Doing the Block by John Romeril, Arena Theatre Company, 22 May 1994

THEATRE

By Arena Theatre Company

At Arena Theatre Studio till June 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 22 May 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 22 May 1994

 

John Romeril has written a very warm, sensitive and politically informed script directed by David Carlin for Arena Theatre. "This century has made us all gypsies " says one character. Migration, refugeeism and fast travel have moved us out of our familiar environments and we are all coping with change beyond our capacities.

 

Romeril effectively links two stories. One about Nam (Kha Viet Tran) who against his mother's wishes goes back to Vietnam seeking his ancestors even though he was born here. The second story is about a young Hispano-Australian (Carmen Mascia) and her newly discovered uncle (Petru Gheorghiu) who has a mental illness resulting from the torture he suffered in Argentina.

 

Romeril's ironic sense of the absurdity of political abuses is evident in the uncle's comment to Nam's Vietnamese mother (Min Ha). "You fled the communists. I was tortured for being one."

 

The linking character is a very generous and charming Koori welfare worker (Tom E. Lewis) who attends everybody's needs but his own but his "clients" look after him in the end.

 

This production is musical, and the dearth of quality voices is compensated for by the commitment to the social and political content. Live music composed by Irene Vela runs under the action, giving emotional layers to the scenes. Songs weave in and out of dialogue, stories link and interact like an operatic score. At one point as the song moves between household, the style imperceptibly alters from Flamenco to Vietnamese.

 

Trina Parker has cleverly designed a scaffold set representative of the Richmond flats.

 

The problem in this production is that the actors seem to be strolling around the cavernous space much of the time. Trian Parker’scaffolding set representative of the Richmond flats is cleverly designed, but the play is much stronger when songs are choreographed tightly and scenes are emotionally changed. Some of the performances have little dramatic and emotional depth but the text assists them.

 

KATE HERBERT

 

Macbeth by Bell Shakespeare Company, REVIEW, 22 May 1994

 

THEATRE

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

By Bell Shakespeare Company

At Comedy Theatre, Melbourne till 18 June 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 22 May 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 22 May 1994

 

John Bell's Shakespeare Company take risks without taking too many liberties with the bard - generally. David Fenton's production of Macbeth has taken a few enormous risks with interpretation. Some are successful.

 

The production shifts in style frequently moving from a chintzy Dr. Who design to a lavish Peter Greenaway film. Fenton has cast the witches as dome-headed aliens with access to advanced technology. This has interesting possibilities but there is no follow through. If the witches have super tech powers why are they not manipulating the action given they are on stage much of the time?

 

Anna Volska's Lady Macbeth comes on stage in an excitable, almost manic flurry, which was a potentially inspired choice. Unfortunately there is no through line from mania to "unsex me here". Her changes in the first two acts come from a vacuum, leaving her looking like a socialite at a cocktail party.

 

John Bell's Macbeth initially explores a man with too much of "the milk of human kindness" but this leaves him a distance to travel to reach monstrous butcher. Once there, however, he is a substantial villain and the third act after interval was much more successful generally.

 

This is a production of a violent and supernatural play which remains superficial in its delivery. The emotional layering is thin with the exception of the moment when Macduff receives news of the death of his family. Christopher Stollery shows a profound emotional turmoil.

 

There are some strong support and cameo performances. The crowd of roistering soldiers, Heinekins in hand, are entertaining. James Hagan is a wonderfully bucolic, laconic Porter and Sean O'Shea (who bears a disconcerting resemblance to Rowan Atkinson) plays an ingenuous Malcolm.

 

The stage design comprises a bevy of appropriately bleak and oppressive black walls, but the eclectic costuming is confusing and inconsistent. There is some attempt to offend the audience with gross imagery. An outsized dinner platter of disembowelled horse smacks of Greenaway grotesquery but created an effective, terrifying setting for Banquo's ghost. In contrast, the foetus in the witches hi-tech cauldron wis revolting, gratuitous and out of context.

 

The final confrontation and battle between Macduff and Macbeth is riveting. Fenton composes a tableau of all the dead right upstage and invades the stage with huge and threatening chrome lances. The stage finally becomes dangerous.

 

This Macbeth emerges as a production with some interesting ideas and moments, but no coherent concept and vision.

 

KATE HERBERT

Antigone, Jean Anouilh, Melbourne French Theatre, 22 May 1994

THEATRE

Antigone by Jean Anouilh

By Melbourne French Theatre & Theatre of Spheres

At North Melbourne Town Hall till May 29, 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 22 May 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 22 May 1994

 

Jean Anouilh's Antigone explores the emotional, personal and philosophical to a greater degree than Euripides' play.

