Theatre Review: A Stranger in Town

A Stranger in Town. Written by Christine Croyden. Directed and designed by Alice Bishop. Inspired by the original musical diary of Otto Lampel. Original score and musical direction by Matt Lotherington. Lighting design by Richard Vabre. With Amanda LaBonte, Sophie Lampel, Jamie McDonald and Drew Tingwell. Presented by Essential Theatre. fortyfive downstairs, Melbourne. Until Sunday 13 November.

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.” ― Mark Twain

Precious memories are at play in this eloquent and involving memory play – imaginatively, impeccably, lovingly, and often quite beautifully, delivered to the stage by Ms Bishop and performed by a uniformly excellent cast, who handle their challenging multiple roles with pure theatrical instinct and immense skill.

As the ghosts of journeymen and women – past and present – take their places on the side of the stage (both shadowed and illuminated by Mr Vabre’s excellent and always atmospheric lighting design), Otto Lampel (Drew Tingwell) begins his journey across the Atlantic on a boat bound for Canada. It is the late 1940’s – and Mr Lampel, a Czechoslovakian Jew – is beginning an immensely personal and equally dangerous journey to discover the essence of his humanity … and what remains of his identity.

Having fled Prague at the start of World War II – the only member of his family to survive Nazi-led genocide – Lampel is haunted by wartime horrors (quite brilliantly realised in an ingenious mountaintop scene) and the extent to which his spirit has been so rigorously interrogated that he has become an unreliable witness of his own life’s values and accord.

Mr Tingwell captures – perfectly – the introspective, layered, studious and dramatic reach of the fascinating Mr Lampel, while Ms Lampel (the real Otto Lampel’s granddaughter), Mr McDonald and Ms LaBonte shine in their roles including fellow travellers, a lion in the zoo (Mr McDonald works wonders here), a statue in the park (Ms Lampel), and restaurant owners in Montreal (Mr McDonald and Ms LaBonte).

The highlights of Ms Croyden’s multi-layered, cryptic, symbolic and richly-allegorical script are many – with the stakes at play powerfully underlined when one of Mr Lampel’s earlier travelling companions collapses into the restaurant he has been frequenting. It’s a heart-breaking moment of stark realisation (and breathtakingly well done), which brings sharply into focus the risks our fellow human beings are prepared to chance in order to flee persecution with something akin to blind optimism and indefatigable hope for a brighter future.

While it certainly resonates with our nation’s own asylum-seeker dilemmas and their attendant perverse lack of fundamental regard for humanity and personal history, A Stranger in Town never feels like it is trying to be worthy and earnest issues-based theatre. It dances, instead, with artful and poetic adventurousness – and is grounded by Ms Bishop’s gorgeous and evocative costumes into which the cast change on each darkened side of the stage, having plucked them from within a motley collection of suitcases. It is a brilliant theatrical device – perhaps no more effortlessly incorporated than when Otto’s frosty, strident wife (Ms Lampel rising to the occasion again) arrives in Montreal from London to determine for herself whether her husband intends to return with her to their son in London. The cryptic contents of the satchel she brings with her are, under Otto’s orders later, to be burned. It’s an incisive moment entirely lacking in sentimentality – one of the many fine qualities A Stranger in Town boasts.

Mr Lotherington’s pre-recorded original score (which was certainly not helped on opening night by a stubbornly recalcitrant speaker) could do with a judicious prune – particularly some of the underscoring which, in the presence of such fine performances, occasionally tends to rather unsubtly underline the fact that this is a ‘musical’ fable as opposed to serving the text and the performances of it as insightfully as the stagecraft does.

The original songs (based on Otto Lampel’s musical diary which was recorded in Canada) are fine and engaging, however the duet between Otto’s new lover and his English wife only serves to spark an surprisingly discomforting comparison with an identical moment between Miss Saigon’s Kim and Ellen. (It is, in fact, so completely jarring that the show would be none the poorer for its loss altogether.) Mr Tingwell does, however, prove himself to be a fine pianist and the cast acquit their musical responsibilities in fine form.

Ultimately, A Stranger in Town’s profound, overriding sense of optimism for a life of love, happiness and understanding is thoroughly engaging – and Essential Theatre should be encouraged to refine it further and set sail with it to the European festival circuit where, I suspect, it will be even more of an absolutely unqualified success.

Pictured: Sophie Lampel in a publicity still from A Stranger in Town. Supplied.

Theatre Review: The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane

The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane. Director Gavin Quinn, Designer Aedin Cosgrove, Costume and Prop Designer Sarah Bacon. Andrew Bennett, Derrick Devine, Conor Madden, Bashir Moukarzel, Gina Moxley, Daniel Reardon, Judith Roddy. With local players Kylie McCormack, Sue Tweg, Great Danes Absolute Dane My Gentleman (Santi), Monteral Full Circle (Gertie) and drama students from the Trinity Grammar School, Kew Tim Dennett, Fred Hiskens, William Lodge, Alex Hatzikostas, Thomas Little, Andrew Kondopoulos, Liam McCopping, Atticus Lyon and Nick Wood. Pan Pan Theatre (Ireland) presented by Arts Projects Australia and the Melbourne Festival. Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne. Until Saturday 22 October.

“The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“Remember you must die.”
― Muriel Spark, Memento Mori

The Irish make theatre (in the truest sense of the term) like no-one else. The opening night of Brian Friels’ Dancing at Lughnasa on London’s Westend (where it had transferred from Dublin’s Abbey Theatre), remains the theatrical highlight of my life. But this Pan Pan Theatre production of The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane certainly gives it a run for its money – constantly nudging at the limits of theatricality with a rare and breathtaking curiosity performed with exacting stagecraft and the unequalled Irish passion for words and language; the definitive story.

And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Partly an anarchic vivisection of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a robust behind-the-scenes tragicomedy as three ideal ‘Hamlets’ audition for the leading role, and literally littered with illuminating intertextual juxtapositions (Samuel Beckett is superbly represented by the post-apocalyptic Endgame), The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane is a theatrical construct of unique, fiercely original mind-fuckery of the highest order.

As much as it defies (and denies) labels, The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane invites absolute scrutiny on a great number of psychologically compelling levels. It also, both relievedly and delightfully, plays with the extent to which it is enamoured with its own intellectual conceits: a monumental Pinteresque pause follows the first mention of “postdramatic” and, in a bravura moment, the Ghost walks – quite literally – out of the building.

The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane begins with an engaging prologue – a lecture on the stability of Shakespeare’s text among other things – from an academic (delivered with dry good humour by Sue Tweg). It’s a brilliant device – serving equally to lower, unsettle and provoke our expectations with particular insights: quoting Muriel Spark’s “problems you can solve, paradoxes you have to live with” leads into a fine thread on the objectification of the emotional needs of the women in Hamlet (radically deconstructed by an unforgettable mad scene later). A strangled rendition of “Greensleeves” on the recorder then catapults us into the audition process – overseen by the play’s director Mr Quinn and other production personnel.

The audition process is the perfect way to not only level the playing field but also raise the stakes – while robbing us of our ability, and need, to judge. The first act ends, however, with the audience being invited onto the stage to stand next to the Hamlet of our choice. Suddenly, the high-stakes quest for the role becomes something more like a community sporting match – and the damaged, eye-patch wearing Mr Madden is chosen (as he apparently often is).

And it’s not difficult to understand why. With his hapless recounting of his early days on stage and his poignant description of how he might have (somewhat gymnastically and over-enthusiastically) performed the role were he not so scarred (and scared), Mr Madden set himself up perfectly for the challenge: the dreamer, the procrastinator, the athlete and the provocateur … the ideal Hamlet.

The audience were then summarily dismissed so that the company could prepare for Act 2 – their performance of Hamlet. Standing outside the theatre, I couldn’t help wondering how on earth they would ‘bring us back’. Socialising, gossiping, laughing and smiling – we were at once both an audience united and an audience divided. I needn’t have been concerned. Upon re-entering the theatre, Aedin Cosgrove and Sarah Bacon’s design had transformed the space into a candlelit wonderland of divine theatrical order. Metal rubbish bins lined the stage (equal parts Beckett’s beloved chessboard and England’s orderly country garden) – before the ensemble took to the stage and delivered the “To be, or not be” monologue in a round. And I was, from that point on, hypnotised.

