How do you begin to cram eight seasons of a highly complicated, awarded, record-breaking, and internet-critiqued global phenomenon into a two-hour musical parody? You set it in Linda the divorcee’s living room.
Spark Creative offer an uproarious crowd-pleaser in the Sydney Opera House’s Playhouse Theatre. Musical genres collide, the production forgoing narrative cogency (which some might say emulates GoT’s eighth season – cue Reddit rage). It pulls no punches in bending over its knee one of the most talked about, most watched shows ever and spanking out the laffs.
The plot: Linda (Leslie Collins) is divorced. Her friends decide to surprise her by watching the finale of Game Of Thrones together. She then admits the un-admittable: she’s never watched an episode before. Her friends have an incredible idea: “We’ll act it out for you!” Cue excitement and frivolity.
Spoilers sets the tone for the evening. “It’s about a TV show. If you just read the books, fuck youuuuuu.” Irreligious, the ensemble explicates the major spoilers of seasons one through five before going on to ostensibly spoil the ending to Star Wars: A New Hope (“Darth Vader told Luke “I am your father”) and The Usual Suspects (“Kevin Spacey is Keyser Söze”) among other pop culture hits. It’s self-aware (as any big comedy in 2k19 is), and if you lean into this form of hyper-meta-clever, then buy tickets now: Winter is here.
Jordan Stidham stole the show as Tom (who often played Jon Snow). While the ensemble are all seasoned comedians, Tom seemed to have the audience roaring at every turn. The stagecraft was very well executed – seemingly unprompted mistakes perfectly crafted, as any good slapstick requires. The lighting design deserves great applause as it managed to set the mood incredibly well while also maintaining the setting, which we must remember, is Linda the divorcee’s living room.
Trivial tidbits tickle a keen viewer pink: a Starbucks coffee cup and water bottle get a cameo, and while the costumes are haphazardly crafted from the living room setting, the use of a bathmat for robes is a cheeky nod to GoT’s costume designer Michele Clapton’s innovative choice to make the Night’s Watch capes from IKEA bathmats.
With a song that expresses the convoluted and messy entanglement of characters, houses, and sell-swords, a rap/hip hop ode to The Red Wedding (called Stabbin’), and the inescapable reference to Trump (because the internet-literate globe is obsessed with more than one evil Night King), it’s near essential to anyone who spent two days, 22 hours and 15 minutes watching all eight seasons.