 

Both Creon and Antigone are intractable. She follows her beliefs and heart, he his duty which involves defiling the body of Antigone's brother, Polynices, and the execution of Antigone. We know tragedy is at hand so, like voyeurs, we watch the complexities of the moral debate.

 

Anouilh's Antigone is childish, petulant, defiant yet potent. Her rebellion threatens Creon's public profile. Alice Garner's Antigone is naive and feisty but could further explore the emotional extremes.

 

 Julia Zemiro as Chorus, the commentator and facilitator of the action, is a commanding and witty presence and the most magnetic and arresting performer.

 

 Alison Scarfe's design is startling icy white on white with scattered cubes, spheres and metallic cones. The playing space is defined by a floor cloth of abstract dove motif and bolts of muslin stretching like beams of light to the ceiling echoed by dramatic lighting by Daniel Zika.

 

The collaboration with Theatre of Spheres has allowed a more experimental production for the MFT. Kirsten Von Bibra's production in the North Melbourne Town hall utilises the majestic dimensions of the space by using slides and synchronised movement. A barely audible electronic soundscape by Natasha Moszenin creates an atmosphere of tension and drama.

 

These elements at times inform the dialogue and narrative and at others are merely a distraction. The dreamlike quality and the restricted playing space flatten the dynamic of the script and gives passionate interactions a restrained feel.

 

Anouilh's language is lyrical, imagistic and evocative. The production is much richer if you speak French but it a visual treat if you do not.

 

KATE HERBERT

Love and Other Sharp Objects, by Julie Anne O'Brien with Woolly Jumpers _REVIEW_ 22 May 1994

 THEATRE

At Union Theatre, Melbourne University June 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 22 May 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 22 May 1994

 

Love and other sharp objects such as sex, lust, sexual preference, pregnancy, abandonment, all feature in the Woolly Jumpers latest show, Love and Other Sharp Objects. It is directed by Noel Jordan and devised by the company with writer Julie Anne O'Brien.

 

This show has a vigour which it borrows from pop culture. It uses sampled drumming and guitar music, pop lyrics, club dancing, video clip style footage and movement and fast episodic scenes which grab the attention of a teenage audience weaned on ad breaks.

 

Four actors play a range of teenagers with a spectrum of problems. One story line deals with Anna an Italian 15-year-old who has sex for the first time, to get it over with really, then finds she is pregnant. Another deals with Melissa, the "slut" who wants to be loved and her friendship with Cameron who realises he is gay.

 

The dialogue is witty, well observed with the naivete of teenagers who want to be grown-ups. "If I’m gay, everybody'll think I'm a poof," says Cameron.

 

The music is great, lyrics are good and all four actors can sing. Songs are injected to add energy and appropriately do not simply echo the content of the scenes.  Jordan's intermittent solo club dancing is effective at times in emphasising the sexual energy on stage but is gratuitous and distracting at others.

 

The style shifts from abstraction and a dream like filmic quality to naturalism, to pop song. The eclectic quality of the production has many advantages but there is no core style. This, in conjunction with the multi-story lines, eventually leaves it fragmented, cluttered and superficial.

 

A play for teenagers cannot cover all bases, all types, all problems. But the teenage audience seemed to like it heaps and be embarrassed by its reflection of their lives. Cool!

KATE HERBERT

The Grapes of Wrath adapted by John Galati, REVIEW, Melbourne Theatre Company, 13 May 1994

 THEATRE

By Melbourne Theatre Company

At (Playhouse Theatre, Melbourne Arts Centre, runs until June 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 135 May 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 15 May 1994

 

Prohibitive costs ensure we rarely see large casts in productions unless they have toe-tappin' chorus lines, so it is exciting to see Roger Hodgman fill the Playhouse stage with twenty-one actors and musicians in John Galati's adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

 

The play has the epic proportions of Steinbeck's novel. It follows the journey of the Joad's, a family of Oklahoma farmers (Okies), to California, land of sun, grapes and work. They have been driven off their leased land like thousands of others in 1938 and seek a new life. Their poor, isolated but peaceful lives are replaced by the deprivation, violation and abuse often afforded refugees.

 

Roger Hodgman has effectively cast quirky, skilful actors including the very funny James Wardlaw. Jeremy Sims is excellent as an intense and brooding Tommy, the eldest son who returns worldly-wise from gaol. The interesting relationship is between Tom and Casey, the lapsed preacher-come-socialist activist, played with sympathy and intelligence by Robert Menzies.

 

Annie Phelan is Ma Joad, the matriarch pivotal to the narrative and family. Her performance is detailed, moving and funny and her pain palpable as she witnesses the disintegration of her family.

