The brilliance of Topher Payne's Perfect Arrangement lies in how completely it commits to the performance-within-performance conceit. Patrick Kennedy's production at New Theatre transforms the auditorium itself into a television soundstage, complete with TV camera, vintage lights, and an illuminated "applause" sign that acknowledges its audience as studio witnesses rather than mere theatregoers.
This is no simple period piece about the Lavender Scare, the US government's systematic persecution of LGBTQ+ employees during the 1950s. On stage, Bob and Norma are two US State Department employees tasked with identifying and reporting “sexual deviants” within their ranks. Ironically, both Bob and Norma are gay, and are married to each other’s partners as a carefully constructed ruse.
Across this scenario, Kennedy's production recognises that Payne's script operates on multiple levels simultaneously: as an authentic recreation of 1950s sitcom aesthetics, as a commentary on the exhausting performance required to survive in a hostile society, and as an urgent reminder that the choice to hide or reveal one's identity carries consequences that extend far beyond individual comfort.
The set design for this production, though modest, perfectly captures the artificial perfection of 1950s television. That peculiar blend of domestic wholesomeness and studio artifice where everything looks slightly too bright, too clean, too arranged. When characters literally exit through the closet to reach their real partner's home, the metaphor becomes deliciously concrete rather than merely symbolic. The staging acknowledges that these four people's entire lives exist as a constructed performance, where even private moments carry the weight of potential public exposure.
The ensemble cast, featuring Brock Cramond, Huxley Forras, Lucinda Jurd, Dominique Purdue, Brooke Ryan, Jordan Thompson, and Luke Visentin, handles the tonal complexity with remarkable skill. They must perform characters who are themselves performing constantly, adopting American accents that signal distance from modern Australian reality while embodying the rigid codes of 1950s "polite society." The performances capture the exhausting vigilance required to maintain cover. Every public gesture monitored, every word potentially revealing.
Purdue's return to New Theatre (following roles in The Other End of the Afternoon and Significant Other) brings a particular authenticity to the production's emotional core, while Visentin's extensive credits suggest an actor comfortable with the kind of nuanced character work the play demands. The New Theatre debut performances from Cramond, Forras, Jurd, Ryan, and Thompson demonstrate Kennedy's skill at introducing new talent while maintaining production cohesion.
The production's humour operates as both a release and as camouflage for genuine horror. The awkward social rituals, the carefully constructed excuses for why one couple appears at the other's home, the cheerful desperation of maintaining appearances, all of it plays as farce until suddenly it doesn't. When characters acknowledge that exposure means prison or asylum, when they describe themselves as "hunted," the laughter concedes to the recognition of what survival in those times actually required.
The play's exploration of gendered persecution reveals uncomfortable truths about how even discrimination discriminates. The suggestion that lesbians faced greater challenges than gay men, demonstrated in the comment that "the act of sex doesn't exist unless there is a man involved" indicates how patriarchy shaped even perception. Women's sexuality, rendered virtually invisible, paradoxically created different forms of vulnerability beyond the archaic thinking of a perfect wife's role. The play acknowledges that discrimination operates through multiple intersecting systems, each creating distinct vulnerabilities.
Kennedy's direction also employs a subtle staging technique that incrementally increases the play's intensity physically, but almost imperceptibly. The audience may not consciously register the gradual tightening of pressure beyond the performance, but the cumulative effect creates an atmosphere of mounting intimidation that perfectly mirrors the characters' increasing desperation. The production understands that the most effective horror often operates through accumulation rather than shock.
The costuming deserves particular recognition for its period accuracy, creating the visual vocabulary of 1950s conformity that makes any deviation from prescribed gender roles immediately visible. These are clothes designed to communicate social acceptability, each detail a component of the larger performance of normalcy.
The production's presentation as part of Mardi Gras+ programming creates productive contrasts between celebration and commemoration. Here, we watch entertainment that acknowledges how recently LGBTQ+ people faced the choice between hiding or facing institutionalised punishment. The play refuses to let contemporary audiences forget that the rights now celebrated were won through courage that cost people their careers, families, and sometimes lives.
Kennedy's observation that the play "reminds us that progress isn't abstract: it's lived, negotiated and often deeply personal" captures what makes this production essential rather than merely historical. The way we still contort ourselves to meet expectations around relationships, identity, and work, may have changed form but hasn't disappeared entirely.
Perfect Arrangement succeeds because it trusts audiences to recognise the fact beneath the humour, to understand that farce can contain genuine tragedy, and to see how performance, whether on a television set or in daily life, can be both a survival strategy and a soul-destroying compromise.
Perfect Arrangement continues at New Theatre through March 7 as part of Mardi Gras+. Tickets and more info: https://newtheatre.org.au/perfect-arrangement/
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