Saturday, 31 May 1997

Underneath the Arches, May 31, 1997


By Jon Finlayson & Jon Stephens
at Capers Dinner Restaurant until June 28, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around May 29, 1997

How many other people who did not live through the war know all the words to Underneath the Arches and have no idea how they learned them? Was it old movies, parents, grandparents or is it the universal unconscious?

Comedy is a great barometer of its era. The sweet, funny and poignant songs and sketches of English vaudevillians, Flanagan and Allen, concisely reflect the hardships of Depression, Post-Depression and wartime Britain. It is easy to dismiss them individually as charming but slight tunes but to hear twenty or more songs over an hour is to experience a social and political documentation of the period.

Underneath the Arches is performed by two charming old troupers, Jon Finlayson and Jon Stephens, in a dinner theatre environment. One major difference is that the a la carte food at Capers is terrific.

FInlayson, with his drooping eyes and moustache is Sad-Sack while Stephens is Perky-Boots and they have a delightful rapport as they soft-shoe across the floor engaging in mild and amusing rehearsed and ad-libbed patter. They inject an air of authenticity and joy into the pieces.

Flanagan and Allen played as tramps but their work always dignifies the working- class, the poor or the indigent while it gently criticises and jogs the consciences the wealthy who allow them to sleep underneath the arches.

Each generation thinks it invented comedy but hearing this duo's original routines   one recognises the debt owed by The Goons, Morcambe & Wise, Monty Python and others bent toward the ridiculous. Comedy has a history and even these guys did not begin it.

Flanagan's (Finlayson) wordplays and malapropisms are wildly silly. "I'm going a-plank, a-wood, Aboard! Aboard! Oy, Oy, Oy!"  The duo began on stage in 1926 then transferrred routines to radio and later, during the war, became stalwarts in the Crazy Gang Show entertaining civilians and troops.

The show features immortal tunes such as Two Roving Vagabonds, Any Umbrellas, Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner and Mademoiselle from Armentiers, the only slightly "blue" number.

If you remember them from the war, or you don't remember them but know the songs or if you just want a good meal and a novel nostalgic night, this is a toe-tapping show in comfortable surroundings.
KATE HERBERT  

In at the Deep End by Anthea Davis, May 31, 1997


In at the Deep End by Anthea Davis
at La Mama until June 8, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around May 30, 1997

Anthea Davis in her solo show, In at the Deep End, has great warmth and generosity as a performer. Her complicity and engagement with the audience at La Mama draws us into her intimate journey through water.

Behind a beach screen she changes coyly into one spectacular one-piece bathing suit after another. It is a Retro swim collection. She makes witty observations of women's bathing-suit etiquette, mirror checks, the tricks we use to cover peeping buttocks or disguise a curvy tummy with a wrap-around towel.ˆ

We do a marathon with a woman who has failed once and tries again. We observe her joy and pain, elation and deflation in both failure and success.

Davis intercuts these more poignant and poetic scenes with personal water recollections and facts about Australian women swimmers.  She recalls the blue plastic back-yard pool and the 'No peeing in the pool' rule. "I broke it the first day. I didn't want to get out."

Her own youthful swimming training begins as ambition with dad's support. The 4.30am starts drive her to the A Team but eventually become routine. She quips, "It's hard to have a relationship when you're in the water all the time." Her more recent lap-swim, fortuitously alongside Daniel Kowalski at the State Swim Centre, resulted in a personal best.

She floats upright in space. The soundscape is the regular breath of the swimmer. We experience vicariously the silence of the water, the euphoric endorphin release of the lap swimmer, the delusions of the marathon swimmer.

The piece begins with some beautiful video footage of synchronised swimming. Unfortunately its second episode got lost in video ether. Pity.

Director Luke Elliot has kept the pace smooth and scene changes crisp and simple.

Annette Kellerman changed the beach rules for us by trimming down women's bathing costumes and by her quirky stunts. She performed in a tank filled with fish and eels (made me squirm). The 1912 Stockholm Olympics with no government financial support. We may believe that women's sports are treated as second class but at the turn of the century things were far grimmer.