 

Tony Tripp's remarkable and simple backcloth leaves space for epic scenes and a vintage car and it is exciting to see characters who are victims of the elements, leaping with abandon into real water. Exceptional lighting by Jamieson Lewis and simplicity of staging by Hodgman serve the story, emphasising the slow dripping away of their livelihood, energy and dignity. Crowd scenes are quite static compositions, but this keeps the focus on central characters.

 

Emotion is withheld in these characters who rarely touch lest they shatter. The emotional and narrative gaps are filled by the extraordinary and evocative live music, which layers the characters and narrative as does an opera score. Gerry Hales and Broderick Smith sing and play innumerable instruments and Smith can act too. Any gaps in the narrative caused by adapting such a huge novel are overcome by the music.

 

You could hear a feather drop as the story escalated to an intensely moving final image. We are left with an overview of a decimated family, a blasted social landscape of abused workers, and poverty of spirit. It is a life-death -life cycle. Out of death rises a phoenix.

Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet, by Hoy Polloy_REVIEW_13 May 1994

 THEATRE

At Adelphia Studios Chapel St Fitzroy, until June 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 13 May 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 13 May 1994

 

Glengarry Glen Ross has all the trademarks of David Mamet, not the least of which is scads of "F....ing". 

 

 G.G. Ross crawls inside the hole of real estate salesmen during the last week of a sales competition. The winner gets a Cadillac, the second gets steak knives and the other two get fired. Needless to say they are cut-throat, frantic, stressed and ready to do anything including stealing the "leads" which will get them the requisite sales.

 

This is a challenging script handled admirably by director Wayne Pearn. The dialogue is difficult, riddled with scattered thoughts, broken sentences, overlapping, swearing and colloquialisms. The pacing is crucial and some of the actors handled it well.

 

The characters are unremittingly ghastly jerks. There is the hapless and desperate Levene, the smarmy office manager, Williamson and an inarticulate wimp, Aaranow and the abrasive Moss: all credible and appropriately irksome.

 

The magnetic performance was from Ben Shaw as the fast-talking Ricky Roma, the top salesman with the deadly charm of a cobra.

 

The rhythms are frenetic, the relationships intense and the atmosphere fraught. These guys are desperate to win. "Never open your mouth till you know the shot." Translation: "Make sure you know which lie to tell."

 

 If you've never seen Mamet, get a look at this.

 

By Kate Herbert

Tanya and Kit by Harry Cripps, La Mama, REVIEW, 7 May 1994

THEATRE

At La Mama, until June 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 7 May 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 7 May 1994

 

Two women meet in an apartment and both believe they live there. They become intimates, familiars, inseparable. Harry Cripps' Pintersque script is interesting, involving and funny. It comes to life with the two actors, Sarah Chadwick and Sophie Lee who have a great rapport on stage.

 

Chadwick plays Tanya, a "sleek and dangerous" woman with an unspecified executive position.  Her performance is masterly, her presence magnetic, her timing and delivery impeccable. Lee has a charming ingenuousness as Kit.

 

This is a quirky play which works on many levels although it incorporates some improbable left-field plot elements. Really worth a late-night look.

 

Kate Herbert

Last Chance Gas by Steve Taylor & Kevin Dinsley, La Mama, REVIEW, 7 May 1994

THEATRE

At La Mama, until June 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 7May 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 7 May 1994

 

Russell Hoban, in Ridley Walker, created a bastardised English language in keeping with his post nuclear holocaust fictional world. Similarly, in Last Chance Gas, Steve Taylor & Kevin Dinsley have fabricated a garble which is both poetic and comprehensible.

 

Jim Daly plays the extraordinary proprietor (Priata) of the last gas stop on a long road. Hapless customers must "do" for him: entertain him in order to obtain "juice". Their antics are wild and almost vaudevillian as they tap dance, sing, perform feats of magic and gymnastics. If he is not pleased he blithely slaughters them.

This piece exaggerates our modern obsession with petrol. The customers writhe in orgasmic delight as Priatsa, rather grossly, "pees" the juice into their ears. Really.

 

Daly is exceptional as Priata. He is hilarious, making the language and action credible, and he is well supported by a physically adept Thomas Wright as Ferul, his slavish doggie.

 

Rosalie Zycher's direction is very physical, vigorous and challenging but the rest of the cast struggle with text, character and concept. The production is violent, funny and exciting at times but, by the end, the idea that "the world is fucked" palls and we want something more in the narrative.