The company’s Hamlet is an expansive, jumbled, intertextual, anti-narrative tour de force of playful invention – topped by the arrival of the Trinity Grammar School Drama Students who perform the travelling players' ‘play within a play’ and the gravedigger scene like they’ve never been performed before. And just when it all appears to be skating along the edge of tongue-in-cheek, self-aware and joyful abandon, we are suddenly thrust into hell, when, having crawled out of a rubbish bin, a soaked Judith Roddy delivers a blistering, postmodern riff on Ophelia’s mad scene that is undeniably the dramatic highlight of a most brilliant and inspirational night at the theatre.

Pictured: Conor Madden in The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane

Theatre Review: The Magic Flute

Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Impempe Yomlingo). Adapted and Directed by Mark Dornford-May. Musical Director Mandisi Dyantyis. Choreographer Lungelo Ngamlana. Additional music and lyrics by Mandisi Dyantyis, Mbail Kgosidintsi, Pauline Malefane, Nolufefe Mtshabe. Performed in English and Xhosa. The Isango Ensemble presented by the Melbourne Festival. The State Theatre, Melbourne until Sunday 16 October.

Composed in 1791 (the year of his death) with a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s The Magic Flute is one of the most beloved operas in the repertoire. Its origins as a singspiel (a play with songs) were most brilliantly realised in Milos Forman’s film of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, in which the stricken Mozart delivers his glorious vaudeville in a suburban theatre to capacity crowds who are enthralled by the work’s musical and dramatic adventurousness. Away from the rigorous, uptight tradition of the Court, Mozart – it could be argued – had finally found his Tribe.

And how, I couldn’t help imagining, Mozart would have adored the Isango Ensemble's stunning re-imagining of his beloved masterpiece – receiving its long-overdue Australian Premiere last night as one of the headline acts in this year’s Melbourne Festival.

From the first notes of the instantly recognisable overture to the final joyous celebration of triumph over adversity – it was constantly impossible to hold back the tears as years of austere, straight-jacketed, over-produced Flutes were swept to one side and replaced by a previously impossible to imagine sense of almost divine synchronicity. This is a Magic Flute for our troubled times – a never less than awe-inspiring liberation of the musicality that is innate within each us.

Played mostly on marimbas (traditional xylophone-like instruments with the full range of a Western keyboard’s sharps and flats), steel drums, and – even more astonishingly – glass bottles partly filled with water, Mozart’s score was given a breathtakingly beautiful new lease on life; so much so that I doubt I will be able to listen to it in quite the same way again.

It could also be argued, however, that without the many previous incarnations of this problematic opera, the Isango Ensemble version might have limited points of reference. Musically, the purists might mourn the absence of the lush, traditional orchestrations – not to mention the overall result of Mr Dornford-May’s judicious pruning and sophisticated and adventurous tempi (two and quarter hours flies by and other opera producers would do well to take note).

What is a certainty, however, is that by replacing instrumental orchestrations with vocal accompaniment (as in Papagano’s poignant Act 1 aria about his quest to find a wife) and the extraordinarily moving a capella account of the glorious prayer for the male chorus that opens Act 2, left me with a newfound appreciation for Mozart’s intricate harmonies – illuminated in a truly magical new light; beautifully and often more thrillingly sung as I have ever heard them before, anywhere in the world.

The colourful kingdom in which The Magic Flute takes place is effortlessly relocated to a corrugated-iron clad South African township, where the trials and tribulations of our journeymen and women are given a profound new sensibility. Infused with overtones of tribal initiation, guerrilla warfare and an array of Western influences (including a fabulous nod to The Supremes and a fabulous set of outlandish Afro wigs), every aspect of the interpretation made perfect sense – with one scene of dead bodies covered with grey blankets, in particular, packing an immensely powerful punch.

The ‘grab bag’ aesthetic of the costume design is an absolute masterstroke – with Papagano in camouflage, beautifully vibrant tribal attire, pink nightdresses (with matching teddy bears), dancing boys in their very camp flares, and a spectacular diva-esque frock for the Queen of the Night, all playing an important role in defining time, place and circumstance.

This is an extraordinarily rewarding night of compelling music theatre. Go – and experience The Magic Flute like you never have before, and probably never will again.

Theatre Review: Tom Tom Crew

Tom Tom Crew. Directed by Scott Maidment. Ben Walsh (Musical Director), Shane Witt, Ben Lewis, Daniel Catlow, David Carberry, Jamie McDowell, Mali de Goey, Tom Thum and DJ Sampology (Sam Poggioli). Presented by Melbourne Festival and Strut & Fret Production House. Now playing upstairs at the Forum Theatre until Sunday 23 October.

In the grand tradition of Stomp and Tap Dogs but with generous lashings of thrillingly high-stakes, daredevil acrobatic abandon and Tom Thum’s simply astonishing beatboxing, Tom Tom Crew burst into life for the opening night performance of their Melbourne Festival season.

What it lacks in big-budget showbiz polish and razzle dazzle, Tom Tom Crew more than makes up for with its genuine, eager to please, backyard/garage band aesthetic. This is no over-produced big set-piece extravaganza. Instead, the Crew’s raw (almost next-door neighbourly) honesty, intoxicating smiles and personalities, passion, humour and talent comes strikingly to the fore – uniting and delighting their audience with a rare kind of high-energy performance euphoria.

These are well-disciplined, chilled, drilled and thoroughly engaging performers – whose camaraderie from their Flying Fruit Fly Circus training ground and years on the international touring circuit (the show was born at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2006 before travelling to London, Edinburgh, New York, Berlin and Montreal) has resulted in a tightly-knit ensemble that both personifies and exemplifies trust, risk, loyalty and precision.

Entirely lacking in pretension, Tom Tom Crew wins points for opting to keep it real – like busking boys in a local park showing off to their captivated admirers; and in the cluttered realm of circus spectaculars, this is the essence of the Crew’s theatrical torque. Trained at the famous Fruit Fly Circus, it’s not difficult to join the dots between the Crew’s childlike joy at tackling high-flying acrobatics with energetic leaps and bounds into flights of sheer breath-taking fantasy. Equal part circus and vaudeville, the pace rarely sags – and when it momentarily does, it is only to allow us (and them) to catch our breath.

If Ben Walsh’s drumming on a seemingly impossible number of plastic barrels is a worthy, gob-smacking showstopper, nothing could have prepared us for Tom Thum’s (pictured) beatboxing. Rarely, in the theatre, do we find ourselves in the situation of being unable to believe either our ears or our eyes – but this boy with a microphone is a beatboxing virtuoso (and a terrifically gifted graffiti artist as witnessed in one of the show’s very clever multimedia interactions). From a classic jazz set to the instantly recognisable beats and melodies of the late Michael Jackson (poignantly performed as a “tribute”), Tom Thum’s contribution defies description.

On opening night, the boys were entirely worthy of the unanimous and thunderous standing ovation that, in retrospect, was the very least we could bring to the party. Without a doubt, this will be the hottest Melbourne Festival ticket in town. Whatever you have to do to get your hands on a ticket – do it.

Melbourne Fringe: The Dog Theatre Gala

It’s Melbourne Fringe Festival time, and while I don't consider this blog to be a 'What's On' column, the inbox is absolutely bulging with tasty morsels from Melbourne’s Independent Theatre Makers; some of which I will include here in the spirit of independence – which I value greatly.

Peta Hanrahan, the Artistic Director of Australia’s celebrated The Dog Theatre (Winner of Best Venue: Melbourne Fringe Festival Awards 2009 and Winner of Best New Venue: Green Room Awards 2009) has fired the first of her many cannons and announced The Dog Theatre Gala on Friday 7 October, 2011 at the Footscray Town Hall. All profits from the evening will go directly towards supporting The Dog Theatre in the fiercely-contested Fringe Festival marketplace.

The $70 per head Gala package includes:

The Show
A special performance of one of The Dog Theatre’s Fringe Festival offerings Unpack This! In 2008, Geoff Paine (Clive from Neighbours) made headlines when he assaulted his neighbour (so you can imagine the headlines). Mr Paine was ordered by the Magistrates Court to attend a One Day Anger Management Course. He took notes – and Unpack This! is the result. Written by Mr Paine and starring Michelle Nussey, Syd Brisbane, Paine and Ross Daniels, this comedy about two social workers showing six men how to manage their anger promises “pain, regret and tears – and that’s just the counsellors!”

