Lovers and Haters
Lovers and Haters, Norwood Concert Hall, Adelaide, March 6-15;www.adelaidefestival.com.au
Anyone of a certain age or someone with an interest in recent Australian history you will know that Don Dunstan was the Premier of South Australia who transformed a genteel backwater into The Festival State. He also put South Australia back on the world map as a political powerhouse: women’s rights, anti-discrimination and equal pay were on the agenda and effected; South Australia hummed as never before or since.
If you paid attention you might get a teensy hint of this from Lovers and Haters but it’s more likely that if you know little or nothing of the man, you would think he was a mere dilettante, a trivial publicity hound and a rampant poofter. And to discover that you would have to sit through a “musical” of such paralysing ghastliness it could qualify as a cruel and inhuman punishment in UN terms.
It must have seemed like such a good idea on paper: Keating! is on a seemingly endless barmstorming tour of the country and if there is another politician who could rival Placido as a renaissance nonpareil who deserved a whole show to be devised around him, it is Don Dunstan.
Tragically, Lovers and Haters is not it. For a start it isn’t a musical, instead it has snippets of songlets that a high school for the tone deaf would be embarrassed to own. For another, the script is an agglomeration of prurient, sniggering piffle that demeans not only its subject but also the audience.
That’s the first half. The interval provided the means for blessed escape. It is possible that the second half redeemed itself and turned into something worthy of Dunstan the man and the politician. Given that even the piano was out of tune, it seems unlikely. The “creatives” involved in the show apparently hope Lovers and Haters will get picked up. If it is, it could only be to dump it in the nearest skip. Please.
