Review: 10,000 Beers
Playwright and rugby journalist Alex Broun explores the testosterone-fuelled world of Australian sports in 10,000 Beers, a thrilling new one-act play now playing at Darlinghurst Theatre.
The Panorama Pirates are an Adelaide rugby team who travel to Sydney for an end-of-season trip with one goal in mind: to drink 10,000 beers in one very wild weekend. From the Friday night pub crawl through to Star City on Saturday and the blind-drunkenness of Stupid Sunday, team members must each drink around 100 beers per day to reach their total.
The four-strong cast is uniformly outstanding: Matt Zeremes (familiar to queer audiences for his previous leading role in Holding the Man) provides ample laughs as the lovable Len, who battles against the ridicule of his teammates and, at one point, seems to be facing an internal struggle with his own sexuality.
Imposing Islander actor Anthony Taufu clearly relishes his role as Reid, the team’s morose anchor who’s always ready with a painful childhood anecdote to suck the fun out of any pub crawl. Gus Murray as team captain Doug is particularly strong when inhabiting other characters in pivotal moments, such as the captain of the Panoramas’ rival team or the Bondi bouncer who finds himself on the wrong end of Reid’s rage.
And Andrew Steel, playing something of a one-dimensional party boy for much of the action, puts in a searingly brave performance in the play’s pivotal closing scene.
Half-drunk beers fly across the stage throughout, the actors stagger drunkenly across empty cans, clothes come on and off (those tempted by the promise of on-stage nudity should be careful to arrive on time), and fights are picked every couple of minutes.
For the most part, it’s all in good fun, but Broun is careful not to glamourise or condone all this anti-social debauchery.
As he shows in the play’s final minutes, as bitter resentments between teammates spill over with shocking results, downing 10,000 beers in one weekend is bound to damage more than just your liver.
Photo: Brett Boardman