Wine from Enigma Variations
Tamara Irish, former principal of Tarrington Vineyards, along with New Zealand-born Julia Hailes, are progressing towards the establishment of a winery and vineyard – Enigma Variations – at the base of the Grampians in Western Victoria. Tamara and Julia are delighted to welcome the world of independent biodynamic farming and winegrowing to this remarkable piece of land.

The Cheese Board
To accompany your wine, a selection of cream and sharp cheeses, local seasonal fruits and breads selected to complement the Enigma Variations wine.

After the performance guests will have the opportunity to meet and mingle with the cast.

When Friday 7 October, 2011
Time 6.00pm
Where Footscray Town Hall, cnr Hyde and Napier Streets, Footscray

To book your Gala tickets and find our more information about The Dog Theatre’s Melbourne Fringe Festival offerings, visit their website.

Pictured: Geoff Paine and Ross Daniels. Image supplied.

Return Seasons: Pin Drop

Without a doubt one of the finest pieces of theatre I saw in 2010, Ms Saulwick brings her award-winning Pin Drop back to Melbourne for two weeks at The Malthouse's Beckett Theatre from 28 July to 7 August (with previews 26 and 27 July).

“The stranger breathing down the phone, the thump on the roof in the dead of the night, the danger lurking in the unlit street. Part documentary, part art-house thriller, Saulwick’s interdisciplinary work, Pin Drop, explores the phenomenon ... of fear in our day-to-day lives, and its impact on how we choose to live.”

More information including show times and bookings are available here.

Theatre Review: Bare Witness

Bare Witness. Written by Mari Lourey. Directed by Nadja Kostich. Performed by Isaac Drandic, Daniela Farinacci, Adam McConvell, Todd MacDonald and Maria Theodorakis. A La Mama Theatre presentation at fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne until September 26.

The cultural influence of photojournalism on the battlefield has resulted in some life-changing images. Some, like the Associated Press’s Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a naked little girl running along a road immediately after a napalm attack during the Vietnam War – are defining images of a generation.

Controversy, too, has challenged the reputation for authenticity of both written and photographic journalism that has emerged from places to which few of us would dare travel – especially given the life and death stakes that exist in constantly unpredictable war zones. Renowned war photographer Robert Capa’s iconic “The Falling Solider” – a photograph of a ‘soldier at the moment of death’ – has long been the subject of controversy, with a Spanish newspaper declaring it a fake in 2009. Capa, who most memorably (and miraculously) photographed World War II’s D-Day Landings in 1944, also once wrote: “If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.” Ironically, Capa was killed by a landmine in 1954 while on assignment for Time-Life magazine covering the first Indochina War. He died, it has been reported, “with his camera in his hand”.

Mari Lourey’s epic Bare Witness script (with dramaturgy from Julian Meyrick, Michael Carmody and Ms Kostich) is an extraordinarily layered, insightful and passionate testament to the monumental dedication and primal survival instincts of the people behind the lens. It is also, initially, coloured with an affecting optimism and engaging sense of ribald (if circumstantial) camaraderie amongst the correspondents, who meet the demanding negotiations for safety, translation, proximity, information, infrastructure and technology with determination, efficiency and an unhealthy cynicism.

Ms Kostich’s direction is busy early on – mistaking lots of activity for action. In spite of every best intention to create some memorable movement-inspired vignettes, the cast (who uniformly lack physical literacy, fluidity and powers of elevation) seem ill-at-ease with what unfortunately begins to resemble something more like vaudeville than a revelatory physical vocabulary complicit with the text. The ‘squaring the shot’ motif and the twee ‘clapping of the hands to signify the shutter in action’ just become repetitive, while leaping, twirling actors’ bodies achieve nothing like the exhilarating potential of leaping, twirling dancers’. Ultimately, the issue of how movement informs this determinedly stage-bound piece of theatre remains a considerable dilemma.

This is quite obviously an ensemble deeply connected to the material and the performance of it – and their memorising of this Herculean text is never less than outstanding. But while such clear and present subjectivity and intention does wonders to increase the worthiness of a piece, it does little to increase its powers of effective communication. The overall result is a piece of theatre that teeters uncomfortably on the precipice of self-reverential indulgence.

What hauls it back from the edge of that slippery precipice, are the moments when Ms Kostich trusts her ‘big picture’ instincts and everyone stops wandering and/or running around and flinging themselves all over the place. These moments of rare, potent stillness and introspection reveal a heightened level of engagement and focus with and on the characters and the subject. These fantastic moments of breath, space and stillness are when Bare Witness really comes into its own as an epic piece of theatre – while also revealing the true powers of a finely-tuned ensemble. This ‘air’ is no more beautifully incorporated than in the ‘telephone home’ sequences – the only moments we have to connect with the characters on a level and in a circumstance we implicitly relate to.

Jethro Woodward’s soundscape is marvellous – not only its pure inventiveness, but also in its complicity with the text. It’s just a real shame it all took place up in the corner where it became an absolute strain to watch him at work. It was frustrating to be denied the opportunity to become absorbed in the myriad of significant aural possibilities he was contributing.

Mr Carmody’s video, too, is far too conspicuously contained to realise any of its potential to influence the physical environment and is all rather too neatly incorporated and accounted for (as opposed to Mr Woodward’s random aural interjections and under-scoring) to be really effective. Emma Valente’s lighting, on the other hand, is intricately incorporated into the action, and the use of various different light sources throughout the performance are particularly arresting.

Ultimately, one might say the angles are all strange – which may well make for an interesting photograph, but not necessarily a great one.

Pictured: Maria Theodorakis, Daniela Farinacci and Todd MacDonald in Bare Witness. Photographed by Marg Horwell.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

Theatre Review: If, as … and Stranger in the Corridor

If, as … and Stranger in the Corridor. Two short plays by Mammad Aidani. Directed and Designed by Lloyd Jones. La Mama Theatre, Melbourne until September 19.

For people who like their theatre about refugees making new lives for themselves in Australia to be mostly variations on the theme of how ‘they’ can be more like ‘us’, then Mr Aidani’s powerfully brutal ode to the despair associated with a disintegrating mind desperate for comfortingly familiar reference points is not going to be your chai latté.

The mandatory detainment of asylum seekers is a controversial and internationally-criticised ‘policy’ of consecutive Australian Governments (from every philosophical spectrum) and in our reckless and self-serving political climate, it is difficult to separate these acts of governmental-ordained discrimination from the act of theatre-making. In a country that steadfastly and blindly refuses to acknowledge the essence of humanity and difference, the cultural relevance of the act of theatre-making assumes a profoundly necessary responsibility.

Consider this statement: “A boat-load of Sri Lankan Asylum-seekers”. Eerily familiar, isn’t it. Why? Because somewhere, in the favoured national fortress-like psyche, and a lazy, time- and resource-poor media, it is simply too complex to even begin to address the truth of the issues regarding refugees: which is that every person onboard that boat is a human being – a human being who has witnessed and experienced acts of torture, horror and destruction, to the extent that their only choice is to board a leaky boat and sail across the sea to a faraway island where, they hope, their lives will be better. There is a point, one might imagine, where the issues of refugees must become less about some kind of abstract scorecard (in the same way in which one year’s road toll competes with another’s) and more concerned with humanity.

The act of making theatre, especially as a result of its very close proximity to us at La Mama (and in Mr Jones’s ‘V-shaped corridor’), has the power to engage specifically with explorations of humanity – the psychological aspects of curiosity and fear we all share. And these two short plays currently on at La Mama are, make no mistake, powerfully illuminating theatre.

Mr Aidani’s two short extraordinary plays make immensely powerful statements about what is at stake for the human condition and the act of mental and emotional endurance. Directed by La Mama Elder, Lloyd Jones (who can trust a text to flower like few directors I know), our senses are starved of visual feeders, and instead, it is Mr Aldani’s words that take us through the stark reverie of a shell-shocked mind, and a once-abundant imagination struggling to filter and finally determine the truth and newfound relevance of haunting memories of colour, people, music and familiar sounds: the “invisible story”.

