Thursday 27 October 2016

Godspell Reimagined, Oct 26, 2016 ***


MUSICAL THEATRE 
Music & new Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, conceived and originally directed by John-Michael Tebelak
Produced by Simon Myers and Glenn Elston 
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne until Nov 6, 2016 
Reviewer: Kate Herbert 
Stars: *** 
Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Thurs Oct 27, 2016. KH
 Colleen Hewett
 The golden rule for Godspell Reimagined is that thou shalt have Colleen Hewett in your finale.

Hewett’s appearance for the last 10 minutes of Glenn Elston’s production of this rock musical elevates this cheerful, entertaining but only intermittently satisfying show to another level, and any flaws in the earlier scenes are forgiven.

With her smoky, coffee-coloured tones, Hewett enters singing Prepare Ye The Way of the Lord, then leads the ensemble with her impassioned and professional rendition of Day By Day, the song that she sang in the original Australian Godspell in 1972.

Michel Tebelak conceived and directed the original, 1970s Godspell, basing the narrative and dialogue on the Gospel of St. Matthew and depicting the story of Jesus as he teaches through parables, suffers betrayal by Judas then dies on the cross.

Godspell Reimagined features Stephen Schwartz’s fervent music and new lyrics, but Elston has reduced the company from eight actors and four or more musicians to a total ensemble of eight.

Schwarz’s songs are the highlight, including the rousing Prepare Ye and the moving Day By Day, the kooky, vaudevillian tune All For The Best, the celebratory You Are The Light of the World, the rocking We Beseech You and the sweet, folksy number, By My Side (by Peggy Gordon, Jay Hamburger).

Although this scaled down production is engaging and the cast are capable singers and musicians, the acting is uneven, the voices are tuneful but not exceptional, and the production lacks the passion, youthful exuberance and compelling tragedy of the Godspell we know and love.

The broad slapstick, improvisational comedy and topical references are often entertaining – the interpretive dance of anger during the Prodigal Son parable is hilarious – but many of the company lack the requisite comedic delivery and timing to make this entirely successful.

The production might benefit from more complex choreography (Sue-Ellen Shook) and more layered musical arrangements (Lucy O’Brien).

Act Two abandons most of the comic interplay and concentrates more successfully on Judas’s betrayal of Jesus and the impending tragedy of Jesus’s Passion and Crucifixion.

Mark Dickinson has a strong presence both in the ensemble and as the traitor, Judas, while Christopher Southall sings well as Jesus but lacks the necessary charisma for the role, while Louise Fitzhardinge and Bonnie Anderson provide a range of supporting characters.
Christopher Southall & Mark Dinkinson
Another queen of Australian musical theatre royalty appeared briefly on opening night when the cast invited an audience member on stage; and who do they bring up but Debra Byrne. We might have witnessed an impromptu duet by Hewett and Byrne!

But it was Hewett, wearing a simple white robe, who stole the show, held us in the palm of her hand during Day By Day and got us on our feet as we cheered and thanked the Lord for her professionalism and God-sent voice.

By Kate Herbert

Saturday 22 October 2016

Kinky Boots, Oct 22, 2016 ****


MUSICAL THEATRE
Book by Harvey Fierstein, Music & Lyrics by Cyndi Lauper
Based on movie written by Geoff Deane and Tim Firth
Presented by Michael Cassel by special arrangement with Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig in association with Cameron Mackintosh
Her Majesty’s Theatre, until Jan 15, 2017
Review by Kate Herbert
Stars: ****
Review also published in Herald Sun online at 10.30pm on Sat Oct 22, 2016. KH

 Callum Francis(centre) with the Angels in Kinky Boots
The glittering, fire-engine-red boots in the musical, Kinky Boots, are ‘two-and-a-half feet of irresistible, tubular sex’, according to Lola (Callum Francis), the high-kicking drag queen.

With his sassy dancing, bold vocals and comedic skills, the willowy Francis is the audacious and flashy star turn of Jerry Mitchell’s Australian production of Harvey Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper’s Tony and Olivier Award-winning musical.

