If you’ve been following the anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine mandate riots in Melbourne recently – and honestly, you’d need to be living under a rock to have missed them – there’s a chance that you came across Tom Tanuki. Not because he was participating, but because he’s been reporting on and unpacking the phenomenon during the pandemic. Strikingly concise in his writing and delightfully absurd in his satire, Tanuki has created a show for Melbourne Fringe that falls firmly under the latter – subtly mocking conspiracist factions in a hallucinatory video journey to his local supermarket.
Anti-Lockdown Ode is a bizarre, 60-minute rabbit hole into the minds of those who’ve been chanting “Arrest Bill Gates!” and livestreaming themselves harassing shop staff for adhering to public health orders. Tanuki employs a meandering style of storytelling in the work, taking us back to the early days of the lockdowns – a time when we were just getting used to masks (in Australia) and having punch-ons about toilet paper in Coles.
And to be clear, Anti-Lockdown Ode is about a trip to Coles because the Tom Tanuki in this work is very much a red, “down down, prices are down” guy, and not a green, “fresh food people” Woolworths man. And that’s important, because as much as the show pokes fun at the inane actions of some, it also takes jabs at the likes of capitalism, colonialism and unchecked police power – which will still exist well beyond the pandemic’s expiry date.
As with many Fringe shows this year, Anti-Lockdown Ode takes place online but Tanuki makes fair use of the digital format. He’s no stranger to making videos, after all, and the viewer is kept somewhat glued to the screen by the bizarre, satirical musings, and cuts between video-diaries in “Cruickshank Park” and trips to Coles from the point of view of a trolley. A guided meditation in a supermarket is a strangely soothing moment as Tanuki spends the hour-long show tacitly commenting on the noisy anti-lockdown minority and its animalistic tendencies as the show builds to its comically epic crescendo.
If you’re familiar with Tanuki’s wry humour, you’re going to enjoy this sublimely-unhinged, dreamlike romp. If you’re not, maybe familiarise yourself before taking this deep dive.