Every word is sacred, highlighting the fascinating juxtaposition of the first (If, as …) to the second (Stranger in the Corridor), where we are left contemplating which of the two male characters in the second play might be the male character in the first. Unless, of course, 'he' is 'us'.

In the first play, Mr Jones also makes a typically pertinent design statement about the occasional futility of language and effective communication with a clever and strategically placed sign which potently highlights the pointlessness of it all and begs the question “who tells us what we should do and why?”. In the second play, the projector that never works – and, in fact, is not even assembled – is another jewel of design detail of great significance.

In spite of the text’s references to “melody”, Mr Aldani’s text and Mr Jones’s direction of it, are determinedly anti-melody – with the exception of Shahin Shafaei’s haunting singing.

Elnaz Sheshgelani and Mr Shafaei (both originally from Iran) and Majid Shokor (pictured, who was born in Iraq and who was a member of the Iraqi National Theatre Company) deliver superb, committed performances. Their undeniable unity with the text lends this performance a rare authority and an invigorating authenticity. Mr Shafaei inhabits La Mama’s tiny staircase in a way that becomes almost too painful to watch, and the analogies with the character’s situation come hard and fast. In its complicity to the text and the study of enforced inaction, it is a beautiful performance. Mr Shokor’s ‘reading’ of the text is an inspired directorial choice, and Mr Shokor rises to meet the challenge with an almost innate level of respect and wonder that becomes increasingly difficult to endure.

The text is laced with sharp, penetrating observations about the toll being trapped or enclosed in a limiting physical space takes on our imagination and will to survive it, but perhaps the most telling is this one: “I don’t have anything to prove”. Or this one: “Silence”.

Some years ago in Sydney I met an Iraqi refugee who, while in detention, had sewn his lips together. Today, I am a little closer to understanding why. That is the power of theatre.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

Theatre Review: The City

The City by Martin Crimp. Directed by Adena Jacobs. Red Stitch Actors Theatre, Melbourne until 25 September.

There’s a stunning moment in Ms Jacobs’ adventurous, counter-intuitive direction of Mr Crimp’s edgy, tense, efficient if unremarkable elegy to inner-urban, fringe-dwelling fatalism for the Red Stitch Actors Theatre. When Clair (the captivating Fiona Macleod) has returned from a conference in Lisbon, she has gone straight upstairs to bed. A bright red alarm clock rings incessantly, bringing her downstairs to resume her tranquillised existence of manufactured empathy with her world and, particularly, her husband Christopher (a fearless Dion Mills). All of the elements – Ms Jacob’s razor-sharp direction, Danny Pettingill’s lighting design, Dayna Morrisey’s set design and Jared Lewis’s sound design – converge to make this a singularly riveting moment. And how I hoped it was all going to end there.

In the impossibly dense, concrete-laced, inner-urban sprawls of London (where this play is set), one constantly struggles with claustrophobia – a certain sky-lessness – which leads to a heightened awareness of how our spirit-sucking proximity to others in the high-density world of semi-detached fortresses exists in London like nowhere else I have experienced. (This is not to say that my experience is vast, but London’s inner-urban environments are pinched and cramped to the point of occasional bouts of immense paranoia.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, paranoia and neurosis are the constant feeders to Mr Crimp’s characters who are all really just in desperate need of a weekend by the sea. Or in the country.

Playwrights who fashion their plays as structure to action (or in Ms Jacob’s adventurous interpretation, inaction) run the risk of being found to be suddenly transparent – which on this occasion is no more clearly articulated than in the long-overdue appearance of the ‘Girl’ (Georgie Hawkins on this occasion). The young girl’s arrival opens a Pandora’s Box of, now, truly horrific possibilities. Regrettably, no sooner have the demons been released, than they are back in their box with the lid firmly closed. It is just one of the many points in this performance at where the calibre of what was happening on stage departed from the reason they were there. The trend of British playwrights exploring their quasi-autonomous habitational quagmires might well be interesting for them (or anyone who has ever lived in Islington), but the lack of universiality in the themes at play results almost immediately in an outstanding production in conflict with its source and, ultimately, superior to it on nearly every level.

Ms Morrisey’s set design which, while perfectly functional and cleverly multi-dimensional, is all too easy-on-the-eye to connect us to the environment in which Mr Crimp’s tortured characters might exist. More East Malvern than Eastgate Estate. But Clair and Christopher’s home is made of sterner stuff – blood, sweat and tears – as was cleverly articulated in the artfully contained and beautifully studied and composed performances from Ms Macleod and Mr Mills as the uptight couple in need of some serious marriage guidance counselling sessions.

Meredith Penman is superb as the next-door neighbour ‘Jenny’, and escorts the role to well beyond the pinnacle of its potential – particularly in her ‘this is how you act a monologue’ moment, downstage centre and delivered with the full force of an actress possessed. This is how good the acting is at Red Stitch – but the point at where the actors leave the characters behind says two things: yes, the writers give the actors their permission, but ultimately, the play itself is found to be wanting.

Curiously, one of the plays many structural flaws fails to reward the fascinating ‘Jenny’, Ms Penman (or us) with any kind of meaningful denoument. Strangely (and it may have all become a little too obscure for me by this stage), the essence of ‘Jenny’ is assumed by the ‘Girl’ (they wear identical costumes) and ‘Jenny’ is reduced to anesthetised wallpaper. So, you assume, ‘Jenny’ is the grown-up daughter. Or something.

Spoiler alert: The final scene, which plays with the deadening weight of a self-conscious epilogue, is incredibly anti-climactic and leans heavily (and deflatingly one-dimensionally) on the “then I woke up and realised it was all a dream” analogy. Playwrights ‘writing about their characters in their play talking about how the play came to be written’ might, some years ago, been considered marvellously illuminating post-modern de-constructionism. Today, it’s just pretentious – and in this case particularly, only serves to whip the rug out from under everything and everyone, including us.

So to all those playwrights out there beavering away on their inner-urban, Global Financial Crisis-infused, pre-apocalyptic nightmare piece: please know how to finish.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

Theatre Review: Outlaw

Outlaw by Michael Healy. Directed by James Adler. Eagle’s Neat Theatre. Northcote Town Hall until September 3.

There’s a really interesting play to be written about the complexities of ‘Green politics’, but this inert, one-dimensional drama by Mr Healy isn’t it. It doesn’t garner any favours, either, from Mr Adler’s almost perfunctory ‘walk-on during the blackout, stand and/or sit around, walk-off during the blackout' staging which appeared determined to disengage with the play’s all too fleeting and momentary moments of imagined intrigue and reduce it to a banal, self-interested and self-reverential soap opera.

In Germany (for some inexplicable reason), there is a tyre-slasher making a real nuisance of themselves within the local community, but the cast seem to treat the whole thing like the rest of us treat a pesky fly at a BBQ. As the play drags on, the head of the environmental activist organisation ‘Greenfriends’ (get it?) Tillman (Will Ward Ambler) is increasingly suspected of being the tyre-slasher. What doesn’t increase, sadly, is our interest in why it matters. What does increase, however, is our frustration with thinly-drawn characters standing and/or sitting around wrapped up in their own self-absorbed, dreary lives while Mr Healy takes to the media with the most unrelenting, tedious and ultimately pointless amount of ‘media bashing’ since the last Joanna Murray-Smith play I saw. The irony is that the indefatigable Phil Zachariah gave the best performance as ‘Ludo’, a journalist. David Loney as ‘Andreas’, Tillman’s “Right Hand Man” literally burst onto the stage with an abundance of energy, characterisation and audibility, which only made him seem more and more out of place – as though he was acting in an entirely different production of an entirely different play. If anyone else had made even the slightest effort to rise to meet him, we might have had a performance on our hands.

The bits of design by Meri Hietala were great, albeit very literal – especially her use of tyres as an ottoman and as parts of the over-used sofa. I especially liked her knife chandelier.

Ultimately, the real dramatic irony of this performance was that only a day later, Australia had its first ‘Green’ MP in our House of Representatives (even if it was with Labor and Liberal preferences) and an increased number of seats in the Australian Senate. Now that’s fascinating. But I’m only a self-serving journalist, so what would I know?

The review was commissioned by Stage Whispers magazine at www.stagewhispers.com.au

Theatre Review: The Boy From Oz

The Boy From Oz. Music and Lyrics by Peter Allen. Book by Nick Enright. The Production Company, State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne. Returning 5 to 16 January, 2011.

