The COVID-19 vaccine has arrived—and it is one or more coats of Apocalipstick.

It was such a privilege to be back in a theatre for the second-last showing of Polytoxic’s latest that I had to write at least a brief review.

Apocalipstick technically sold out twice: once with restricted audience numbers, and again once those restrictions lifted. The energy—the sheer relief—in the room is electric: it’s a long time since we’ve all hooted and hollered like this. No one hesitates when the cast opens the show by leading us in a middle-fingers-up cry of ‘Fuck you, 2020!’

Polytoxic’s Lisa Fa’alafi and Leah Shelton have handpicked the line-up and rotating special guests. On our night it’s Abbey Church, Busty Busty Beatz, Hope One, Mayu Muto, Lana Tukaroa, Nerida Matthaei, Neridah Waters, An(drea) Lam, Chinta Woo-Allcock, and the Brides of Frank. It’s a silver lining of lockdowns that we have all this talent here in Brisbane at one time.

Apocalipstick proves that feminist theatre is in no danger of being diluted by so-called political correctness. Shelton’s drag-burlesque strip from full PVC-and-furs to nothing at all sets the tone for the evening: no holds are barred. This is a knockout night of cabaret that always punches up.

Polytoxic blend in the greatest hits with the brand new: it’s as much a joy to revisit Fa’alafi’s killer ‘Weave’ routine as it is to be introduced to Andrea Lam’s Bollywood-meets-Youtube-comments ‘Item Number’.

But the real stars of the show are the Hot Brown Homies, the lesser-known brothers of the Hot Brown Honeys—i.e. Busty Beatz and Hope One as our salivating emcees, Big M.I.C. and Young Harrison, promoting their new hit single ‘Ballistic Misogynistic’. The Hot Brown Homies’ reunion tour with 90s boy band Wrong Direction may just have garnered the best laughs of 2020 (shy of the Four Seasons debacle).

The big magic of Apocalipstick is in its queer joy, its (literally) balls-out feminist comedy that speaks directly to its audience. There is no male gaze here, my friends: in fact, toxic masculinity is cleaned up with a spray of ‘Antibac Off’. And, with a well-deployed leaf blower, Young Harrison will have you adding the phrase ‘stroking the Ryobi’ to your lexicon.

Apocalipstick is also the first show I’ve seen in the New Benner Theatre at Metro’s new West Willage digs*. The last theatre I saw was at Metro Arts, with Love farewell-to-the-Old-Broad festival in February. I spent the months in between living and breathing the Metro archives—photos, faxes, letters, blueprints, playbills—and interviewing dozens of artists and arts workers (including Fa’alafi and Shelton). (The result—Art Starts Here: 40 Years of Metro Arts—is a pretty neat snapshot of Brisbane arts.)

With its risk-taking, glitter, contained chaos, nudity and BDE, Apocalipstick also proves that the bold energy of Metro Arts wasn’t constrained to the Old Broad. It’s alive and well over the river (with a working lift!!).

Apocalipstick ran from 6 to 28 November 2020 in the New Benner Theatre at Metro Arts.

*Also accessible on the night were Rebecca Ross’s uncanny-domestic Dark Entries video installation and Joanne Choueiri’s Archive of Loss—an installation of obituaries to Brisbane buildings demolished under Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. I recently had the pleasure of interacting with (and exploring inside) a large-scale installation of Ross’s on Chevron Island, Light House, which projected video out through the windows of an abandoned house; I love the way Ross uses spaces like these to make a kaleidoscope of our sense of time. And Archive of Loss is a pretty perfect installation for me: it blends architecture, archive and cemetery to make us reflect on the character of our city (and loss thereof). The work shows how much bureaucratic ‘progress’ often amounts to: many of Choueiri’s obituaries read, ‘[The building] was survived for 12 years by a hole.’

Dark Entries shows in Gallery One and Archive of Loss in Gallery Two until 5 December.