By Aksharaa Agarwal
All it takes is an idea. In the dark, a booming voice proclaims, ‘all is dead, save the light, which falls on Michael Caine.’ (This must’ve been before he became ‘Sir’ Michael Caine.)
In my head, it’s the wild west. Brush rolling in the light breeze, the empty road. Dry heat. Saloon doors swinging idly on loose hinges. (This is dragging on. You get it.) Duel town. In this case, duet town I think? The dust settles, and here I am again, before familiar faces.
Since this is not my first rodeo, (which was at the 2025 Sydney Fringe), I know what I’m in for. Like a veteran MK-Ultra subject, mind exploded, I’m back for my fix. Flashbacks of french clams.
More accurately, I’m one of those confused initial test-screening audience members whose curiosity got the better of their aversion. All this to say, my main criticism is that it wasn’t called ‘The Premiere: The Return’ specifically in my honour (Don’t bother pointing out the oxymoron).
Don’t get me wrong, now. The Premiere is a prestige event, taking its cue from such ornate a site of the high arts as our very own State Theatre. The influence cannot be denied, for nothing else explains the miniscule and off-centre placement of the ‘screen’. Rather intimidating surrounds.
Lights up. Round two.
Actually hold on, this guy said he was Oscar Isaac???
Oh. Okay. Not that one. Nevermind. Moving along! He says he’s pioneering something. Don’t know if that’s true. He is wearing a skinny scarf though. It’s a movie. No. a peek behind the curtain, that’s what he’s apparently known for. No, a movie about…both. Live! Live? I think I know a certain Coppola who may have words to say about this…
Since customer knows best, and the screen industry is, after all, a business, the audience was consulted on the screening for the night. A radical cinema democracy! This sure is sounding like a fairly recent Coppola thing.
By a slim margin, a familiar plot wins the vote. It’s one we’ve seen before. Two serial killers fall in love. Then…they become English teachers. Of course they do. Who else would relish such a sappy trope? There is a twist though, and it isn’t a narrative twist. Our show for tonight would be a screening, if it can be called that, of a daring tale intriguingly entitled ‘Seafood Broil.’ I can see those eyebrows raising.
My second criticism is that I didn’t get to watch the one about Kermit saving someone who fell inside a toilet.
The thing about The Premiere is it’s more than just an actual friend group daring to carry out their usual interactions in front of an audience. It’s more than just a carnival specimen of six scene kids and their two pet trip-hazards in their otherwise mostly natural habitat. It’s a philosophical exercise, an interruption of form, an explosion of boundaries. It’s multiple levels of awareness layered in a seamlessly traversable trifle dish.
As I once insisted, improvisation is a covenant between the jester and the court, one that slants the pedestal of the performer. Borne of shared recognition, it embraces the constructed nature of so much human activity by admiring the intricate clockwork behind the dial. That suspension of disbelief, of awareness, that so much imitation demands, is here requested by consent. Duly granted! The result is riotous.
It is in this context that we received, that night, a tale of two lovers. Two killers. Involving the HSC board director, 2 billion kilos of prawns, and a prawn monster. The murder of a prawn monster. The resurrection of a prawn monster (it’s made of soft meat.) Who then got married to the renowned choreographer, the one and only…Kim (not that Kim. Or the other one.) As director Frankie Water-Cooler said of his magnum opus, this final addition to his ouvre in which all crew were also cast, ‘this film is for the prawns.’
From the speed-dating for serial-killers opening, we were led through instantly conjured B-plots involving: a paper on Pride and Prejudice (fair depiction of up-to-date curriculum); a task-force after ‘The Hacker’ (not of code but of the coder); and a love scene set to the sound of 2 billion prawns stirred in a pot. Then, the thrilling climax, in which a banana may have been made of cake.The uncredited lead composer who appears in every scene, and has no dialogues at all, is leading the Oscar race. A24 is rumored to have had their distribution deal rejected.
Entertainment on the whole is a smoke-and-mirrors show. Popularly, literally, and obviously. So of course there are illusions surrounding how instantly the plot comes to life, and the nothingness from which it emerges. Those illusions are deliberate. In fact, we’re invited to collaborate in their construction.
That is the only way to remember they aren’t there. To reclaim the contentious and banal terrain of ‘what happened’ from the contemporary vice of record-document-catalog-reblog that only produces endless duplicates. Like all good illusions, this one also fades. (There is something to be said about formal irony…) More importantly, it is the only way to celebrate the skill and craft it takes to come up with anything at all, much less something clever and on-the-spot. In doing so, we recognize it in each-other, in ourselves, the delight of riffing on the capacity for surprise. We take one step backward into the gift of ungoverned chance, and find it in each other.
That is the most enduring facet of this entire act.
Why punch a regurgitated string of borrowed words into your brick-of-brain-death (among other atrocities)? Buy a ticket and a beer, leave your share house, and fail a try-not-to-laugh challenge with friends IRL instead.