Urban Display Suite – Melbourne Season

The zeitgeist bought its three-bedroom deco flat in St Kilda before the boom and has never left. Property prices: you’re either smiling as you sip Moet or googling “sell my kidney” and realising that, even with the first home buyers grant,  you need another 25 body parts to get a deposit. Michael Dalley’s real estate musical satire Urban Display Suite returns for its third season with a sharp wit that leaves its audiences grinning and ready to buy.

With music co-written with the ever-wonderful John Thorn and joined by the delightfully slimy Lyall Brooks, Gabrielle Quin and Sharon Davis, Dalley continues his astute observations of middle class suburbia with a nearly-too-close-for comfort review about our obsession with property.

As a renter, even the sight of four pretend real estate agents walking into the theatre is enough to evoke fear and loathing. Fortunately, cabaret favourite Dalley has seen many of them himself and softens the terror with an opening song about the type of people who get that Cert IV in real estate and believe that their jobs are important.

Dividing property owners into bogans and wankers, the rest of us are safe to LOL at post-Federation-Square architecture and spot-on gorgeous songs about McMansion facades and shit art of the Mornington Peninsula. But expect to blush if you’re counting on your parents leaving their house to you, and don’t be surprised if your inner-apiring-home-owner-bogan agrees that you don’t need a personality or a ten-inch penis if you bought before the boom.

Urban Display Suite has extended its season for another week and is a must if you spend your weekend reading Domain.

More of Anne-Marie’s writing is at sometimesmelbourne.blogspot.com