Wogs Out of Work
Space Cabaret Club, Adelaide Festival Centre

Wogs Out of Work is the brainchild of Nick Giannopoulos, Simon Palomares and Maria Portesi. It began in Melbourne two years ago and has now played in ·most of the state capitals and regional centres. Gordon, the road sweeper ambles amiably through the crowd to begin a wog’s-eye-view monologue. The ethnic origin is undifferentiated Mediterranean and the comedy is as broad as the Parthenon. Gordon recalls his encounter at the Mandarin Duck Bistro with his yuppie neighbour Damien. It doesn’t always work and the skit runs too long but Nick Giannapoulos and his fellow actors have opened up new territory with ethnic comedy which is a lot more fruitful than Con’s in the. Comedy Company.

Simon Palomares introduces us to Anthony Saxon MP who is opening National Brotherhood Week in Springfield. The demographics aren’t quite right for Adelaide but we get the message. Palomares also checks out the crowd – any Greeks here tonight? Any Lebanese? Then he makes a racist joke, and a point at the same time. And where are you from? Whyalla. See, Australians also hunt in packs – but not all in the same car.

Mary Coustas is .Poppy, coming through the window after her secret tryst with Gary, an Anglo yob whose main virtue is that he is thirty years younger than the suitors Poppy’s anxious mother has lined up in the parlour to audition her as a fiancee. We get, yet another perspective from Giannopoulos and Palomares as two middle-aged women working in a factory, relentlessly polishing grapefruit. One woman is Greek, the other Spanish – “same· thing,” they chorus, “same thing”, to the delight of the Europeans in the audience. As their conversation rambles from family to husbands to work, the sketch gets edgier and darker. It is well sustained and director Marc Gracie achieves creditable pace and depth.

Similarly; Palomares’ bleak portrait of an East European busker. and Mary .. Costas’s prattling little schoolgirl, Libby – sitting on her swing recounting unmentionables and guilelessly revealing the prejudices you find in every family- have the sort of substance you associate with Barry Humphries’ best stage work. Giannopoulos’ Spiro, the Greek kid who wants to be a blonde Skippy· surfer, is a lighter piece and runs out of puff, as does Wogs in Space, an ensemble spoof of the cult m6vie,which deals with the menace of prosciutto addiction in a weddings/parties/anything 60/40 band who wear velveteen tuxes. It runs for more than twenty minutes and while the parody Gnocchi-ing on Heaven’s Door goes irrepressibly over the top, it has a tendency to obliterate the more reflective moments of the show.

Wogs Out of Work deserves to be a hit. It is an entertainment which has discovered .its moment, and its market, and not only does it have something to say, it has been saying it to a lot of people who don’t usually go much on theatre. It now has a cast change – Roberto Micale, Nick Bufalo and Evdokia Katahanas, have vey capably taken over for what looks like an eight week run at the Thebarton Theatre. The reports are that audiences keep returning with more of their friends and families so it looks like Wogs out of Work will be working for quite a while yet.

“Community Announcement”, The Adelaide Review, No.60, February 1989, p.27.