You think you might be winning.

Performance collective Post (the beautifully neurotic Zoe Coombs Marr; cool Mish Grigor; and busy new mum Natalie Rose, played by the deadpan, very much masculine Eden Falk in a wig) have externalised the conversation and tried to determine which of the three of them is — definitively, empirically — the best.

After gruelling months of Enneagram tests, Dolly quizzes and hard staring into the mirror as part of the Sydney Theatre Company's Rough Draft development program, they've scored themselves on looks, personality, intelligence, health and fitness, talent, luck, money, life experience, life skills and special skills (felting, making mixtapes, etc). They now present their results.

While this is all entertaining and relatable, perhaps the most impressive thing is how fully Post have managed to realise this mental exercise as a comedic performance piece. They've combined their tetchy debates with plenty of self-conscious strutting, posing, hair-flicking and catwalk-turning, persistent cues to dance off, and a crying competition. It's insightful, self-reflexive, searingly funny and, often enough, sublime.

Who's the Best joyously flirts with contradictions in its own internal logic (points gained for 'enthusiasm' are forfeit when the resulting disappointment detracts from 'mental health'; bad skin necessitates the best skin care routine) and picks at its flawed raison d'etre (pregnant, no-fun Nat dares suggest they're "on different trains" to different, incomparable destinations). It's a performance that shines a spotlight on the performative nature of our hyperreal, camera-ready personal lives.

No matter where the final tally lies, the members of Post are clearly all winners. For the rest of us, there's some consolation: "Luck, talent, same thing — you've either got it or you don't. Now life skills, there's something you can improve."