Review: Poster Girl

Poster Girl by Van Badham
Tamarama Rock Surfers and Platform 19



It's 1974. The Watergate scandal is at its height and US President Richard Nixon is running scared, ABBA wins the Eurovision song contest, terrorism is running rife through Ireland and Cyclone Tracy destroys Darwin.

A young media heiress, Patty Hearst also makes headlines around the world when she is kidnapped by the Simbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small time urban guerrilla group based in the Bay Area of the US.

On Day Nine of her kidnapping a recording is sent to her parents expressing a calm anxiety;

Mom, Dad. I’m OK. I’m with a combat unit that’s armed with automatic weapons. And these people aren’t just a bunch of nuts. They’ve been really honest with me but they’re perfectly wiling to die for what they’re doing. And I want to get out of here but the only way I’m going to is if we do it their way. And I just hope that you’ll do what they say Dad and just do it quickly. And I mean I hope that this puts you a little bit at ease and that you know that I really, that I really am alright. I just hope I can get back to everybody really soon.

By Day Fifty-Nine she does 180 degrees;

Mom, Dad. Tell the poor and oppressed people of this nation what the corporate state is about to do. Warn Black and poor people that they are about to be murdered down to the last man, woman and child. Tell the people that the energy crisis is nothing more than a means to get public approval for a massive program to build nuclear power plants all over the nation. Tell the people that the entire corporate state is, with the aid of this massive power supply, about to totally automate the entire industrial state to the point that in the next five years, all that will be needed is a small class of button pushers. Tell the people, Dad, that the removal of expendable excess, the removal of unneeded people, has already started. I have been given the choice of one: being released in a safe area, or two: joining the forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army and fighting for my freedom and the freedom of all oppressed people. I have chosen to stay and fight. I have been given the name Tania after a comrade who fought alongside Che in Bolivia. It is in the spirit of Tania that I say, 'Patria o Muerte, Venceremos.'


No long after she joins the SLA operatives and is involved in a bank robbery where footage captures her yelling orders to the customers and the staff. It is an episode that has gone down in history as one of the more stranger ones of its time.

Twenty-odd years later, Van Badham has delivered a fascinating and funny story that brings to life the role of Hearst as a more Paris Hilton-like celebrity in Mindy Xyloine (Shannon Dooley).

The SLA are also slightly recast with Badham avoiding the more stereotypical 21st Century terrorists and replacing them with a bunch of disorganised and idealistic pinko lefty hippies (Marika Aubrey, Simon Corfield, Lucinda Gleeson and Andy Lees) who us water pistols to do hold ups.

Meanwhile, a media frenzy heats up as a fashion magazine editor (Susie Lindeman) tries to swoon an unsuspecting detective (Fayssal Bazzi) and dress him up while she is doing it and a news reporter (Sam Haft) is courted by one of the kidnappers.

What is most interesting about this production directed by James Beach is the way modern day celebrity is integrated into the stage design. The opening sequence takes on its filmic counterpart with opening credits much like a film. There are also live television crosses to Mindy's tycoon father (Laurence Coy) as he tries to threaten these vegetarian rebels.

Usually I am not a fan of that multimedia devil in theatre, but it is fitting in Poster Girl as explorations on fact, fiction, the daily news cycle with its journalists, media spinners and publicists crowd in on the never ending cycle of celebrity news.

It all makes for a very amusing evening, as Mindy teaches the hapless kidnappers how to do it properly with all the trimmings. It's a fast paced and witty show but the direction, particularly between blackouts, was unfortunately clumsy on opening night but will hopefully be ironed out during the run.

If you like your pop-culture and your celebrity gossip, this is definitely the theatre for you.


Until 12th July
Old Fitzroy Hotel
Cathedral and Dowling Sts, Woolloomooloo
1300 438 849 rocksurfers.org