Before Bette Midler performed the final song of her “Kiss My Brass” concert in Sydney in 2005, she told us that Australia had been responsible for the gift to the world of some of the best songs she had ever sung. Then, as the stage became awash with pink, Ms Midler sang Peter Allen’s Tenterfield Saddler. Ms Midler is always at her best with a thoughtful and considered ballad, and her performance of this iconic Allen tune was perfection.

And on Wednesday night, as we filed out of the State Theatre having witnessed the opening night performance of the Production Company’s The Boy From Oz, I overheard someone say “just perfect” … and how right they were. Great performances of theatre sometimes appear to take place inches above the stage, not on it – such is the unquestionable dynamic certain ensembles of performers bring to the presentation of their craft.

Blessed with an amazing script by the great Nick Enright, Nancye Hayes’s direction is all pure theatrical animal instinct and the tableaus that meld her vision of the show together are stunning. The fluidity and precision with which this enormous undertaking moves across the huge State Theatre stage is seamless, and Ms Hayes fills the stage with immensely beautiful stage pictures, painted with people, that – at times – are just breathtaking. Andrew Hallsworth’s sensational choreography is faultless and delivered with great vigour and passion by the never less than outstanding cast.

And what a cast! Christen O’Leary and Fem Belling have the unenviable task of bringing Judy Garland and Liza Minelli to life, respectively, and both manage to do so with considerable impact. Robyn Arthur was divine as Allen’s mother Marion Woolnough, and her show-stopping, tear-inducing performance of Don’t Cry Out Loud was magic. David Harris, was equally divine as Allen’s lover for 15 years Greg Connell, owning I honestly love you with a show-stopping interpretation that was so good and so beautifully performed, that it was as though the song was existing for the very first time. Fletcher O’Leary (one of the two boys who will play Young Peter throughout the season) gave the performance of a seasoned veteran, and his melding with the older Peter in the recreation of the famous Radio City Music Hall Rockettes kick-line was yet another show-stopper. Wonderful support was provided by the razzle-dazzle trio of Claire George, Samantha Morley and Sun Park who, apart from being very handy with moving the white grand-piano, also conquered the vocal demands with artful precision and flair.

Musical Director John Foreman championed the big, challenging score into one dazzling unit and his band, including members of Orchestra Victoria, was the best it is possible to be. In Music Theatre, there’s an unspoken anxiety in the relationship between the music, the work and the audience. It’s that moment when an instrument slips out of tune or off the beat. It’s that tempo that trips over itself or drags. It’s that startled cringe when the magic and slippery bond that unites great ensembles of musicians falls away. But not here. Mr Foreman and his band were in complete command, and the result was electrifying, particularly much of the tempi which showcased not only Mr Allen’s fantastic tunes, but powered the work of the entire company. From the complete Broadway tuner When I Get My Name In Lights to the intricacy of every heartbeat of Quiet Please, There’s a Lady Onstage, Mr Foreman and his band were pure trust, and more perfect than the greatest expectation.

Shaun Gurton’s impressive and marvelously versatile set design served the work at every turn and Trudy Dalgleish’s lighting of it was brilliant. Kim Bishop’s wonderful costumes brought the showmanship and the pizzazz to life beautifully, but also served to reinforce the era in which Peter Allen lived – a life of such immense passion, dedication and total commitment to the pursuit of his dreams.

Some performers are simply perfect for a particular role – and Todd McKenney brings Peter Allen to life as though they share every piece of one another’s DNA. McKenney’s is a must-see performance of music theatre fire, passion, artistry, flair and great intelligence. Quite apart from the fact that he rarely leaves the stage (and only then to change into another of Mr Allen’s signature outlandish shirts), Mr McKenney reads every beat to perfection and is so alive to every nuance of his character’s journey through this thoughtfully structured show, that at times, it becomes quite overwhelming. When the archival footage of Mr Allen playing the piano and singing Tenterfield Saddler is projected onto a large screen that descends from the fly tower, Mr McKenney sits on a step and watches him with such admiration and understanding that it becomes an incredibly powerful moment of pure pathos – the kind that is only possible in the theatre when ‘theatre people’ are doing what they do best.

And it’s hard to imagine a better example of it than this.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

Theatre Review: She's Not Performing

She’s Not Performing by Alison Mann. La Mama Theatre, Melbourne until September 5.

There’s an important new voice in Australian Theatre – and it is the voice of young playwright Alison Mann, whose first full-length play She’s Not Performing is an absolute ripper. ‘Issue-based’ theatre always has the potential to be sabotaged by its own worthiness, but not in the hands of this adventurous and marvelously talented young playwright and her dramaturg – Melbourne’s Mistress of psychosexual invention and efficiency, Maude Davey. Stripped away is all the sometimes attendant cloying and wearying victim association, and what we are left with is a script of immense perception, totally lacking in sentimentality and one that not only does complete justice to the stories of the birth mothers of adopted children whom have shared their intimate secrets with Ms Mann – but entirely alters the hackneyed old clichés associated with our condescending and entirely ignorant perceptions of their act of often supreme personal sacrifice.

If Tanya Beer is not one of Melbourne’s hottest and most inventive designers (beautifully illuminated by Darren Kowacki and Lisa Mibus’s captivating lighting design), then I have no idea who is. Ms Beer’s eventual loss to the mainstages of not only this country, but I predict others, will be a great loss to Melbourne’s independent theatre scene. Her signature and singular abilities to substantially alter our perception of spatial relationships within the theatre space is without peer on the independent scene, and her design for this play (like her visionary work for Platform Youth Theatre Company’s One is Warm …) is unerringly brilliant, responsible, evolved and in complete service to the text. Her catwalk structure for She’s Not Performing is possibly representative of the finest use of La Mama’s demanding little space I have ever seen – and to walk into the theatre and suddenly find it not only unrecognisable but appearing to be about twice as big, is no mean feat. Ms Beer never forgets the ceiling and all the wonderful creative possibilities that exist between it and the floor. And like that wonderful piece of advice a seasoned traveler gave me before I left for my first trip to Europe – “Don’t forget to look up” – this is completely involving design for theatre.

Kelly Somes’s direction, it might be argued, could not have failed, but Ms Somes’s wonderfully inventive use of the space and the skillfully guided and riveting rawness of the honesty of the performances she has harvested here mark her as a director to watch. Yes, there are a good too many comings and goings and, as usual, it’s impossible to determine exactly how much of the extraneous fizz was the result of opening night nerves – but there’s nothing to be nervous about, because the piece moves with undeniable force of honesty, skill, understanding and a profound need to be seen and heard.

Andrea Close as ‘Margarite’ gives one of the best performances of the year as the woman who gave away her child. Fearless, shameless and utterly committed to the enormous task at hand (Margarite is only offstage for a costume change), Ms Close’s performance is a must-see. It would be a mistake to discuss it in too much detail here, because the range of emotions you will feel watching Ms Close bring the complex Margarite to life should unfurl for you in the same startling, profound and hypnotic manner in which they unfurled for me. Her precise stillness, her charming and child-like optimism and abandon and her immense sadness and regret, eventually compound into a grand scene between her and 'Hamish', the father of her only child – beautifully realised by Christopher Bunworth.

Interestingly, the weakest character is young ‘Iain’, Margarite’s earnest and erstwhile suitor, played by Mike McEvoy. Whether Mr McEvoy was determined to play the subtext or whether the character really does appear on the page as a bit of a ‘wet-nappy’, is impossible to tell. It was only these scenes that revealed a hint of Ms Mann’s lack of experience and, perhaps, dominant vision that her play would be about the stories of the women, almost at the expense of the emotional needs of the men in their lives and in her play. It was fascinating that the women were beyond ‘victim’ but both the male characters were still very much anchored in their woe and pouty, disempowered misfortune. It is the same gender deficiency that spoiled Jane Campion’s The Piano for me, and quite possibly, Mr Bunworth and Mr McEvoy might need to actually be less-intimidated by Ms Close’s Margarite and more responsible for their place in her life as truths awaken in all of their hideous beauty.

Rachel Purchase is superb as ‘Annie’, and the joy of watching her scenes with Ms Close are as memorable as it gets. Again, it would be remiss of me to say too much about Ms Purchase’s challenges throughout the evening – but she rises to meet them all with star power, divine physical literacy and a genuine and affecting naivety.

