The Literati

The innocent Juliet and the simple Clinton want to be married, and her father Christopher gives his blessing. But Juliet's pretentious sister Amanda and her snobbish mother Philomena are not impressed with the match, offering up an alternative they deem more suitable — the sham poet Tristan Tosser.

And so is the set up to Justin Fleming's The Literati, a new Australian play based on Moliere's Les Femmes Savanates, co-presented by Bell Shakespeare and Griffin Theatre Company. Griffin's SBW Stables Theatre proves the perfect setting for the laugh-a-minute farce, designer Sophie Fletcher creating a chic eastern suburbs living room in which the action plays out, its centrepiece a revolving platform on which characters such as Kate Mulvany's Amanda fumble and stumble, and Jamie Oxenbould as both Clinton and Christopher have a slapstick conversation.

But it's the language — and its performance — that holds the play together, under the direction of Griffin Artistic Director Lee Lewis. Fleming has used different rhyming schemes for "lofty pretentious", love and "wisdom and true scholarship", keeping the combination of the Queen's English and Australian colloquialisms that rhyme fresh and constantly hilarious. It's all in the aim of exposing literary pretension in 21st century Sydney, best observed in the torn Amanda preening and arranging herself among her books, and in Philomena, played by Caroline Brazier, championing the plagiarised rot disguised as poetry written by Gareth Davies' Tristan Tosser. And why would Philomena, Brazier tall and arresting, want that fop — who Davies plays as just the right amount of smug and ridiculous — to marry the sweet-tempered Juliet, brought to life by Miranda Tapsell?

A fucking hilarious night at the theatre. Do not miss it.