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: 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: Pin Drop

Pin Drop. Created and performed by Tamara Saulwick. Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall until Sunday August 29.

Sometimes, but only very occasionally, theatre-makers redefine what’s possible. Sometimes, the often fraught act of ‘collaboration’ evolves to result in a piece of theatre so hypnotic that you can’t actually believe what you are seeing. But rarely, in my experience, does a piece of theatre-making get so entirely under my skin that every single sense is startled into being in ways that I had never imagined possible.

With what can only be described as pure genius, Ms Saulwick and her expert team of artists and eleven additional recorded voices, has created one of the most extraordinarily involving and rewarding theatrical experiences. Every one of my senses was awoken by this intoxicating and hypnotic symphony of sound and light from the exceptional Ms Saulwick – and anyone who has any interest whatsoever in sensory perception or a stunning showcase in breath-taking technical skill should rush to the Arts House at the North Melbourne Town Hall this weekend to experience this supreme example of it.

Even with a grueling review schedule in the punishing Melbourne mid-Winter, I was compelled to walk home from North Melbourne with every one of my senses newly awakened to anything and everything that was going on around me. The sound of a creaking door in a shop across the road, distant voices, my heels on the footpath, screeching tyres and trundling, clanging trams – every familiar sound was highlighted in a totally new and unique way, such is the sensory power harvested and elucidated in this magnificent performance of immense theatrical adventurousness.

Sound Artist Peter Knight (composition, sound design and operation) is a genius. The intricate, other-worldly qualities of Mr Knight’s soundscape are astonishingly good, and in all my theatre-going experiences, I have never experienced technical artistry of such profound sensory invigoration like this. Ever. The design – credited to Bluebottle – Ben Cobham and Frog Peck – is extraordinary, deceptively simple yet masterful and remarkably perceptive. It makes me almost grieve for that way sound and light is so unjustly mis-used in the theatre (where even just turning a couple of lights on and pointing them at the stage seems to be considered ‘design’).

But it doesn’t stop there – such is the determination of Ms Saulwick for her peformance to be one of such alarming originality that even (and one might say especially) the good old theatre term ‘blackout’ takes on an entirely new dimension. Michelle Heaven’s movement is absolute and performed by Ms Saulwick with such a heightened level of skill and awareness that it is almost brutal in its sparsity, constantly surprising in its invention and never less than entirely of service to the soundscape and the almost filmic visions that unfold with pure poetic beauty.

Unforgettable. Go.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers magazine @ 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

Theatre Review: The King and I

The King and I. Music by Richard Rodgers. Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The Production Company, State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne.

Truly great musicals – of which Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I must be close to the most perfect example – set every creative team who takes them on an unenviable set of obstacles. The first one is the audience’s experience of the show that has gone before. (One of mine was a disastrous performance in London’s West End when, suffering from laryngitis, Susan Hampshire – who was playing Mrs Anna – had a go at I whistle a happy tune, and then they just cut the rest of her songs. It was, as you might imagine, appalling. Strangely, however, the show is so good that it still managed to shine through the hapless attempt at its presentation.)

I also have exceptionally fond memories of Melbourne’s Arc Musical Theatre Company’s production (many, many moons ago!) – starring Sylvia Picton as a glorious Mrs Anna and Tony Kentuck as The King. And then there is the 20th Century Fox film – the indisputable and most perfect account of this musical there has been, and will ever be.

And while I’m not predicating that every attempt at staging The King and I is measured against the resources of a major motion picture studio, I am certain that the overall experience of a production of this musical (similarly to The Sound of Music – which 20th Century Fox, fighting their way back from financial and artistic oblivion on the back of the troubled (and expensive) Cleopatra, threw everything they could at, resulting in similar perfection) must offer something else other than just a serviceable account of the material.

The Production Company has consistently provided its stars every opportunity to shine in their staged concert performances of some of the great, mostly American, musicals. For some inexplicable reason, this is the first of their productions I have seen – and, in her welcome piece in the program, Production Company Chairman Jeanne Pratt is entirely correct: it won’t be my last. This opportunity to see and hear Rodgers and Hammerstein’s gem almost had me booking to go back and see it a second time. Almost.

The most exciting news is that a star was born in Melbourne’s State Theatre on Wednesday night. Her name is Emily Xiao Wang, and her ‘Tuptim’ was sensational. So too, but less consistently, was Adrian Li Donni’s doomed Lun Tha, and their duets I have dreamed and We kiss in a shadow were the musical highlights of the evening. But nothing either before, or afterwards, compared to Ms Xiao Wang’s absolutely perfect rendition of the early ballad My Lord and Master. Silvie Paladino came close with her sterling rendition of Something Wonderful – but something was missing. Ms Paladino had yet to make the necessary connection to the number: she just didn’t seem to believe it. Yes, it’s a great song – a standard. But within the context of any kind of performance of The King and I, it becomes a great love song, not an anthem – and Ms Paladino’s handling of it was masterful, but a little too efficient.

