Written by Ben Noble

Directed by David Wood

“You just don’t think these sorts of things happen nowadays”.

How often have we heard these words from someone? Especially following a brutal attack on someone for being themselves: being gay, being black, being different and not ‘falling in line’.

Switching from a present-day scenario to their past, audiences entering MEMBER find a father weeping as his son lies in the hospital, battered and broken. Time flitters as writer and performer Ben Noble whisks us back to a more youthful time for Corey as he makes his first friends, who eventually lead him onto a ‘hunt’.

But these hunts have a historical significance – a brutal one that mars the not-too-distant history of Australia, a period in the eighties where the violent act of gangs hunting, pursuing, torturing and killing gay men was a monstrous form of sport. Corey was twelve when he partook in his first one, even if he was unwilling.

Part of MEMBER’s power lies in Noble’s performance and storytelling, weaving a crueller narrative than the audience first realises – ending in one of the few times where the truth and revelations hurt even more than what we’ve learned thus far. It’s carried with respect, but Noble inserts moments of levity, but they’re not jokes, more observations of everyday life of a humorous edge. Switching from Corey (young and old) to nurses, residents, Corey’s ‘friends’ and relatives, it’s an enrapturing performance that hurtles forward, too afraid to look back. It’ll take time for audiences to adjust, but it’s entirely worth the focus.

MEMBER is constructed from real tales and forged in the patriarchal and homophobic pits of burning rage that still exist. Of fathers who cannot adjust to gay sons and to communities who channel their unfamiliarity, confusion and hurt into deadly outlets. A striking production, MEMBER penetrates the audiences in word and performance, but also with cellist Simone Seales, who provides both backing strings and sound effects, making the heart rate monitor in the hospital all the more haunting.

This is not a production to strictly ‘enjoy’, but it is a fundamentally important one that has been crafted well and deserves the audiences it has. Its exploration of intergenerational hatred morphs into an impressive form of storytelling – one which could benefit from an additional ten minutes or so to flesh out the pacing. But otherwise, Fairly Lucid’s MEMBER powerfully tells a story of our broken, bruised, and battered history with queer lives showing that the healing still has a long way to go.