I cannot recommend this short season highly enough. Rug up, and go. You’ll be sorry you missed it.

Photo by Talya Chalef.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

Theatre Review: The Bougainville Photoplay Project

The Bougainville Photoplay Project. Devised and performed by Paul Dwyer. Directed by David Williams. Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall until August 15.

In the award-winning 1999 documentary Facing The Demons, the family and friends of murder victim Michael Marslew meet face-to-face in a ‘restorative justice conference’ between two of the offenders responsible for Michael’s death. Produced by the Dee Cameron Company, the documentary was broadcast to widespread critical and public acclaim – going on to win the Logie for ‘Best Documentary’ and the Award for Best Television at the United Nations’ annual Media Peace Awards.

‘Restorative justice’ and ‘restorative practice’ are both more- and less-complex versions of the concept of mediation, fuelled by society’s need (and preference) for understanding, forgiveness, harmony and mutual respect and cooperation as opposed to the ‘criminal justice system’ that focuses exclusively on argument, punishment, incarceration and – hopefully – rehabilitation.

In this beautifully directed and performed lecture, Dr Dwyer explores the essence of restorative justice through his engrossing, intimate reminiscence of his father Allan’s work (and his young family’s experience of it) as a renowned orthopedic surgeon in Bougainville during the 1960s. Gradually, the performance shifts its focus to the post-colonial relationships between the people of Bougainville, the Australian Government and BCL (a subsidiary of the mining giant Rio Tinto) whose enormous open-cut copper mine resulted in social and environmental armageddon.

Through the use of archival video (including the mining company’s shocking propaganda film My Valley is Changing), slides of a young family’s visits to Bougainville, photographs, projections and a collection of the “miracle doctor’s” tools the ghost of Dr Allan Dwyer pervades the performance, which makes its capitulation into agitprop a little discomforting. The juxtaposition between the pure-hearted goodness of one (the good doctor) with the capitalistic, imperialistic and self-serving actions of the other (the evil mining corporation) fails to do the argument complete justice. There is no illumination with regards to what the advantages of this mine might have been (if in fact there even were any), and yet without it, there is a hint of political opportunism that for inquiring minds, decreases the overall effectiveness of the piece. The resulting simplistic strain of revenging and avenging the horrors of destructive industry in the bountiful region also fails to meet the complex psychological imperatives within the concept of ‘restorative practice’ – abandoning us, instead, approximately halfway up the great Silvan Tomkins’s ‘Nine Affects’ scale of the human expression of emotion (disgust, distress and shame).

Interestingly, apart from the stunning recreations of his father’s surgical procedures, Dr Dwyer really ups the stakes with a stunning performance of his dangerous nighttime trek to a local forgiveness ceremony. With the use of only a tiny flashlight and a complete command of Bougainville’s lingua franca – Tok Pisin – we experience another level of engagement entirely both with and between the performer and his story. It becomes something like an exorcism – and is at once thrilling, dangerous and exciting. It is also the only point at where the performance embodies the fundamental cultural differences and similarities that define the accepted endpoint of restorative practice in action – which is euphoria, discovered through the act of understanding, acceptance and forgiveness, not the conceptualisation and analysis of it.

Dr Dwyer’s quiet and disarming final statement is that he plans to return to Bougainville with his two sons sometime in the not too distant future. I, for one, wish him well. What it will ultimately take for our nation to follow, sadly, remains anyone’s guess.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers Magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

Theatre Review: Sappho ... In 9 Fragments

Sappho … in 9 Fragments. Written and performed by Jane Montgomery Griffiths. Staging by Marion Potts. CUB Malthouse, Melbourne until August 21.

Sometimes being in the audience at the theatre can be an enlightening, entertaining, challenging, thought-provoking, deeply moving and uplifting affair. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, it can be all of these things. Mostly, you count yourself lucky if it’s one of them. Sometimes, you can also sit there wondering what on earth is going on, and I need to confess, straight up, that from the moment it started to the moment it finished, Ms Montgomery Griffiths’ brilliantly performed ode to the poet Sappho went straight over my head. I’m sorry, but it did. I felt it all whiz past me, as I stared balefully at the stage wondering what on earth I’d missed. Had Act One started at 6pm? Was this Act Two? Why was she naked? Where do you go from the purest of human physical forms?

And like falling asleep on a train and waking up – panicked and disorientated – at an instantly unrecognisable locale, I realised that I was in the wrong place – particularly complex when you’re there to write a review. The harder I tried to concentrate, the more hazy it all became. I would grip onto a word, a phrase, a sentence … desperately trying to make sense of it all. What was it trying to say? What was I supposed to feel?

What is that great big box doing taking up almost the entire stage and restricting one of the most singularly adventurous and physically literate actresses in the country to a zillionenth of what might have been possible?

I’m hallucinating! Embellishing! Delirious with the fear of my own dumbness. The starkness of my sudden and confronting illiteracy! I’ve got no idea what she’s talking about. Oh, wait. Gaps. I am the gap. The gap. Gap. Gap between what? And what? The gap between all this wonderfully clever writing and acting and my power of even fundamental comprehension. She’s in love with someone who’s gorgeous and … oh, now she’s a nasty bossy nasty piece of work. I think. Maybe.

Biscuit tin. Now I am in a biscuit tin. I visualise a biscuit tin – one with a particularly pretty embossed tableau of some sweet, snow-bound English village like the ones you buy really cheaply at Coles at Christmas Time to have on standby for when friends drop by and have a Christmas present for you and you don’t have one for them. God!

This Sappho is everything! … and she has a beautiful coat.

I’m clever enough, I think, to know that the play is going to finish when the honey has all dripped out of the box and onto the stage. I have to keep telling myself it’s honey, because my poor little over-zealous imagination is beginning to imagine it’s something else. But nothing prepared me for the meat-tray.

I leave the theatre with my platonic plus one and we wander, destroyed and disillusioned, off into whatever remains of our ordinary little, happier lives.

It’s been five days and it’s still no clearer … but I did go to Borders and try to buy a book I’ve always wanted to read: The Death of Socrates. Or Plato. One of them. They don’t have it in stock! I’ve failed again. I will be cleverer! This intoxicating Sappho would expect nothing less. Would she?

Pictured: Jane Montgomery Griffith in Sappho. Photographed by Jeff Busby.

Theatre Review: Stephen Lynch – The Three Balloons Tour

Stephen Lynch: The 3 Balloons Tour. The Palms at Crown, Melbourne.

Diminutive YouTube phenonemon and Tony Award Nominee Stephen Lynch took all of about a minute to have the capacity crowd eating out of his hands with a hilarious video about a ‘Hands on a Hard Body’ competition. In it, Mr Lynch has been in training for ages (along with a rag-tag bunch of other competitors), to endure the wintery elements and keep his hands firmly planted on a truck. The person who keeps their hands on the truck the longest, wins the truck. Hands gloved and incredibly psyched up for what could be any number of days and nights ahead, the competition begins and everyone places their hands on the truck. Lynch’s punch-drunk enthusiasm immediately gets the better of him, and in a moment of unbridled glee, he removes his hands from the truck and waves them about in the air. And he is immediately disqualified.

It is this marvelously endearing moment of self-deprecating humour that sets the tone for all that is follow, as Lynch sets out to avenge his obvious failings with the incarnation of a (literally) devilishly sexy and blokey personae where nothing is off-limits. His imitation of Christopher Reeve (“Dear Diary”) was spectacular – just as his safety valve (the words “too soon?”) challenged us all to lighten up and question the extent to which we were truly outraged. The difference is all in the intention, and one never sensed that Mr Lynch was being cruel. He was, instead, harvesting recognisable moments of our lives and our history to bring us all to the euphoric point of just being able to have a bloody good laugh, in spite of our earnest concerns about being politically incorrect.

This was certainly not a show for the uptight PC crowd who would have been totally offended by much of what was on offer. When comedians push the envelope to the extent that Mr Lynch does, it all comes down to talent and charisma. Even though he admitted to feeling terribly jetlagged and sick (which showed in some of the slower rambling segments that barely held together), you never had the sense that here was a performer taking themselves too seriously.