Chelsea Gibb appeared ill-at-ease as Anna Leonowens, and I never imagined I would hear I whistle a happy tune performed as a big broadway belt. Frankly, I hope I never do again. It’s the first big, instantly recognisable moment – and it served to set a series of alarm bells ringing in my head. I need to declare that I am a R&H traditionalist – and if this was going to be a post-modern interpretation of one of the great acting/singing/dancing leading ladies of the music theatre canon, it was going to be a very one-sided affair. Fortunately, Ms Gibb warmed up as the evening progressed and revealed (to me anyway) a strong upper register that she would do well to instinctively trust a great deal more. Having thoroughly adored her Roxy in Chicago (where the big ‘Broadway belt’ belongs), the revelation of a vastly increased range was exciting.

The King and I, without the famous polka, just isn’t The King and I – and the supreme disappointment resulting from the fact that Kathryn Sproul’s otherwise perfectly versatile central structure didn’t get out of the way so that the most famous sequence in this musical could happen on the huge State Theatre stage was quite palpable.

Musically, Orchestra Victoria – under the direction of Peter Casey – handled the score beautifully. My only reservation was the decision to split the orchestra in two (with the strings on one side of the stage and the brass, woodwind and percussion) on the other. I found this reduced the impact of the sound considerably – resulting in a less than satisfactory over-amplified sensibility. The lack of cohesion also took its toll on The March of The Siamese Children – where it seemed, for an instant, that this wonderful piece of music just got away from them. The choice to split the orchestra like this seemed to also make something of a statement about how much more important the staging imperatives were to the musical ones. Unhappily, even though Terence O’Connell’s direction was beautifully handled, it didn’t illuminate anything particularly new and invigorating about this work that might have meant the splitting of the orchestra was a wise or valid idea.

Alana Scanlan’s choreography (with the exception of a half-hearted polka) was perfect – and the long, troublesome The Small House of Uncle Thomas ballet in the second act was spectacularly imagined and brilliantly danced.

But at the heart of The King and I, is the King – a sensational role for the right performer. And Juan Jackson is precisely the right performer. His near-complete command of this fascinating and entirely unconventional leading man was superb, and one can only imagine that as the season progresses, he will become more comfortable with the many complexities of the role. Further down the track, it’s not at all difficult to imagine Mr Jackson making something of a signature role with his future performances as The King in The King and I.

The death of the King is the death of a wide-eyed, amazed, bewildered child/man who is on the precipice of achieving great things for his country. I cry every time I see the film. I was not moved in quite the same way by this performance. There is a big heart beating in The King and I – that is its monumental power. And when that heart stops beating, it is an immense tragedy. I hope that this wonderful company, through each performance that remains, discovers something more of that heart.

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

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: Dead Man's Cell Phone

Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl. Directed by Peter Evans. Melbourne Theatre Company, Sumner Theatre, Melbourne until 7 August.

‘Magic Realism’ is a magnificent concept. When it exists in its most startlingly pure, unadulterated form, both the ‘magical’ and ‘realistic’ elements flawlessly blend together to enhance our understanding and appreciation of not only where it is possible to ‘be’, but how it is possible to ‘feel’. Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones (from Alice Sebold’s novel) are my definitive examples, to date, of its existence in the theatre and cinema respectively. In both of these examples, the elements – combined – had the extraordinary power to alter my comprehension and experience of time and place.

Obscurity and self-indulgence, the perilous traps into which artists exploring the abstract and surreal metaphysical worlds constantly risk disappearing into, are the arch-enemies of the world of magic realism. To avoid them, every opportunity must be fully explored, resolved and embraced – with clarity of imagination, intellect, heart and soul – to ensure that we’re not able to see the cracks and joins that are required to elevate us to this fantastical metaphysical realm.

Sadly, missed opportunities abound in this deadly, tram-crash of an offering from the MTC. As a result of Mr Evans’s determinedly stage-bound and unimaginative staging, Ms Ruhl’s self-reverential play is revealed to be much worse than it is (although I actually suspect it’s not that great anyway). Even fully-laden jumbo jets eventually (and magically) get off the ground, but Dead Man’s Cell Phone lumbers along the runway courtesy of questionable structure, a teeth-grindingly twee scene in a stationery shop, a overly camp airport terminal sequence accompanied by some unconvincing stage-fighting (even though the man sitting behind me was audibly quite impressed by the sight of two women fighting), and interminable scenes of psychology for pre-schoolers.

Jean (Lisa McCune) is in a Laundromat when she discovers that the reason Gordon (John Adam) won’t answer his cell phone is because he’s dead. When she continues to answer his incessantly ringing phone, she rather conveniently finds herself introduced to his family – all of whom have been scarred by Gordon’s apparent rampant narcissism. And on and on and on it goes.

