{"id":17922,"date":"2026-03-09T02:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T15:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/?p=17922"},"modified":"2026-03-09T02:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T15:23:11","slug":"observer-disunited-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/2026\/03\/09\/observer-disunited-states\/","title":{"rendered":"OBSERVER: Disunited States"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Comedian and actor Richard Mealey debuts a brand new original work at this year\u2019s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, critiquing his American homeland for Aussie audiences.<br>In Richard&#8217;s words: \u201cWhen your homeland falls under authoritarian rule, you only have two options: fight the tyranny or \u2026 ya know, pretend like you&#8217;ve never even been there.\u2019<br>Born to British immigrants and residing in Australia for the last 12 years, Richard Mealey (Elephant Rope, A Twist of Fate) isn&#8217;t a &#8220;real American&#8221;.<br>Sure, he loves baseball, fried cheese, and hitting those hard &#8220;R&#8221;s in door, drawer, and poor. But the America that exists today isn&#8217;t the same one he left<br>Directed by Barney Pollock, Disunited States explores Richard&#8217;s disillusionment with being American, and the growing unease of no longer having a \u201creal home\u201d.<br>Filled with characters from different slices of Americana, he exposes truths both obvious and hidden.<br>Performances will take place from April 6-19 in The Cellar at The Motley Bauhaus, 7.15pm.<br>Bookings: comedyfestival.<br>com.au<br><strong>Review by Cheryl Threadgold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comedian and actor Richard Mealey debuts a brand new original work at this year\u2019s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, critiquing his American homeland for Aussie audiences.In Richard&#8217;s words: \u201cWhen your homeland falls under authoritarian rule, you only have two options: fight the tyranny or \u2026 ya know, pretend like you&#8217;ve never even been there.\u2019Born to British&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17929,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_siteseo_robots_primary_cat":"none","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-observer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17930,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17922\/revisions\/17930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}