JK is a best-selling author, mother and playwright, and for legal reasons, bears no resemblance to anyone that might spring to mind. She’s here to be interviewed about a new book in her famous 'Harry Parker' series, The Magical Maps of Muster McMiggleston.
Interviewing her is journalist Matilda Quinn (Sasha Chong); a transwoman, Superwholock fan, and last-minute replacement for comedian Benjamin Law, who either has food poisoning or is outside protesting the interview.
We all know what Anna Piper Scott’s new show, An Evening with JK is about. And unfortunately, we all know why it might be interesting for a transwoman like Scott to play her. In many ways, that’s part of the problem.
A once beloved children’s author who is now so ubiquitous with hate that she exists as a kind of shorthand for a worldwide backlash against trans people. What makes her transphobia so insidious is that it’s packaged as something else: feminism, the woes of cancel culture, a personal concern for children.
Fresh off the success of sold-out runs of her Anna Piper Scott: Such An Inspiration at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Edinburgh Fringe, Scott pokes through these disguises to expose the reality of the transphobia that underpins them. It’s her first ‘straight’ play; a simple two-hander, like Frost/Nixon if it were staged at a literary festival.
Never one to shy away from complex topics, Scott is unflinching in her examination of various transphobic talking points. She spends an hour asking what the end goal of anti-trans rhetoric is, burning strawmen left, right and centre to expose the harsh truths left in the ashes. It’s confronting but it’s also incredibly funny, with Scott’s signature brand of irony used to laugh at the often absurd logic that underpins transphobia. But the show isn’t perfect. It needs more work to navigate the complex tonal shifts of its content.
Matilda Quinn is the ideal interviewer – calm, collected, and empathetic. She’s the more earnest counterpoint to a wry Scott, and is saddled with back-to-back, often self-serious monologues. It could be a boring role in a lesser actor’s hands, but Chong handles it well. All the same, her character can be frustrating. By the end, you want her to crack just a little; to fracture her well-controlled veneer and answer fire with fire. A tense "fuck you" to an audience applauding JK was a magnetic glimpse into trans anger.
Scott has acknowledged that An Evening with JK is a show intended for a "broad audience". Its content will be confronting for trans audience members who are effectively asked to sit and watch common transphobic talking points thrown at them with little reprieve. But tidbits seemingly intended for trans audiences – JK’s gender euphoria while using a male pen name, or Quinn’s deeply affecting description of coming out as an opening of a closet into a mansion full of possibilities – were lovingly received.
But over time, punchlines are overshadowed by the hard reality of transphobia, and laughter seems to catch in the throat, an effect the show doesn’t quite know what to do with. Even a mention of Nazis standing outside the theatre in wait is played casually, peppered with jokes. Tonally, it’s odd, leaving many in the audience unhelpfully shaken.
In the end, JK leaves the stage, pointing out to the audience as if they’re her "loyal" fans. There’s a delicious irony to the gesture that it was a shame to see the show didn’t make more of. A trans woman playing a transphobe calling out to an audience of mostly trans people to support her abuse? Someone should let the children's author know that this show is completely sold out, and they’re not coming to support her.