The Ham Funeral

Revival of this landmark, pre-New Wave, Australian play chosen to launch the new Malthouse Theatre (formerly Playbox) in a reasonably orthodox performance style but with the upper level separated by glass partitions from the lower. Performed in repertory with Journal of a Plague Year with same cast of seven actors.

An anonymous Young Man (Dan Spielman) moves into a squalid hotel/rooming house run by the basement-bound Mr and Mrs Lusty, a bloated, gluttonous pair. When her husband dies abruptly, Mrs Lusty announces a grand funeral featuring the titular ham, a dramatic absurdity