When young, ambitious Charlie Price (Toby Francis) unwillingly takes over his deceased dad’s failing shoe factory in the North of England, his new acquaintance, Lola, suggests Charlie change his product to cater for a lucrative, niche market in glitzy, thigh-high boots for cross-dressing men.

Fierstein’s book, based on a true story and the ensuing 2005 movie, is like a marriage of the high campery of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, La Cage aux Folles and Hairspray with the gritty, British working class characters of Billy Elliot and The Full Monty.

The highlights of the show are Mitchell’s vivacious choreography of the drag queen chorus line, the Angels, and Lauper’s spirited pop tunes that range from funk to power ballads with lyrics that illuminate story and characters (music arrangements by Stephen Oremus).

The vibrant drag chorus number, Land of Lola, is deliciously garish, and the flamboyance escalates in Charlie’s drab shoe factory when the sultry Lola leads the provocatively brazen number, Sex Is In The Heel.

Act One culminates with Charlie’s factory workers joining drag queens in the impudent and saucy ensemble tune, Everybody Say Yeah, with its complex and inventive dance routines performed on production line conveyor belts.

The fever pitch finale brings the audience to its feet with Raise You Up/Just Be, a celebration of Charlie and Lola’s kinky boots and the factory workers’ willingness to accept change and tolerate difference.

Toby Francis is suitably nerdy and uptight as Charlie with his principal vocal strength being in his upper register, and his duet with Callum Francis, Not My Father’s Son, is a poignant interlude between the brassy drag routines.

Sophie Wright is feisty and clownish as Lauren, the factory girl with a crush on Charlie, and her rendition of The History of Wrong Guys is warm and witty, while burly Daniel Williston plays tough Don with comic, stereotypical chauvinism.

Fierstein’s book is accessible and funny, although the dialogue sometimes slips into sentimentality and earnestness, simplifying the complex issues of gender, discrimination and acceptance of diversity.

The characters in Kinky Boots are jaunty and engaging, and we want Charlie, Lola and their workers to succeed and shine, not just in Northampton, but also on the critical, fashion catwalk in Milan.

David Rockwell’s set design boldly contrasts the grim, brown-brick factory exterior and its dilapidated shop floor, with the gaudy glamour of Lola and her Angels who are costumed (Gregg Barnes) in bold coloured lamé, sequins and, of course, the titular, kinky boots.

Kinky Boots may be a bit preachy and not the most memorable of musicals, but it should win audiences with its pop melodies, ostentatious choreography, extravagant costuming and simple sentiments.

By Kate Herbert

Friday 21 October 2016

887 by Robert Lepage, Oct 20, 2016 *****


THEATRE
By Robert Lepage, Ex Machina, Melbourne Festival
Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne, until Oct 22, 2016
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars:*****

Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Fri Oct 21, 2016, and later in print. KH
Robert Lepage in 887.

Remarkable. Robert Lepage’s solo show, 887, is simply remarkable.

In this inspired and mesmerising production that illuminates memory in startling ways, Lepage seamlessly blends personal storytelling about his childhood in Quebec City in the 1960s, with the political struggles of French-speaking Canadians during that period.

He delivers it all as a hypnotic and luminous, visual feast that transforms the stage and transports the viewer to another time and place that is 887 Avenue Murray, the apartment block in which the pre-adolescent Lepage lived with his family in Quebec City.

Lepage addresses the audience directly and with ease as he narrates this autobiographical epic, beginning the show with an unembellished, conversational chat on a dark and empty stage that slowly metamorphoses as he introduces the residents of 887 Avenue Murray who appear as if by magic as tiny people in their miniature apartments.

Lepage is our gentle guide as he plunders his own memory, describing in compelling detail his father, mother, siblings and grandmother and every other family in the building at 887, including the classical pianist, the Irish Catholics, the belligerent family across the hall and the unfaithful wife in the flat above.

As Lepage navigates his path through these vivid, intimate recollections of his childhood, he interweaves glimpses, commentaries and video fragments of the fraught political and class battle that fractured 1960s Quebec.

