Save Suvla Street by David Britton, 31 Jan 1995

At La Mama Wed -Sun until Feb 19, 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 31 Jan 1995

This review published in early Feb 1995 (in either The Melbourne Times or Herald Sun. Sorry, I don’t have the details now). KH

 

Just like the weird perfumier in Patrick Suskind's literary and olfactory novel, Perfume, I spent much of Save Suvla Street at La Mama obsessed with smells around me. My neighbour wore a cloying blend of frankincense and cigarette smoke, the woman in front exuded sweet French perfume, Carlton smelt of petrol and coffee.

 

This was not merely the result of a wandering mind but was stimulated by David Britton's solo character, Hilda Armitage, who stores her memories in jars filled with smells, stinks and aromas from her past: her husband's sweaty singlet, the bullocky scent of her first love Gunter, her daughter's lunch box. We even got to play "spot the pong" when she passed her "memories" around for sniffing.

 

The writing is swift, intelligent, witty, at times echoing almost forgotten Australian idiom then drifting into a timeless, lyrical language which creates an unexpected emotional layering to the text. Hilda is a feisty old bag with a crusade: to save her beloved home in Suvla Street from being bull-dozed and turned into a Hotel. She has called her neighbours (the audience) into her front yard (La Mama courtyard) to discuss the tragedy of a society which no longer values anything old, unless it's an antique. This includes old mums we are soon to discover.

Sue Jones works hard alone on stage for 90 minutes and there are many warm, funny and gently moving moments. She engages and entertains. Director, Catherine Hill, has taken the challenge of the monodrama, and drawn some charming moments from it.

 

The location in the La Mama courtyard was a great choice, if a shade risky during this balmy, wet January. Anna Borghese's set was evocative and attentive to the minutiae of an elderly woman's life.

 

Somehow the production, although generally entertaining, did not seem to penetrate the surface of a potentially intensely emotional piece. It was erratically paced and, at times, did not do justice to Britton's fine poetic language.

 

KATE HERBERT

Blabbermouth, adapted by Mary Morris from Morris Gleitzman, 25 Jan 1995

Adapted by Mary Morris from Morris Gleitzman's novel

By Melbourne Theatre Company & Arena Theatre

At George Fairfax Studio, Melbourne Arts Centre

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 25 Jan 1995

This review published in late Jan 1995 (in either The Melbourne Times or Herald Sun. Sorry, I don’t have the details now). KH

 

Let's face it! Kids are cruel. Just a lisp, a limp, a stammer an accent - instant victim material. When Rowena Batts (a surname designed for ridicule) arrives at a new school and can't talk "'cos she was born with missing bits from her throat", she is teased by the school bully, avoided by other girls and treated as a "community project" by her newfound friend.

 

Blabbermouth, adapted by Mary Morris from Morris Gleitzman's novel, is a play for kids 7ish upwards. It has the hallmark Gleitzman wickedness. Ro's dad is an embarrassment to her, wearing satin C & W shirts and singing Tammy Wynette songs.

 

Everybody is flawed, all are heightened versions of people we know and love - or loathe. The oafish, incompetent headmaster (Francis Greeenslade), the sympathetic schoolteacher (Sue Giles) and the kid who can't read (Carole Patullo). Some are hilarious caricatures. Mrs. Granger (Sue Giles) doles out Cheezels one at a time and the entire Peck family are Def Metal head-bangers.

 

The audience loved the cruel and the gross in the story. When Darren Peck the bully has a frog stuffed in his mouth - twice - everybody squirmed and howled in delight. However, it is Rowena (Frances O'Connor) learning to assert herself with friends, community and father and discovering something of tact and tolerance herself which provides the core of the story.

 

The direction is lively and physical, musician/singer, Tom Lycos, adds another dimension and the whole company gives gutsy, comic performances of an astounding number of characters. Patullo, Giles and Greenslade scamper on and off, each with three or four hilarious roles. O'Connor is delightfully impish as Rowena and Danny Nash as her lovable, oafish dad is charming.

 

You can still catch it after school holidays at 6.30 pm. Early dinner, late to bed.

 

KATE HERBERT

The Sandman, Hungry Ghost Theatre, 17 Jan 1995

By Hungry Ghost Theatre

 Adapted from The Tales of Hoffman

Commerce Way City 12 Midnight Sunday - Tuesday until Feb 7, 1995

This review published in Jan 1995 in The Melbourne Times (or maybe it was the Herald Sun? II don’t have the details anymore.) KH

 

According to the Hungry Ghost Theatre version of the tale of The Sandman, he does not send you happily to dozy land but throws sand in children's eyes until they pop out of their heads and then he feeds them to his children on the moon. 

 

This is no kiddy-winks company. They perform at midnight in a grungy lane off Flinders Street, employing huge shadows playing over distressed concrete walls, Actors fly down in harness, eerie children's lullabies are played on xylophone and there is a plethora of gruesome eyeballs including some giant floating helium-filled ones.

 

The impact of the location cannot be under-estimated. Who needs to design post-modern urban decay when we are surrounded by it in the city centre? The horror of the story is heightened by the chill of Commerce Lane. The stylisation of both language and movement and the fragmentation of the tale itself, add to the weirdness of the experience. The greatest horror, however, was a mouse scuttling over my feet and into the bowels of the building.

 

The performance is a little uneven with a few flat patches and an unfortunate problem with a radio mike, but it challenges conceptions of storytelling, implements some courageous stunts and imaginative visuals and investigates the dark and the mystical. Themes of vision, sight and short-sightedness are reiterated (hence the eyeball motif!) and the boy's night-horrors about the vile Sandman evolve into the tragic obsession of the man.