 

by Kate Herbert

 

Cosi by Louis Nowra , MTC, REVIEW, May 6 1994

THEATRE

By Melbourne Theatre Company

At MTC Russell Street Theatre until June 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 6 May 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 6 May 1994

 

Comedy writers have for years made us laugh at the expense of the afflictions of others. Mental illness is a veritable lolly shop full of gags for Louis Nowra in Cosi.

 

Louis (Christopher Gabardi), an amateur theatre director fresh from the political hotbed of a 1971 university, is thrown to the wolves by a dickhead social worker (Ernie Gray) to direct a cast of nutters in Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte.

 

Nowra cares little for narrative in Cosi, so it is virtually plot-free, but the results are hilarious.

 

While uni students were doing recreational drugs, asylum victims were being subjected to pharmaceuticals and shock treatment. But Nowra knows nothing is sacred in comedy. He's wicked.  Zac, the pianist (Hugh Wayland) crashes head-first onto the keyboard from lithium overload. Doug, a pyromaniac, (Kim Gyngell) sets cats alight. (Don't phone the RSPCA cat-lovers. It's only a play.)

 

The stage is peopled with disordered personalities: an over-eater, a junky, a compulsive-obsessive played with great comic detail by Pamela Rabe, and Henry, a stammering barrister, played sympathetically by Charles Tingwell. The only truly emotional moment is when the withdrawn and inarticulate Henry spits and gasps his anguish about his father, women and traitors.

 

The 'leading man" in this lunatic farce is Roy whose condition is "annoying and supercilious bossiness", portrayed with energy and delight by Barry Otto. He indulges in amateur histrionics and has forced the group to perform Mozart. who suffers even more than Louis.

 

Zac insists on playing Wagner on piano accordion, Louis cuts the arias because no-one can sing and replaces the poisoning with shock treatment for relevance. 

 

Louis' warmth and humanity overcome his need to appease his smug girlfriend and arrogant director pal who condemn him for doing a conservative romance when he should stage Brecht and march in the Moratorium. Louis prefers to help the lunatics to experience something creative (albeit weird). At least they are honest loonies.

 

Nadia Tass's direction has made the most of the hilarity and clown qualities of the characters and dialogue and she takes theatrical risks playing scenes in total darkness but the production lacks pace. The script seems to be careering toward the pay-off: a frenetic, Keystone Cops ending but the sluggish pace makes it anti-climactic.

 

By Kate Herbert

Sanctuary by David Williamson, Playbox, REVIEW, 6 May 1994

THEATRE

At Merlyn Theatre Malthouse, by Playbox Theatre until June 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 6 May 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 6 May 1994

 

David Williamson believes many of the world's problems are caused by that pesky ole male hormone, testosterone which forces men to compete for the highest status, the last word, the most desirable babe. "Mine's bigger 'n yours".

 

Williamson has chosen to say this in a play of a smaller scale than usual. Sanctuary is an intimate script set in Shaun Gurton's awesome granite design in the Merlyn Theatre with only two actors: the inimitable Robert Grubb and Felix Williamson (Yes, he's related). Direction by Aubrey Mellor is brisk and taut so that the play moves along at a cracking pace.

 

The play deals with personal and global issues with less social satire and fewer glib lines than Brilliant Lies or Money and Friends and is dramatically more successful. Sanctuary examines man's capacity to sell out his beliefs for a buck (40 million bucks in King's case) and exposes the hypocrisy beneath the moral indignation of our political watchdogs.

 

Grubb plays Robert "Bob" King, a voluble, charismatic and internationally renowned political journalist who has relinquished a lucrative US TV news contract in order to improve his golf handicap in the North of Queensland. He lives in a millionaire's fortress-like estate, his "sanctuary" from the evils of humanity which he has loathed in his journalistic peregrinations.

 

Enter a pompous, anally retentive, PhD student of Communications, John Alderston (Williamson) to shatter the outward calm of King's luxury. He is writing about King's colourful career but rather than doing a lively psychological study, he prefers to embed impeccably researched facts in long-winded verbiage. His social and personal style is in direct opposition to that of his subject, the florid rogue journo.

 

Felix Williamson looks out of his depth as the nerd although, admittedly, the first act is chockas with information-giving which can be unsuccessful dialogue.  His performance lacked subtlety, being either poorly articulated or bellowed. He is no match for a seasoned performer like Grubb who is vivid and convincing as the shameless self-promoter. I suspect the performance may settle after recovering from first night nerves.

 

The script takes a quantum leap in the second act. The often-stilted rhetoric of the first act gives way to a shocking, violent and more emotionally charged scenario. This holier-than- thou, politically correct dork, reveals a dark and inhumane streak which makes King's choice to bury the truth about the US army in Guatamala look like hiding your jam sandwiches at school.

 

KATE HERBERT