At the centre of Lepage’s political commentary is the provocative, 1968 poem, Speak White, by Quebecois poet, Michèle Lalonde, a difficult, 3-page piece that Lepage must memorise and perform, and that challenges his adult memory and confronts his views of the oppression of culture, race and language by jingoistic, English-speaking groups.
The set design (Steve Blanchet) is staggering in its complexity and flexibility as Lepage, like a magician, opens and closes myriad doors and panels to reveal each new and intricate location: buildings, apartment interiors, kitchen, library, a bar and his father’s taxi in both full size and miniature.

Large and small video monitors embedded in the set display subtle or astounding imagery (Félix Fradet-Faguy), while the stage is tinted with atmospheric and evocative lighting (Laurent Routhier).

Although he ranges across time and issues, 887 feels like Lepage’s homage to his beleaguered and humble father, a handsome, Quebecois man who came from poverty, married and laboured as a taxi-driver to support his family.

The most poignant moments in the narrative are the scenes when Lepage as a child waits for his exhausted father to return home at night, and the final scene when the child comforts his grieving father who sits in his taxi, mourning his own mother’s death.

This theatrical experience with Robert Lepage will leave you gaping at its virtuosity and intimacy, its visual lushness and elegant simplicity. Beg, borrow or steal a ticket immediately.

By Kate Herbert 



Thursday 20 October 2016

War and Peace, Gob Squad, Oct 19, 2016 ***1/2


THEATRE 
Devised by Gob Squad, Melbourne Festival and Malthouse Theatre 
Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse, until Oct 30, 2016 
Reviewer: Kate Herbert 
Stars: ***1/2

 Review also published at Herald Sun Arts online on Thurs Oct 20, 2016. KH

Don’t expect grim imagery or an intensive or academic scrutiny of Leo Tolstoy from Gob Squad’s adaptation of War and Peace, because this production is playful and eccentric rather than confronting or impenetrable.

Gob Squad, a company of English and German theatre artists based in Berlin, teases out ideas, characters and situations from Tolstoy’s mammoth, 1869 novel about the Napoleonic wars and the 1812 French invasion of Russia, and makes them their own.

The show starts gently with the four actors (Tatiana Saphir, Sharon Smith, Bastian Trost, Simon Will), dressed in rose-beige, silken ‘gowns’ (costumes by Ingken Benesch) that ridiculously expose their lower bodies.

They formally introduce audience members and invite them to join the actors on-stage in a French-style salon that echoes Anna Pavlovna Sherer’s salon in Volume One of War and Peace.

This production draws loosely on the structure of Tolstoy’s novel, but the audience cannot be passive and the improvised style makes these salon guests an intrinsic part of the show as the actor-hosts ply them with strawberries, vodka and brandy while encouraging them to reveal personal stories or discuss global issues.

The performers are all charming, quirky, funny and skilful as they weave fiction and fact, improvisation and live video around Tolstoy’s grand landscape of affluence and wartime horrors.

The performance is non-linear, shambolic and irreverent, shifting from conversational dialogue at the salon table, to extracts of Tolstoy’s novel read aloud from the page, to oddball arguments between actors playing characters such as Napoleon and Tsar Alexander.

The actors introduce a bevy of Tolstoy’s Russian characters by portraying them in a parodic fashion parade in which the actors don jackets, robes and hats to give satirical snapshots of leading characters from the novel.

The focus shifts, as does Tolstoy’s writing, away from the fictional narrative and characters toward a more philosophical discussion of history and its impact on the present and future.

The set design (Romy Kiesling) incorporates a battlefield tent with sheer, gauze curtains as well as small and large screens onto which are projected live video of actors and salon members, evocative images of luxurious, Russian interiors or paintings of the Napoleonic battlefield.

This production defies description, not only because of its loose structure and improvised nature and its blend of comical and serious content, but also because its tone, content and participants will change with each audience.

This War and Peace treats the issues of war and peace with a light touch that may indicate an unwillingness to delve too deeply into the darker side, but it gently prods the audience to ponder not only Tolstoy’s book but also his lessons about history.