There was also the added bonus of the devoted audience singing along (not bad for someone whose work we only know of from YouTube), and his song about his “special” friend (“Special Ed”) had the audience roaring out the lyrics (“ … and now his mother keeps him in the / SHED!”) Interestingly, the most vocal members of the audience were male – proving that regardless how we all feel about a song about waiting for the results of our AIDS test (which started the show), its provocative lyrics certainly found their mark. Subliminally, Mr Lynch is also making a significant comment about the importance of safe-sex – and I would posit that a large percentage of his audience would take-home a punchy and compelling message about the need for it in their lives. He should be congratulated for taking the time and the responsibility because, frankly, no-one else is.

Lynch was superbly supported by his best mate Rod Cone who, expertly, was the butt (both literally and figuratively) of Mr Lynch’s rambling odyssey to bromance and appalling humourous, blokey camaraderie. Their song about the ‘hot girl’s fat best friend’ in the pub was so spot-on that it has been the subject of much conversation ever since – as was the song about “Queer Tattoos”, which was almost as clever and tear-inducingly hilarious as it got.

The sound at The Palms at Crown was stunning, but the lighting was appalling which resulted in a nasty shadow residing under Mr Lynch’s chin all night which only succeeded in ageing him by about thirty years. Utterly unattractive.

Knife-edge satire (where Mr Lynch happily and unapologetically lives) is a punishing form of comedy, and lesser talents would have crumbled under the conceit. Not so Mr Lynch, whose singing voice, diction and timing is fantastic and who can really belt out his tunes on the guitar and the piano. His use of his guitar as a lute was just sensational. Tom Lehrer, Noel Coward, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore all forged careers with satirical observations about the cause and effect of manners, ambition, society and the travails that come with each and all of those things – and Mr Lynch is doing a marvellous job of keeping the camp fires burning. Check him out on YouTube. You may very well be mortified, but you won’t be disappointed.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers Magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

Theatre Review: Norm and Ahmed

Norm and Ahmed by Alex Buzo. Directed by Alex Pinder. La Mama, Melbourne, until August 15.

Anyone who wants to know anything about playwriting, directing, acting and designing has until August 15 to get themselves to La Mama and see this brilliant account of Mr Buzo’s (a national treasure, surely) faultless first play.

Written in 1969 (which today is somehow almost too confronting to accept), it was notoriously the subject of a prosecution for obscenity – not, as La Mama’s Artistic Director Liz Jones pointed out (in her wonderful and emotional postscript to the performance) for the use of the word “boong”, but for the use of the word “fucking”. It was here, at La Mama, that Norm and Ahmed was first produced – and as a gentleman in the audience pointed out before the drawing of the famous ‘La Mama Raffle’: “Have the police been notified?” Norm and Ahmed also holds the La Mama record for the most re-stagings of a play at the theatre – with this Many Moons production being the fifth.

Mr Buzo’s script is all lean, theatrical muscle and Mr Pinder’s direction of it is absolutely beautiful in its stark and pure textual complicity. Peter Finlay (Norm) and Kevin Ponniah (Ahmed) deliver two of the most accomplished, tour de force performances in recent memory, and one has no choice but to forgive them their opening night nerves in front of a capacity house – bursting at the seams – for this rare and historic occasion.

In ‘Norm’, Mr Buzo somehow miraculously – and entirely – encapsulates a complex national identity including its deep-seated anxieties about the very essence of what it means to be different. From ‘Norm’s’ razor-sharp commentary about the “perverts” in the bushes to his moving reminiscence of his late wife ‘Beryl’ and his experiences as a soldier in the war – Norm is a monstrously illuminating creation. That people like him still exist, is cause for serious contemplation – and it is in his holding up of the cracked mirror where we, reluctantly, may find something of our own prejudices reflected, that marks Mr Buzo as a truly astonishing playwright. That it’s all done and dusted in under an hour makes him a master.

The tendency to fall into caricature in the performance of these two roles is never far from likely – such is the perilous line between stereotype and archetype around which great writers of great characters for the stage dance. In Mr Finlay’s hands, however, the immensely complex ‘Norm’ is in a craftsman’s hands. At times, through a most incredible vocal and emotional range, it was never entirely clear if Norm was going to kiss Ahmed or kill him. Norm’s vulnerability, his fear, his hatred and his quintessential Australian suspicion are all beautifully realised in this stunning performance. For anyone even remotely interested in the art of acting, this is what it looks and feels like. As Ahmed, Mr Ponniah is all wide-eyed wonderment and naivety – layered with a sense of genuine eagerness to be accepted by his marvelously engaging new-found friend. Mr Ponniah’s complete command of Mr Buzo’s dialogue was superb – and the audience loved it. The shouts and cheers at the end of the performance, with curtain calls which one sensed could have gone on all night, were entirely well-deserved.

Nothing, however, can prepare you for the final moment in Norm and Ahmed – and the woman sitting three seats away from me almost leaping from her seat and screaming “No!”, was the entire measure of this electric night in the theatre. It is compulsory viewing. Go.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers Magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

Film Review: Me and Orson Welles

Me and Orson Welles. 114 minutes. Rated PG. Directed by Richard Linklater. Screenplay by Holly Gent Palmo and Vincent Palmo Jr. Based on the novel by Robert Kaplow.

There is a marvellous synergy about Richard Linklater's sparkling little gem of an independent film that tells the story of a week in the life of teenager Richard Samuels (a perfectly captivating Zac Efron).

At the height of the Great Depression, young Richard finds himself cast in Orson Welles’s (an unerringly brilliant performance from Christian McKay) Mercury Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar – performances that would become known as one of the most important theatrical events in history. The undeniable synergy is that, throughout his career (including 1941’s Citizen Kane and a notorious radio broadcast of H G Wells’s The War of The Worlds that convinced New Yorkers that Martians really were invading their city), Welles waged an unrelenting battle with the influential Hollywood studios of the 1930s and ‘40s for his right to complete creative control. His passionate audaciousness and pure creative genius is brilliantly realised in this film that has been made and distributed without the support of a major Hollywood studio – even if it has taken two years to get here!

Kaplow’s novel, (based on a true story), has provided Palmo and Palmo Jnr with a marvellous story about the power it takes to pursue one’s creative dreams – and their screenplay doesn’t miss a beat. Dick Pope’s (Topsy Turvy) cinematography is superb, as is Laurence Dorman’s perfect production design (the intimate and detailed recreation of every nook and cranny of The Mercury Theatre is, in its finite detail, astonishing). Bill Crutcher (Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang), David Doran and Stuart Rose’s (both of whom worked on The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time) art direction is beautifully-observed, while Nic Ede’s (Nanny McPhee) consummate costuming generates both a magnificent period feel but also a wonderful individuality that flawlessly serves the film’s bold, theatrical adventurousness. Linklater’s frequent collaborator, film editor Sandra Adair, establishes and maintains a sublime pace that never falters.

Zoe Kazan (as a delightfully optimistic young writer, Gretta) is a revelation, with a performance of immense range, power and conviction, while Claire Danes is perfect as Welles’s ambitious assistant, Sonja. Ben Chaplin (Dorian Gray) is equally good as Mercury cast-member ‘George Coulouris’, and his stage-fright scenes immediately prior to the nerve-shattering opening night performance (in which he is playing Mark Antony) are rivetting.

This is a film for lovers of the theatre, radio, film – a film that will amply reward the time you spend in its richly engrossing, compelling, and vastly entertaining company.

Theatre Review: Salonika Bound

Salonika Bound by Tom Petsinis. Directed by David Myles. La Mama Courthouse, Melbourne.

Much of the power of great writing for the theatre comes from the juxtaposition of what is and what is not said – often associated with the vastly under-rated and consistently under-utilised skills of the Dramaturg. In Mr Petsinis’s case, there is an utterly compelling case for him to forge such a relationship because while his latest play Salonika Bound has flashes of brilliance, it is also constantly undermined by verbosity, repetition and simply too much tedious exposition. Equal parts memory play, reunion drama, chamber musical and history lesson, it also continues the disturbing trend of Melbourne playwrights borrowing observation from the vast human tragedy of the Holocaust, without honouring the complexity of its political, human or social context – either then, or more importantly in a contemporary theatrical context, now.

