The Exchange

So Tamara recently invited me to a dinner & theatre event, and keen for an outing, I said sure. Let me just say this – dinner theatre is quite different in Ballimore, NSW than it is in, say, Chicago. So there were 5 of us who went, and we drove along for about 30min until we rocked up at this little pub, in the middle of nowhere. But there was a big sign out front saying “The Exchange – funniest play to come to the Outback.” So we sidled up to the bar to get some beer or wine (some of the girls were disappointed that they had run out of vodka, but where did they think they were – a pub??) and then were ushered to the back room, which was kind of a big covered porch with 5 plastic tables and some folding chairs, for dinner. Tiny little outback pub – probably serving traditional meat and potatoes, right?? No – try spring rolls, fried rice, butter chicken, and curry. And then 1 dish of beef stroganoff, which was more like a few pieces of beef in a big tub of gravy made from a powder mix.

The play, quite appropriately, took place in a small outback pub. It was a 3-man production – there was the bar-tender and then 2 older blokes who spent their days hanging out at the pub. It was quite amusing, and I’m getting to know the lingo and the sense of humour well enough that I could get most of the jokes (my own personal accomplishment of the evening). But I’d say about 50% of the dialog was the 2 older guys arguing about “Whose shout is it?” (i.e. who is buying this round). And then periodically, amid the jokes and the drinking, they would lapse into these philosophical conversations involving a dialog between the 2 older guys and a simultaneous monolog from the bar-tender, and wax on about the meaning of life or Aboriginals or relationships. All-in-all, quite an entertaining evening, and a good taste of rural Australia.