Little Black Bastard at Rich Mix

Little Black Bastard at Rich Mix

01 July, 2011
by: Naima Khan

Naima Khan reviews Little Black Bastard part of Origins Festival at Rich Mix.

The front of house staff ask me what I'm here to see and as I tell them, I'm surprised to hear each word come out quieter than the last. I've been emailing people about Little Black Bastard for a while but saying the phrase out loud to a stranger, I find, is more difficult than I would have thought. That's possibly part of what Noel Tovey wants us to discover through his one-man autobiographical show.

His accounts are given to us like bits of a  graphic patchwork to put together and his style is markedly different from the dynamic, animated storytelling we see in a lot of one-man-shows today. Here there are no props and no animated gestures, instead Noel delivers tales of his childhood like a grandfather delighting in the details but at pains to remember his harsh upbringing. Regardless, he powers through and a story like his needs telling.

So many of Tovey's formative years were horrific, he can't help but tell us how the unrelenting abuse and discrimination informed his adulthood as he draws us pictures of the tricks he turned and the bohemians he meets. He's beautifully frank as he talks about the dissociative disorder he developed which is part of what enables him to tell his story like this over and over again. His tone changes as he affectionately remembers his first time on the stage, and then there's the infectious smile that spreads across his face when he talks about discovering a version of himself that he really quite likes. 

While Little Black Bastard is drenched in stories of violence and sexual abuse, it's far from staged misery lit. Tovey consistently gears his audience toward bigger questions in his brief contemplation of blame, god, redemption, and his own genealogy which elevates the material. However, the script lacks a clear historical context and as a result it loses some of its gravitas. Though we're given a lot of dates, Tovey doesn't address the Australian or global issues that affected the mindset of his time, he prefers to tell us his own story. 

A personal contemplation such as his is well placed on the stage and is a fantastic component of Origins Festival at Rich Mix, but it is let down by a dated sound design that doesn't do justice to the play. We hear performed soundbites from scenes of his life: the voices of frightened children, prison guards and his mother among them, but the sound feels dated and unsophisticated like something lifted from a '80s school documentary. Nonetheless, Noel's performance overcomes this and as the lights go down it feels like he's reinvented himself for the last time.

Little Black Bastard runs at Rich Mix until 2nd July.

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Naima Khan