By Kate Herbert


Monday 17 October 2016

Sunshine, Oct 16, 2016 ***



THEATRE 
By Tom Holloway, Red Stitch Actors Theatre
Red Stitch Actors Theatre, until Nov 5, 2016 
Reviewer: Kate Herbert 
Stars: ***
 Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Mon Oct 17, 2016 & later in print. KH
L-R: Caroline Lee (back) , George Lingard,  Philip Hayden, Ella Caldwell
On the city streets on a night of teeming rain, four apparently unrelated, but equally distressed characters share their stories in an overlapping narrative that leaves the audience gasping for breath.

In his new play, Sunshine, Tom Holloway employs a ‘choral’ style that interweaves four, unnamed characters’ monologues that tell the tale of a damp and doomed night when a marriage ends, a dead husband is mourned, a man betrays his friend and two strangers’ lives collide.

Before the inter-connection of their stories becomes clear, each character embarks on some solo soul-searching that reveals dark secrets and obsessions, deepest fears, and alarming thoughts that we hope do not manifest themselves in action.

Directed by Kirsten von Bibra, the actors (George Lingard, Ella Caldwell, Philip Hayden, Caroline Lee) initially carry their own, narrow, vertical, fluorescent lights that look like church candles but shed an unholy glow that heightens the desperation of the characters and the eeriness of the night.
Lingard’s Man 1 starts his night in a supermarket after which he pursues an unwitting customer along city streets, while Caldwell’s Woman 1 shifts manically between passionate memories and frantic tears.

Hayden is Man 2, cheerfully obsessed with a carload of teenagers whose car stereo blares a Billy Joel tune, while  Lee’s Woman 2 reflects on her past while driving around town in her husband’s enormous, leather-seated car.

Their words pour out in streams of consciousness, or come in stuttering fits that interlock with, or echo each other, but never communicate directly with other characters or create a linear dialogue.

Following their individual stories is a challenge as they prattle and rant, weep and laugh and sing, sometimes simultaneously, and this makes the first hour of the show exhausting, leaving one craving a moment of silence.

The performances are generally strong, particularly from Lee who finds a tender and poignant beauty in the grieving, older Woman 2.

Lingard creates a dangerous and volatile presence, Hayden makes his character warm and vulnerable, while Caldwell has a frenetic, youthful edginess.

Holloway’s dialogue is not easy to perform, so the actors’ delivery is sometimes awkwardness and cueing is occasionally loose although these issues may be eliminated over the season.

The final scene that replaces the theatrical device of interwoven monologues with a surprisingly conventional dialogue between two characters is a welcome relief from the previous intensity and complexity, but it is a disappointingly predictable ending to the play.

While Sunshine is a novel, theatrical experience, Holloway’s experiment with language and narrative is not entirely successful.

By Kate Herbert

The Color Purple, Musical, Oct 15, 2016 ***


MUSICAL THEATRE
Book by Marsha Norman; Music and Lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis & Stephen Bray
Based on Alice Walker’s 1982 novel and Spielberg’s 1985 film
Presented by StageArt 
Chapel of Chapel, until Nov 6, 2016 
Reviewer: Kate Herbert 
Stars: ***
 Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Mon Oct 17, 2016 and later in print. NB: The title uses the American spelling of 'Color'. KH
 L-R front: Thando Sikwila, Jayme-Lee Hanekom, Vanessa Menjivar


Through both song and story, the musical of The Color Purple captures the heartache and pain of Alice Walker’s 1982, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on which the musical is based.

By focussing on the life of one girl, Celie (Jayme-Lee Hanekom), as she grows from abused child to assertive woman, the narrative (Marsha Norman) depicts the grotesque violence against African-American women in the American South during the early 20th century; violence perpetrated not only by white folks but also by black men.

The musical, directed here by Robbie Carmellotti with musical direction by Caleb Garfinkel, has very little dialogue, but includes 28 songs (Music and lyrics by Stephen Bray, Brenda Russell, Allee Willis) ranging from Gospel to blues, jazz, ragtime and African-influenced songs.