Ms McCune skips along the pantomime route and never gets under the character’s skin – sacrificing all the wonderful myriad of possibilities for lots of cute, loveable nervously apprehensive acting, which had the audience tittering with affection. The simple fact, however, is that Jean is far from cute. She is a sad, tragic, desperately lonely young woman, and Ruhl’s ultimate sacrifice of her on the altar of impossibly trite and banal romantic convention is utterly disappointing. Sue Jones (as the matriarch of the family) was great – even though I couldn’t help wishing I was watching her play “Auntie Mame” or Arnold’s mother in Torch Song Trilogy (both of which she’d be perfect for). John Adam, Sarah Sutherland, Daniel Frederiksen and Emma Jackson all acquit themselves beautifully within the incredibly limited (and limiting) director’s vision, but after seeing Mr Frederiksen in the equally unfortunate Rockabye, it’s really time for the MTC to offer him something decent.

Claude Marcos’s momentarily clever Laundromat design refuses to get out of the way or effectively transform into anything other than a really expensive props table. That the actors have to wander around moving chairs and tables in the scene-changes like they used to when it was considered creative, becomes really tiring and derails whatever hope there was ever going to be for decent pace. Paul Jackson’s lighting design tries hard to take us somewhere, but never really had a chance because the big, ugly, green-walled Laundromat steadfastly refuses to budge.

Whenever people bemoan the fact that I chose when (and when not to) answer my mobile telephone, I always inform them that “my mobile phone exists for my convenience, not yours”. It’s that simple really. That this little golden rule negates much of Ms Ruhl’s thinly-structured, ‘other-wordly’ and pretentious mumbo jumbo about mobile telecommunications polluting the after-life is just one of the many points at where my interest in the proceedings simply evaporated, never to return. But I did rush home and do my washing.

Pictured: Lisa McCune in Dead Man’s Cell Phone. Photographed by Jeff Busby.

Theatre Review: Blood

Blood by Sergi Belbel. English language translation by Marion Peter Holt. Directed by Scott Gooding. A Vicious Fish Theatre production at Theatre Works, St Kilda until 4 July.

Trust and honesty, like truth, are devilishly slippery touchstones in the theatre, and if this ambitious Vicious Fish Theatre production didn’t quite manage to raise the stakes high enough on opening night, there is little doubt it could. And if it does, it will be something to behold. Watching it tentatively unfold on opening night, it was obvious that the company had the permission to fearlessly explore within Mr Gooding’s beautifully crafted direction, but – with a few notable exceptions – the cast remained almost uniformly apprehensive and tentative in a piece that demands the exact opposite: a primal scream of fever-pitched fear so real you can taste it.

Belbel’s searing, unsentimental play about the circumstances and consequences of a politically-motivated kidnapping, is an absolute ripper – efficient, perfectly structured, bitingly succinct and powered by flashes of brilliant observational satire. And in a week where we had our own particular brand of political blood-letting, Blood’s quintessential theme of unwavering belief in one’s right to self-determined rule over others in any given dominion, appeared to not have originated in Spain at all – but just a few hundred kilometers north in our own national capital.

Janine Watson, as the kidnapped wife of Jon Peck’s politician, delivered a beautifully complex and committed performance, while Peck, too, was excellent in his dual roles of a hapless policeman and the morally-bankrupt politician. Theatre Works’s notoriously cruel acoustics took much of Kassandra Whitson’s big monologue moment prisoner, but her performance as the politician’s mistress and a pregnant policewoman revealed the essence of a really outstanding performance. Alison Adriano, Chloé Boreham and James Tresise all seemed a little unsure and ill-at-ease – with choices, voices and character seeming to almost evaporate within the huge, stark and demanding space.

Rose Connors-Dance’s superb lighting design made much of the distracting and unnecessary set redundant. (I actually still don’t understand why this show had a set.) Connors-Dance’s obvious understanding and appreciation for the definitive power of shadows and darkness was risky, but flawlessly realised – supporting and, in fact, defining the space perfectly. ‘Because of Ghosts’ contributed some disappointingly fleeting moments of intriguing musical soundscape that seemed to exist almost to have lit the flame under the entire performance. That it didn’t quite take on this particular occasion takes little away from the fact that Vicious Fish are an independent company to watch out for. And if everyone has resolved to accept their entire share of responsibility for what could be a rivetting performance of a fantastic play, it would qualify as the show to see.

Pictured: Kassandra Whitson in Blood. Photographed by Paul Dunn.

Theatre Review: King Lear

King Lear by William Shakespeare. Bell Shakespeare. Directed by Marion Potts, Designer Dale Ferguson, Lighting Designer Nick Schlieper, Composer/Musician Bree van Reyk, Sound Designer Stefan Gregory. The Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne, then His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth from 18 June.