 

KATE HERBERT

A Flea in Her Ear, Melbourne Theatre Company, REVIEW, 14 Jan 1995

 

by Georges Feydeau

By Melbourne Theatre Company

At the Playhouse, Melbourne Arts Centre, until Feb 4, 1995

This review published in Jan 1995 in the Herald Sun (or maybe it was The Melbourne Times? I don’t have the details anymore.) KH

 

French playwright Georges Feydeau really knew how to slap together a rib-tickling farce riddled with sexual innuendo and more-obvious-uendo. His own life could have been a tragic reflection of one of his plays. In addition to his gambling and extravagance, his late nights at Maxim's, his divorce and an affair with a dancer, his syphilitic mental deterioration caused him to believe he was Napoleon!

 

In A Flea in her Ear, (1907), director Simon Phillips has gone for broke with the silliness of this door-slamming, slapstick romp with wrought iron doorways creating a virtual obstacle course on stage. Actors scamper about, peeping, sneaking, snitching and hiding behind doors and leaping in and out of beds which appear and disappear. Benny Hill had a transcontinental father in mad old Georges.

 

The cast, without exception, is superb. Richard Piper makes a feast of his double casting as both the staid Chandebise and his doppelganger, the dopey brothel porter. Robert Grubb is excellent as the philandering Tournel and Lewis Fiander plays the jealous Spaniard like Salvador Dali with an outrageous accent.

 

Marg Downey and Genevieve Picot as the plotting wives, find a joyful balance between grace and comedy while Peter O'Brien plays a sexy Camille with a very funny speech impediment. Much as I want to, I cannot mention everybody but Judith McGrath's cameo as the brothel madam was eccentric and wonderful.

 

The production gallops along, peppered with double takes and double identities, romantic deceptions, sexual games and tumbles of both kinds. There is no message, no political correctness, no tragedy in this farce. It is simply a beautifully directed, designed and acted summer romp.

 

KATE HERBERT  280 wd

Hello Dolly! REVIEW Melbourne, 9 Jan 1995

 Music by Jerry Herman; Book byMichael Stewart 

From Dec 31 State Theatre, Melbourne Arts Centre

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 9 Jan 1995

This review published in Jan 1995 in the Herald Sun (or maybe it was The Melbourne Times? I don’t have the details anymore.) KH

 

Hello Dolly! is fluff. Let nobody tell you otherwise. The plot is thin, the characters two-dimensional and the sentiments questionable. It is crammed with tacky love scenes, bad jokes and extravagant chorus routines but if you love a musical, get along.

 

Dolly Levi (Jill Perryman), a New York widow, has made a career in matchmaking since the death of her sainted husband. After years of settling other people's affairs, she has now decided to settle herself upon her abrasive, penny-pinching but unsuspecting client, Horace Vandergelder (Warren Mitchell), a "half-a-millionaire" grain dealer from Yonkers.

 

Musically, the show relies heavily on the title song. There are no other really memorable tunes. Jill Perryman's doting public applauded like seals every time she blinked, particularly during her gala promenade around the apron of the stage followed by a bevy of dancing waiters.

 

Warren Mitchell is very restrained as Vandergelder and Henshaw could afford to give this consummate performer his head to raise the comedy stakes.  Denise Drysdale's cameo as the blousy Ernestine Money, reached the ultimate degree of tacky campness. Jackie Love, with her light comic touch and fine voice, was a delightful Irene Molloy.

 

Director Christopher Henshaw probably has another commercial success on his hands after his recent production of South Pacific, Dolly is pacy and very camp, but aren't most old musicals? It is as much a fashion parade as a show and costume designer, Tim Goodchild, has had a field day designing vivid and spectacular gowns for the turn of the century. Set design by Brian Thompson has a quirky and effective cartoon-like quality which off-sets the costumes.

 

KATE HERBERT  270 wd

 

The Comedy of Errors , Melbourne Maskworks, 14 Jan 1995

 

Written by William Shakespeare

Melbourne Maskworks

At Northcote Amphitheatre from approx 14 Jan 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on or around 14 Jan 1995

This review published in Jan 1995 in The Melbourne Times (or maybe it was the Herald Sun? II don’t have the details anymore.) KH

 

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare employs that cutesy comic device of mistaken identity. Of course, it is always a tall order to find two sets of identical twins, so Melbourne Maskworks have creatively solved the problem with identical masks.

 

This may not be Shakespeare's best comedy, but it provides plenty of scope for adaptation.  In addition to its simple set (Ian McLay) and colourful costumes (Naomi Szakacs) and superbly crafted leather masks (Sylvia Rech), Maskworks' production has the advantage of the exotic natural setting of the Northcote Amphitheatre with its great acoustics, natural lighting effects at dusk, a view of the Yarra, kookaburras and a passing parade of sticky-beaks walking their dogs.

Some clever and charming slapstick routines in the style of the Italian Commedia del'Arte are the highlights of the show directed by Peter O'Donohue. In fact, the production could have been enhanced by editing some of the longer wordier speeches and focussing on the more physical aspects. There are some delightful mumming routines running parallel to dialogue which liven it up.

 

A few visual gags and character mannerisms are filched directly from The Three Stooges and other clowns. Some are over-used and become repetitive. Live music by Anne McCue is a bonus and there are some lively and very funny characterisations from Russell Fletcher, Trevor Major and Jules Hutchenson.

 

This may not be high art but it is a pleasant and entertaining night out and you can sip champagne as you watch.

 

KATE HERBERT