Apart from the abuse by her father (Augustin Tchantcho) and her husband, known only as Mister (Kendrew A. Heriveaux), Celie’s greatest pain stems from being separated from her dear sister, Nettie (Anna Francesca Armenia), whose letters from Africa, where she is a missionary, are intercepted for years by Mister.

As Celie, Hanekom travels a path from a timid, repressed and abused child who bears two children to her father by the age of 14 and is forced into a violent marriage, to the confident, independent woman who reclaims her life.

The pocket-sized Hanekom’s own confidence soars during the show and her voice is at its best in her final, impassioned solo, I’m Here.

As Shug Avery, the self-possessed, liberated singer and object of Celie’s love, Thando Sikwila is sassy and seductive with exceptional vocal power, range and control that seem effortless in her solo, Too Beautiful For Words, her bold ‘juke joint’ number, Push Da Button, and her duet with Hanekom, What About Love?

The singing and acting skill of the cast is uneven, but the chorus numbers are rousing with some thrilling harmonies and a particular highlight is Noelani Petero as the Church Soloist who leads the ensemble in Mysterious Ways, the stirring, opening Gospel number.

Vanessa Menjivar is audacious and funny as Sofia (played in the film by Oprah Winfrey), the impudent, young woman who bends to no man’s will, including that of her husband, Harpo, who Iopu Auva'a plays with gentle, comical diffidence.

The set (Carmellotti), comprising simple, wooden platforms, provides a flexible stage for multiple locations, but it is creaky and awkward for the actors, while the staging and choreography (Jayden Hicks) lack imagination.

This sprawling saga about Celie’s life includes some funny and poignant moments, but its highlights are the music and a few standout performances.

By Kate Herbert

Friday 7 October 2016

Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, Oct 6, 2016 ****


MUSICAL THEATRE

Adapted by Lee Hall, bases on The Sopranos by Alan Warner; by National Theatre of Scotland and Live Theatre
Melbourne Festival
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne, until Oct 22, 2016
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Oct 6, 2016.
Stars:****

Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Fri Oct 7, 2016 and later in print. KH
Cast
 Former Catholic schoolgirls, take heart. When compared with the alcohol-, drug- and sex-fuelled rampage of the six choirgirls in Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, your real or imagined, past transgressions will look positively saintly.

With their secret stash of boozy beverages, the choir travels by bus to an Edinburgh choral competition to represent their convent school that claims the dubious honour of a ridiculously high teen pregnancy rate.

The choir’s angelic, unaccompanied voices, singing Mendelssohn’s Lift Thine Eyes in the opening scene, belie the mischief and outrageous behaviour that follow in Vicky Featherstone’s rollicking, hilarious and poignant production of Lee Hall’s adaptation of Alan Warner’s 1998 novel, The Sopranos.

Hall’s stage narrative is episodic, with short, swift scenes that effectively capture the frenetic energy and rapidly changing mood and location of these unruly, dysfunctional girls over 24 hours as they hit the clubs with the aim of getting plastered and shagged – but they express it much more crudely.

The girls punctuate their frenzied exploits with a repertoire of tunes ranging from Don’t Bring Me Down and Sweet Talkin’ Woman by 1970s rock band, Electric Light Orchestra, to the dulcet, reverent tones of J.S. Bach’s Agnus Dei.

The performances, peppered with constant, blasphemous expletives, are vivid and vivacious, the six-part harmonies are thrilling and the actors embody the frenzied, adolescent behaviour that masks the poignant fact that the girls’ future looks grim while their present is fuelled by despair and raging hormones.

Caroline Deyga is the brassy Chell who has faced a lot of death in her short life, while Joanne McGuiness plays hapless Orla who travelled to Lourdes to cure her cancer.

The feisty Kylah, played by Frances Mayli McCann, sings in a local band but has loftier ambitions, while Kirsty MacLaren’s wiry Manda adds milk powder to her bath to make her feel like Cleopatra.

Karen Fishwick is the prim Kay, the middle-class girl who the others see as a goodie-goodie because she aims for university, while Dawn Sievewright is a highlight as the audacious Fionnula who has a moment of self-discovery.

