One thing we have a lot of in Sydney is plays. From the SBW Stables to the Sydney Theatre, Belvoir Street to the Opera House, the one thing you can be assured of in this city is text-based narrative theatre. Sure, Performance Space does its bit to introduce the theatrehound's palate to a wider selection of what is possible on the stage, but for the most part words, strung together in such a way as to create lines and scenes and acts and stories, are the meat and potatoes upon which we Sydneysiders must dine.

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I would usually relegate this sort of thing to my Delicious feed (which recently, along with my Twitter and Last.fm feeds, found its way onto this blog's sidebar), but consider this particular much too relevant not to post here, where people are more likely to see it.

Louis Nowra's review of Kristin Williamson's David Williamson: Behind the Scenes, which appears in today's Australian Literary Review, is well worth reading. Not only will save you from reading the book, which on the whole sounds badly written and uninteresting (though I would love to know who Nowra is referring to when he writes of "one shining example" of a non-pedestrian critic), but also because, towards the beginning, it offers an almost word-perfect definition of what I have in the past referred to as placebo theatre. The emphasis, obviously, is mine.

Louis Nowra, 'Life with a wounded outsider', Australian Literary Review:

It was only when I went to see his 1991 play Money and Friends that I understood his success. I watched an audience laughing with recognition as the story unfolded and it occurred to me that Williamson was probably one of the few Australian playwrights who didn't talk down to or at his audiences. He was one of them and he and the audience were engaged in a conversation as equals. His work was one gigantic affirmation of their lives and ideas. He didn't undermine their beliefs, in fact, he corroborated them. One could say that, for his audiences, familiarity bred contentment.

Substitute "complacency" for "contentment" and you'd be somewhere close to nailing it.

Bell Shakespeare and Malthouse Melbourne: Venus & Adonis by William Shakespeare, directed by Marion Potts. Set and costumes by Anna Tregloan, lighting design by Paul Jackson, composition by Andrée Greenwell, sound design by David Franzke. With Melissa Madden Gray and Susan Prior, music performed by Felicity Clark, Michael Sheridan, Bree Van Reyk. Presented by Sydney Theatre Company and Bell Shakespeare. Wharf 2, Walsh Bay. Season ended.

Back in October, I wrote a review in which I more or less lavished praise on The Navigator, a contemporary opera by Liza Lim and Barrie Kosky. I have thought a lot about my response since then, not entirely agreeing with a lot of what I wrote (or rather wishing I had written more), and am convinced now that I was more enamoured with what was trying to be done than with what was actually achieved. The music and singing were brilliant, the stage direction laboured, and the libretto without merit. But I admired its ambition, the fact that it was trying to do something difficult. It may have missed its mark by some stretch, but at least it aimed high.

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Company B: Baghdad Wedding by Hassan Abdulrazzak, directed by Geordie Brookman. With Ben Winspear, Yalin Ozucelik, Arky Michael, Tahki Saul, Osamah Sami, Julia Billington, Melanie Vallejo, Robert Mammone and Tim Walter. Belvoir Street Theatre, Surry Hills. Until March 22. Bookings: (02) 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au

And so it seems that I am doomed to play the naysayer once again. Because while Hassan Abdulrazzak's Baghdad Wedding has had every other member of the punditry doing back-flips (or at least star-jumps) since it opened a fortnight ago, it had me wanting to do little more than walk out, or at least go to sleep, for much of its duration. (And this, I note with a touch of sad irony, on the first night in months I had been looking forward to the theatre.) Yet another example of placebo theatre, yet another paper tiger, it is precisely the sort of show that does nothing new or interesting, theatrically or thematically, to warrant the sort of reception afforded it by the centre-left bourgeois-bohemians in its audience. In fact, it does precisely the opposite: as one its characters notes at one point about words like 'hero' and 'terrorist', Baghdad Wedding encourages lazy thinking, about theatre and issues alike, by over-simplifying both. It may not do this to the same extent as some of the very worst examples of placebo theatre—Gallipoli, The Convict's Opera, Pig Iron People—but does it it nonetheless does. What Scarlet O'Hara at the Crimson Parrot did for the aging matinee set, Baghdad Wedding does for the latte- and sauvignon blanc-sipping ones: it placates, it comforts, it confirms.

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