A Streetcar Named Go Fuck Yourself is the latest play by Kissing Booth, performing as part of the Netherworld Festival – a line-up of “Cabaret, Performance, and Unruly Arts” hosted by The Motley Bauhaus in Carlton for the next couple of weeks.
Towards the end of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche speaks of her fragile heart, unable to stop herself falling for and marrying a teenage boy, only to discover that boy mid-tryst with an older man:
“Then I found out. In the worst of all possible ways. By coming suddenly into a room that I thought was empty – which wasn’t empty, but had two people in it… the boy I had married and an older man who had been his friend for years…”
In A Streetcar Named Go Fuck Yourself, writer and director Jake Stewart takes this minuscule plot point and has crafted from it a fantastic new work of theatre: clever, funny, uncomfortable and gay as fuck.
In Act 1, we find ourselves sweltering in the unforgiving New Orleans heat with a gorgeous homage (homo-age?) to the original Streetcar, but instead of two sisters reuniting, we have two brothers (Marco Pecer and Wheeler Maurer).
Wheeler plays a pimp who has arrived under something of a cloud, but what threatens to disrupt Marco’s character’s world the most is the presence of a teenage boy (Simon Brownjohn) working for his brother. There’s nothing predatory about his behaviour, only a conflicted heart whose feelings over time prove harder to deny.
This is heightened and hilarious storytelling – the cast revelling in the lyricism and imagery of the language, with movements apparently inspired by both ballroom culture and how a spiteful queer person would move and flaunt themselves on Christmas Day in front of a homophobic relative.
After the interval, the audience moves upstairs for Act 2, where we sit in traverse, presented with – according to the setting and language – a different play altogether.
Now we’re in the modern day, with Callum O’Mara playing a drama teacher at a boys high school, who finds himself increasingly drawn to his star pupil, a gay teenager played by Gabriel Jarman. The teacher isn’t a monster, and his student isn’t prey. As their orbits begin to inexorably and painfully circle each other, a reckoning also begins to approach.
While Stewart’s script in Act 1 was romantic and exaggerated, in Act 2 the writing is exquisite and sharp. Such distilled linguistic goodness is a rare find, and the cast wield their words incredibly well. Two seemingly disparate acts suddenly connect, moments before a pure expression of love turns to ruin and a final quiet contemplation.
Whether upstairs or downstairs, each of the cast gave excellent performances – all the more commendable for how fearlessly they committed to exploring a subject and character motivations not treated so sympathetically since David Harrower’s Blackbird or, to a lesser degree, Jennifer Haley’s The Nether.
Marco and Callum playing the Older Man in Act 1 and Act 2 respectively deserve praise for how they navigated their characters’ yearnings and conflicts. Callum, especially, did beautiful work showing the torturous burden on his heart, moving helplessly from attraction to love to suffering.
A Streetcar Named Go Fuck Yourself is a sometimes-confronting, always-engaging play you won’t regret taking a risk on.
A Streetcar Named Go Fuck Yourself
The Motley Bauhaus, 118 Elgin Street, Carlton
Performance: Tuesday 28 July 2026
Season continues to 8 August 2026
Bookings: www.eventfinda.com.au
For more information, visit: www.themotley.com.au for details.
Image: Marco Pecer (supplied)
Review: June Collins