The Bloke goes to war

By Kath Gannaway
IN A WEEK of Anzac tributes, the Upper Yarra Arts Centre offers another one – C.J. Dennis’s tribute to “the boys who took the count” in the Great War.
Ginger Mick at Gallipoli, presented by Petty Traffikers, brings to the stage Dennis’s tale of Ginger Mick and the Anzacs in Turkey.
Combining larrikin humour with pathos and written in Dennis’s unique slang, Ginger Mick at Gallipoli is adapted from The Sentimental Bloke, the book diggers famously carried in their breast pockets in the trenches of World War I. The play has received outstanding reviews.
Bill Perrett in The Sunday Age said: “It combines some familiar representations of masculinity and dinky-di nationalism with some questions of contemporary relevance.”
Age reviewer Helen Thompson described the play as an ingenious adaptation of an Australian bush classic whose energy and adrenalin levels were exhilarating, the choreography remarkable.
“This production gives the originally iconoclastic version a rough-hewn masculinity and physical dimension that has a powerful impact,” she wrote.
Ginger Mick at Gallipoli is directed by Stewart Morritt and performed by all-male cast.
See it at the Upper Yarra Arts Centre in Warburton on Saturday, 28 April at 8pm. Bookings on 5966 5040.