Poor Shakespeare. His works have been trussed up, borrowed, abused, paraded as ‘chocolate box confection’ and shoe-horned into any and every possible ‘modern dress’ incarnation at the whim of directors the world over.

“Shakespeare,” wrote Peter Brook, “never lingers very long on the same scene, his style changes constantly … so the process of preparing Lear … was elimination – of scenic detail, costume detail, colour detail, music detail …”. And Brook would know. His 1962 Royal Shakespeare Company production starring Paul Scofield as Lear, is revered as the benchmark by which all other productions are measured – even by people like me, who weren’t even there.

But on Wednesday night, every Lear I have seen or imagined was swept aside by an ensemble of performances and a production so profoundly, beautifully complex that not since I melted, hypnotised, into the wall during a Kabuki performance in Tokyo has a piece of theatre stunned me with its textual and visual complicity and simplicity. That it should be this grand, torrid family drama of insanity, insecurity, betrayal, greed and envy is an absolute credit to Ms Potts, who has quite obviously staked her reputation, and that of Bell Shakespeare, on it. And how magnificently well-rewarded for the courage of that vision she is.

It is impossible to deny the influence of the time-honoured Japanese theatrical traditions of Kabuki, Noh and Butoh on Ms Potts’s paper-cut precise and bewilderingly painful ritualistic exorcism of Shakespeare’s greatest play. One of the fundamental Noh disciplines is that each member of the ensemble contributes to the performance their individual, impulse-driven instinct – resulting not in an ordered structure of a well-rehearsed ensemble – but a unique performance of spirit and rhythm that exists, like the act of theatre itself, for the very first time. Independence from all that has gone before.

Nor are there ‘stars’. Instead, the discipline demands – insists – that actors deliver a truthful instinct so pure and ego-less, that the performance dynamics are constantly in a rarified and exhilarating state of continual flux. It’s an enormously risky choice – and here, it is realised with something close to Zen-like perfection.

In Jane Montgomery Griffiths’ astonishing ‘Goneril’, this discipline was absolute. Her twitching, grotesque, lusty, power-hungry Princess was as bold, as risky and as adventurous as any performance I have ever seen. Josh McConville’s Butoh-inspired ‘Edgar’, was a mind-blowing marriage between physical vocabulary matched with an astonishing vocal range and prowess. As the blinded ‘Gloucester’, Bruce Myles was riveting and heart-breakingly raw and honest in his connections to the text and his dismal circumstances. Tim Walter’s sexy ‘Edmund’ was nothing less than the perfect object of the Princesses’ (and, audibly, most of the audience’s) desire. It can be hard to be sexy in Shakespeare – but not for Mr Walter, whose flirtation and silly, juvenile, power-hungry fantasies are brought bone-baringly to life, resulting in the deaths of practically everybody. His desperate, panicked admission of guilt – like a spoilt little boy who has accidentally burnt the house down playing with matches – capped off a brilliant, passionate performance. Peter Carroll’s ‘Fool’ will be remembered as, if not the, then certainly one of the finest of any actor’s on a Melbourne mainstage. It is, for my money, his career’s best, and should be seen to be believed.

The ensemble are inspired and supported throughout this immensely challenging performance by the divine, playful, inventive and intuitive percussion from Bree van Reyk. Dale Ferguson’s set and costume design is constantly startling – perhaps no more so than the devastatingly simple use of fur coats scattered about the huge stage, to represent the casualties on the battlefield. Symbolic in its minimalism, here is design that is never less than entirely of service to the vision, the performances and the text. The utilisation of the large, round revolving disc that sits centre stage provides the ensemble one opportunity after another to revel in their complete command of this production’s adventurous, intricate and deceptively simple stagecraft. At turns, with consummate ease, it becomes music box, throne, clifftop, vast castle chambers, indoors, outdoors and, with something like centrifugal force, it takes centre stage as Lear and his Fool battle and rage against the elements during a stunning storm sequence. Nick Schlieper’s amazing lighting design is so intrinsically at one with the production design, and as the play moves to its icy, barren second act, the lighting sends both visual and literal shivers right across the stage with some fascinating use of what looks like huge, white sheets of latex. The effect is mesmerising.

But at the heart of King Lear, there is Lear. And John Bell’s performance is one of such beautiful, heartfelt purity that one can only imagine it’s possible from an actor so entirely within a character’s skin that anything more would risk tearing it. It is a beautiful, intelligent, understated performance that, while successfully providing the massive text with its pulse, steadfastly refuses to corrupt the emerging performance dynamics with showy self-indulgence. His wondrous, wide-eyed stare ahead of him in the seconds before he died, brought tears to my eyes.

For a company celebrating 20 years of performing the works of William Shakespeare, this is an inspirational and unforgettable night at the theatre. See it.