Five Years Below the Masthead

Trevor Jamieson: Hipbone Sticking Out

It was  five years ago to the day that I saw Analisa Bell's little show Gold-Digger downstairs at the Maj on my first assignment (audition, really) for The West. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun.
I just want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who's been so kind and helpful along that journey in the best way that I can - by showing you how privileged I've been to see and report back on so many wonderful shows.
Here's a list of 100 of the best of them – ranging from theatre to cabaret and comedy, circus to music – I've got to see in that time; each one memorable, each of the highest quality. It's impressive to see that the list divides almost exactly evenly between home-grown and visiting shows. There's a long list of others that could, probably should, have been on it as well.

Alison van Reeken
The Deep Blue Sea

Krakouer,  The Deep Blue Sea,  Waltzing the Wilarra,  The Ugly One,  Die Winterreise,  Laryngectomy,  Crazy For You,  Scent Tales,  Red,  Tender Napalm,  Adam and Eve,  The Damned,  Who’s Afraid of the Working Class,  Atishoo,  Blackbird,  National Interest,  How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,  It’s Dark Outside,  On the Misconception of Oedipus,  Boy Gets Girl,  Evie, The Motherfucker with the Hat,  Duck Death and the Tulip,  Sami Shah,  Minnie and Mona,  Hamlet (Barking Gecko/WAAPA), Other Desert Cities, Hedda,  Storm Boy, Trampoline, Midsummer (A Play with Songs), Diva, Vicious Circles,  Fuck Decaf,  Eight Gigabytes of Hard Core Pornography,  Jasper Jones,  This is Not a Love Song, Laughter on the 23rd Floor,  King Hit, Hipbone Sticking Out, Venus in Fur, Monroe & Associates, Under This Sun, Legally Blonde, Sonic Sessions Tim Minchin, Dedications and Gudirr Gudirr. 

Denis O'Hare: An Iliad

Donka: A Letter to Chekhov,  Aftermath,  The Animals and Children Took the Streets, Beautiful Burnout,  Stiggio and Tallis: Music in 40 Parts,  The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart,  Mission Drift,  Watt,  Black Diggers,  The House Where Winter Lives,  An Iliad,  Henry V (Propeller),  Africa,  The Disappearances Project,  The Year of Magical Wanking,  …miskien,  Love in the Key of Britpop,  Le Foulard,  Insomnia Cat Came to Stay,  East End Cabaret,  The Bookbinder,  Sex Idiot,  Too Much Light Makes the Baby go Blind,  Tatterdemalion,  Waves,  The Defence,  MKA: Dogmeat,  First Day Off in a Long Time,  Sunglasses at Night,  Neil Hamburger,  Paul Foot,  Asher Treleaven,  Jim Jefferies, Greg Fleet,  Dr Brown Brown Brown Brown and his Singing Tiger,  Kaput,  Echolalia,  Boats,  Death in Bowengabbie,  I’m Your Man,  Henry IV,  Henry V and Hamlet (Bell Shakespeare),  Slava’s Snowshow,  Brief Encounter,  51 Shades of Maggie Muff,  Christa Hughes,  Meow Meow,  Amanda Palmer,  Camille O’Sullivan,  Martha Wainwright,  Empire and Absinthe.
 
I hope you got to see plenty of them!

Thanks to Steve Bevis, who's been the most indulgent and generous of editors, and to Barry Strickland, Damien O'Doherty and Maggie, the Queen of Hairdressers, who put my name in front of him. Thanks to my Lesley for rectifying my lousy grammar and reining in my excesses, to all the producers and publicists who tolerated my fussy requests, to the handbags who kept me awake, even on 4-show nights at the Fringe, and to the generous beverage sponsors of Perth's theatre companies. And Uber.

But most of all to the creative people, both sides of the lights, who do this fine work for us, in most cases for little reward and less security. 

They are heroes, and I hope I've been more help than hindrance to them.