In addition to their primary character, each of the cast plays multiple roles, peopling the stage with a parade of characters from grungy but helpful pub drinkers to bemused, nightclub bouncers, bartenders and even a nun called Sister Condom (not her real name, we presume).

The three-piece band (Laura Bangay, Becky Brass, Emily Linden) provides tight accompaniment and the design (Chloe Lamford) combines a scruffy, nightclub with a statue of the Virgin Mary gazing down on the girls with her beatific smile and silent judgment.

The period of the play remains unspecified but it feels like the 70s because of the musical references and the girls’ lack of mobile phones.

At times, the narrative is unclear and some scenes need to be edited or excised as the show feels too long.

Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour is a wild ride with this gang of grotesque, offensive but loveable characters whose appalling behaviour embodies all we loath about teenagers, and all that we hope to nurture.

By Kate Herbert

Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, Oct 6, 2016 ****


MUSICAL THEATRE

Adapted by Lee Hall, bases on The Sopranos by Alan Warner; by National Theatre of Scotland and Live Theatre
Melbourne Festival
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne, until Oct 22, 2016
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Oct 6, 2016.
Stars:****

Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Fri Oct 7, 2016 and later in print. KH
Cast
 Former Catholic schoolgirls, take heart. When compared with the alcohol-, drug- and sex-fuelled rampage of the six choirgirls in Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, your real or imagined, past transgressions will look positively saintly.

With their secret stash of boozy beverages, the choir travels by bus to an Edinburgh choral competition to represent their convent school that claims the dubious honour of a ridiculously high teen pregnancy rate.

The choir’s angelic, unaccompanied voices, singing Mendelssohn’s Lift Thine Eyes in the opening scene, belie the mischief and outrageous behaviour that follow in Vicky Featherstone’s rollicking, hilarious and poignant production of Lee Hall’s adaptation of Alan Warner’s 1998 novel, The Sopranos.

Hall’s stage narrative is episodic, with short, swift scenes that effectively capture the frenetic energy and rapidly changing mood and location of these unruly, dysfunctional girls over 24 hours as they hit the clubs with the aim of getting plastered and shagged – but they express it much more crudely.

The girls punctuate their frenzied exploits with a repertoire of tunes ranging from Don’t Bring Me Down and Sweet Talkin’ Woman by 1970s rock band, Electric Light Orchestra, to the dulcet, reverent tones of J.S. Bach’s Agnus Dei.

The performances, peppered with constant, blasphemous expletives, are vivid and vivacious, the six-part harmonies are thrilling and the actors embody the frenzied, adolescent behaviour that masks the poignant fact that the girls’ future looks grim while their present is fuelled by despair and raging hormones.

Caroline Deyga is the brassy Chell who has faced a lot of death in her short life, while Joanne McGuiness plays hapless Orla who travelled to Lourdes to cure her cancer.

The feisty Kylah, played by Frances Mayli McCann, sings in a local band but has loftier ambitions, while Kirsty MacLaren’s wiry Manda adds milk powder to her bath to make her feel like Cleopatra.

Karen Fishwick is the prim Kay, the middle-class girl who the others see as a goodie-goodie because she aims for university, while Dawn Sievewright is a highlight as the audacious Fionnula who has a moment of self-discovery.

In addition to their primary character, each of the cast plays multiple roles, peopling the stage with a parade of characters from grungy but helpful pub drinkers to bemused, nightclub bouncers, bartenders and even a nun called Sister Condom (not her real name, we presume).

The three-piece band (Laura Bangay, Becky Brass, Emily Linden) provides tight accompaniment and the design (Chloe Lamford) combines a scruffy, nightclub with a statue of the Virgin Mary gazing down on the girls with her beatific smile and silent judgment.

The period of the play remains unspecified but it feels like the 70s because of the musical references and the girls’ lack of mobile phones.

At times, the narrative is unclear and some scenes need to be edited or excised as the show feels too long.

Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour is a wild ride with this gang of grotesque, offensive but loveable characters whose appalling behaviour embodies all we loath about teenagers, and all that we hope to nurture.

By Kate Herbert