Evan Beswick

It doesn’t feel like much of a dig to describe Pedro Leandro as a better actor than a comedian. Yes, he’s “magnetic” – the achievement which provides a nice springboard for an exploration of his own drive for success and self worth linked, he hypothesises, to his sexuality – and, yes, he is “clever and beautiful”.

You’d think the production budget could stretch to a sheet draped over the back wall, onto which the “planetarium” of K Mak at the Planetarium is projected. But it requires a level of suspension of disbelief which this writer does not possess to ignore the water pipes, electricity conduit, smoke alarms, papered-over windows and hearing loop equipment to which attention is now so clearly drawn in the illuminated space where, well, space is meant to be.

By Evan Beswick Published 05 Aug 2024 For about 40 minutes this is a remarkable piece of theatre. From the top, a peculiar tone is set as a workie cartoonishly, eagerly lights up a cigarette. He moves, unexpectedly, over to a beat machine and chaos pads, firing up a hard and heavy wall of sound that supports the following scenes about food banks, the people who make them happen, the context they happen in, and the deadening, depressing destruction of a whole section of the working population.