Achilles Yiangoulli and Argyris Argyropoulos’s songs are pretty, lyrical and melodic – but they do absolutely nothing to advance the plot, and Mr Myles’s direction is too frequently sabotaged by their placement which only serves to ensure that the performance grounds swiftly and completely to a halt. It is only when Laura Lattuada rediscovers her voice at the end of the performance, that the musical element makes sense, but it’s a small price to pay for having had to sit through the interminable musical interludes that also had everyone else on stage treading water for long periods of embarrassingly vacant time.

Antonios Baxevanidis’s performance, however, of the play’s dramatic highpoint – a monologue about the significance of the number tattooed on his arm – was immensely powerful, as was the scene where Mike McEvoy’s ‘James’, Bruce Kerr’s ‘Dimitri’ and Ms Lattuada’s ‘Helen’ debated the essence of the traditional value and cultural significance of a name. It was only these two scenes that resulted in any cultural illumination, and it is a great pity that Mr Petsinis didn’t explore this rich territory of identity more adventurously.

Marshall White’s set and video design was excellent – particularly the way the suggestion of the tiles on the floor were extended into the appearance of crucifixes on the wall.

No doubt the cast will settle into the rough and ready rhythm of the piece as the season progresses, but this is strictly theatre for the converted: those who desire to stare into the mirror of their own cultural imperatives. For the rest of us, it offers only a hint of illumination – even though there is something of a really fascinating idea struggling to get out from underneath simply too many well-intentioned words and far too many songs.

This review was commissioned and first published by Stage Whispers Magazine www.stagewhispers.com.au

Theatre Review: Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto

Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The story of Emanuel Ringelblum by Neil Cole. Directed by Dominique Bongiovanni; Performed by Alex de la Rambljie, Liran Shachar, Phil Zachariah and Joseph Strou. An Eagle's Nest Theatre production at La Mama Courthouse, Melbourne until May 16.

The Holocaust has inspired many artists around the world to share their interpretations of the events that, collectively, define the single greatest crime against humanity in living memory. As an historical event, it has become increasingly scrutable, thanks largely to the tireless endeavours of publishers, authors (such as Primo Levi), filmmakers (Steven Spielberg), archivists and benefactors who are determined to document the extent of the horrors before the generation of survivors are lost to us forever. And while it is a cultural imperative that we record and share these experiences to enhance our understanding of how such systemic annihilation of our fellow human beings could happen, it is also equally imperative that we do the telling of them justice: something which this ambitious Eagle's Nest Theatre production struggles to achieve.

The story of Emanuel Ringelblum bears extraordinary witness to the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto, the single largest Jewish Ghetto in German-occupied Europe. Together with other members of the doomed community, he collected a wealth of information and documentation about such things as the effects of starvation and disease throughout the ghetto, as well as details about the revolutionary anarchists who would later form the foundation of the famous Warsaw Ghetto uprising – the single largest act of resistance and revolt by the Jews against the Germans during the Holocaust.

Director Ms Bongiovanni just doesn't seem to have been able to find a theatrically invigourating way to bring Mr Cole's didactic script to theatrical life. As Ringelblum, Mr de la Rambelje spends the night shuffling and generally fussing about with bits of paper and wandering upstage where these critical historical documents get filed away in some random order and location. The actors are also hindered by too much sitting and standing around, and too many unfulfilled comings and goings. Mr Stroud (who plays the young radical David), has the unenviable task of constantly arriving onstage to deliver increasingly desperate news about the escalation of human tragedy that was unfolding in the ghetto. That he was too often met by a lack of depth of reaction (other than cursory nods to how terrible it all was) made the night increasingly uncomfortable.

There also appeared to be some difficulty remembering lines, and the apprehensive and, at times inaudible cast, were not helped by the lack of atmosphere or even the fundamentals of design (there is no designer credited in the program). The over 25,000 individual pieces that made up Ringelblum's collection are represented by shambolic bits of paper and some second-hand books which only lends the production an unfortunate mood of a garage sale.

Mr Cole is to be acknowledged for bringing the story of Emanuel Ringelblum to a wider audience, but the overall feeling is that, while he obviously reveres his subject, he has not found the raw and honest connection with him and what he and his colleagues achieved, to make it a fascinating and illuminating insight. There's a great deal of idle and, ultimately, repetitive chat about Trotsky, anarchy and the sins of the Jewish Council (the Jews who formed what was essentially local government in the ghetto). But to come away from a night at the theatre that purports to tell the stories of the Warsaw Ghetto unmoved and underwhelmed, is to do the service of these memories a significant injustice. I hope it improves as the season progresses.

Theatre review: Mortal Engine

Mortal Engine. Chunky Move. Director and Choreographer Gideon Obarzanek; Interactive System Designer Frieder Weiss; Laser and Sound Artist Robin Fox; Composer Ben Frost; Costume Designer Paula Lewis; Lighting Designer Damien Cooper; With Kristy Ayre, Sara Black, Marnie Palomares, Lee Serle, James Shannon, Adam Synott, Jorijn Vriesendorp. The Merlyn Theatre at the Malthouse, Melbourne until 13 March, then Sydney Theatre, 5–15 May, 2010.

The wildly contrasting, and often conflicting, creative disciplines of dance, theatre, cinema, multimedia and visual art are almost impossible to wrangle into one cohesive whole; and if Chunky Move's ambitious Mortal Engine doesn't quite manage to triumph over the fourth wall, it's certainly not through want of trying. When it does work, it is truly something to behold: a spectacular fusion of forms to which we find ourselves connected – almost transcendentally – like our pulse. When it doesn't, it's never less than a fantastic experiment in dire need of a purpose; other than being one hell of a multimedia show loosely constructed from all sorts of technical wizardry, powered by Ben Frost's magnificently formidable soundscape and interrupted by occasional choreographic flourishes.

A large white screen lies at an almost impossible (to dance on, anyway) angle on the stage … as though a cinema screen has been tilted to a thirty-something degree angle from the floor. It's an intoxicating prospect; and the first thought is something along the lines of "how are the dancers going to dance on that thing?" But with striking power, strength, precision and startling elasticity, they do. The extremes that these faultless bodies cannot reach are flawlessly assumed by the stunning projected multimedia elements on, and practically through the screen, that create a trance-inducing, kaleidoscopic surface that explores the world of shadows, shapes, metaphysical extensions of touch and, at times, quite miraculously, the dancers' very souls. It is finger-tip exactedness; and only the very few moments when the dancers are lit by traditional spotlights from above, are the tender, uncomplicated gestures of rare, poignant intimacy.

Mortal Engine, however, also continues the increasingly exhaustible trend of contemporary dance projects relying on the visual dynamics and vocabulary of multimedia. Meryl Tankard's The Oracle (recently also in the Merlyn Theatre) began with a very long multimedia presentation that had me looking sideways at my companion and wondering whether we'd actually come to a dance performance or a video installation. When one is in the honourable position of having the opportunity to see as many shows as reviewers are, it all starts to resemble an extreme kind of over-reaction to the limitless possibilities that multimedia offers. At worst, it's a dangerous statement about the limits of purely choreographic adventure. At best, it's an exciting exploration of form. The awkward questions, however, remain: is contemporary dance experiencing some kind of identity crisis? Or are multimedia and contemporary dance inexorably linked in what is, increasingly, a marriage of pure convenience?

I know reviewers are not meant to speculate on what 'might have been', but the nagging doubt about how much more involving the experience of Mortal Engine might have been in a found space, as opposed to a theatre, continue. The chief doubt (among the many) I have about this work, is that it steadfastly defies (and denies) both genre and theatrical (as in four-walled) conventions; including its dispensing with everything but the fundamentals of a narrative. Creative artists dispense with story at their peril; risking, instead, the reduction of, and requisite alienation from, the extent to which we engage with, and share in, the rewards of the performance. While there are certainly some memorable highpoints in Mortal Engine, including some sensational elevations (from not only the dancers, but also the set), and a furiously breath-taking male solo across the screen's entire surface, it ends up being a purely, if hypnotic, observational experience.

We spend a great deal of time, too, wondering and marvelling at how on earth it's all happening. But at some point, however, the dominant curiosity becomes – and remains – "Why?", not "How?". Or maybe it's as simple as "Why not?" You decide … because perhaps to Mortal Engine's unending credit, I can't. And that has been its greatest gift.

This review was commissioned and published by Stage Whispers @
www.stagewhispers.com.au