1 month ago
13
January 30, 2026 — 1:04pm
THEATRE
The Placeholder ★★★
fortyfivedownstairs, until February 8
The shared experience of grief has culminated in many an incisive theatre piece centred on chosen families navigating existential questions of loss, friendship and mortality – Domenica Feraud’s off-Broadway play Someone Spectacular and, closer to home, Ash Flanders’ Malthouse production This Is Living among them.
Ben MacEllen’s The Placeholder is the latest play to wade into thorny territory. We’re plunged headfirst into 2017, notably the year queer communities were subjected to a plebiscite on marriage equality. It’s a devastating time, illustrated by clips of real-life interviews and news segments showcasing the bigotry that was allowed to flourish.
United by virtue of Barb’s Bosom Buddies – a fundraising collective dedicated to honouring the memory of namesake Barb, who died of breast cancer – five disparate people in the fictional rural town of South Bend find themselves meeting monthly to brainstorm badges, banners, cookies and muffins.
Matriarch Pat (Meredith Rogers) is a soft-spoken retiree whose kitchen becomes the focal point of the play, brilliantly materialised by Bethany J. Fellows’s set design. Helen (Michelle Perera) is a widow with a heart of gold and a penchant for baking. A proud lesbian, Keira (Rebecca Bower) self-medicates with alcohol to withstand living in a cloistered town. Barb’s niece Jo (Brigid Gallacher) is the conservative black sheep of the group. And sporty Nic (Oliver Ayres) used to go by Nicole, until they announce they’re transitioning into a man.
The reprisal is swift. The elder members of the group, Pat and Helen, paradoxically take it in their stride, but Keira is incensed by the perceived loss of a lesbian peer, and Jo insists it’s all but a phase. The remainder of the play details the fallout of Nic continuously insisting on his personhood against bad-faith arguments and a gulf of miscomprehensions.
As the kindest, most level-headed character, Helen is who most audiences will project themselves onto. But Perera, so brilliant in This Is Living, is also the strongest of the ensemble. Her comedic timing is impeccable as she expertly oscillates between empathetic displays of allyship and perfectly executed moments of humour that imbue the play with levity at key junctures.
Functioning like a time capsule by virtue of being set nearly a decade in the past, The Placeholder provides a stage for various expressions of acceptance and opposition as the group muddles through supporting Nic. A cookie-cutter bigot, Jo’s views cover well-trodden, odious ground. But it’s Keira’s see-sawing between solidarity and gender essentialism and a self-victimisation that’s impervious to the marginalisation of others that’s harder to stomach – and altogether more interesting.
MacEllen presents thought-provoking contrasts between desired gender-affirming care and unwanted life-saving surgery, gender and sexuality, mental deterioration and newly prized lucidity. But at close to three hours, The Placeholder is simply too long. MacEllen’s script retreads familiar ground in the play’s second act, which drags lugubriously to its emotional climax(es).
The tenuous connecting thread of a makeshift charity doesn’t explain why these characters are so invested in one another, and why they tolerate unconscionable behaviour – particularly from Jo. As a result, the emotional payoffs are muted, hampered further by unnatural, dialogue-heavy exposition and uneven acting during key dramatic reveals.
Much is left unresolved by close. Keira’s alcohol addiction continues to be the butt of jokes, Pat’s clear descent into dementia is unremarked upon. String-heavy interludes between scenes are peppered with a greatest hits compilation of what happened in the intervening years – good, bad, ridiculous. But the cacophony, so effective initially in illustrating the overwhelm of the plebiscite, overpowers the play by the end.
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