This is a short, sweet and funny show and, whether you love the water or not, you'll find much to engage you.

KATE HERBERT 

Thursday, 29 May 1997

The Art of Success, Nick Daar, VCA, May 28, 1997


Written by Nick Dear
Company 97 V C A Drama School Grant Street Theatre until May 31, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around May 27, 1997

The most striking element of The Victorian College of the Arts production of Nick Dear's The Art of Success is its extraordinary design in the newly re-opened Grant Street Theatre. New Zealand director, Colin McColl's vision, in conjunction with his costume and set designers (Julie Renton) provides a provocative and innovative concept for an ordinary play

Dear is a contemporary British writer who uses the collision of social and linguistic anachronisms and modernisms to highlight the commonalities between our generation and that of 18th century English decadence. He has a great facility for pithy quips and rapier-sharp ripostes and he can sling together an epithet or a bawdy reference about any old thing.

The Art of Success is about engraver, William Hogarth (Justin Smith) who dragged himself out of poverty to become one of Britain's favoured artists. The narrative has two threads. One focuses on his relationship with the political nepotist, Prime Minister Walpole (Christopher Brown) and Hogarth's inner circle of roustabout friends: one a peer of the realm (Oscar Reding), another in the House of Commons (Brown again) and the third being Henry Fielding (Simon Oats).

The second story follows the various women in his life: his sweet, virginal wife (Alexandra Schepsi) who lives in blissful ignorance of Louisa, his favourite harlot (Miria Kostiuk) and the murderess Sarah (Sophie Gregg) who he draws in her death cell. Hogarth is a charming devil who, in his naivete, abuses all three. He deceives his wife, enacts gross perversions on his mistress and uses Sarah's notoriety for his own material gain.

The entire cast of this graduate production are strong but there are some notable performances. Smith brings warmth and a youthful charm to the rather distasteful Hogarth. Brown is a stately and rich-voiced Walpole while Kostiuk is divinely sexual as the whore. A cameo by Rachel Tidd as the titillating Queen Caroline was a delight.

The play itself is light and inconsequential, its visual components, set (Julie Renton), make-up, costume (Katherine Peters), dramatic lighting and distressed violin soundtrack (Bronwyn Dunston) featuring. Costumes are constructed entirely from plastic materials. Gowns are provocatively transparent and morning coats shimmer and reflect: Plastic Gothic.

The slatted floor has nine "conversation pits" inset. Each is a location for a scene: brothel filled with pink cushions, the boudoir with white, pub littered with empty beer cans, the riverside with mud. It is all ˆwell-conceived if a little over-designed.

KATE HERBERT

Wolf Lullaby, May 29, 1997


Written by Hilary Bell
By Performing Lines at The Malthouse until June 1, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around May 28, 1997
 
There is something supremely disturbing about a disturbed child. This makes Hilary Bell's Wolf Lullaby an intensely disturbing play.

Nine year old Lizzie Gael (Susan Prior) is hyperactive, voluble yet secretive. Her days are filled with chatter, chants and games, her nights with terrifying nightmares about a wolf sliding unseen under the door. She craves from her parents (Lisa Hensley & Sean O'Shea) reassurance that she is a good girl.

Prior as Lizzie gives an exceptional and uncanny portrait of a child. One forgets she is an adult as she skitters and slides, interrupts demands, muses, sings and plays. She is lovable but seems possessed of a demon that cannot let go of her tiny frame.

The play is unsettling both emotionally and physically. The tension is excruciating as we await Lizzie's confession. Did she kill baby Toby? Did she lure him away from his mummy and strangle him? Did she write those frightful words on the wall, "I murder so I may come back"?

Bell has based this family's horror story in Tasmania but it is based on such living nightmares as the Jamie Bolger murder. How can we comprehend the epitome of innocence becoming the essence of evil?

The torment of Lizzie's mother Angela is palpable in Hensley's moving and natural performance. Her desire to protect competes with her need for the truth. She seeks support from her ex-husband, Warren. "Help me", she pleads.

Anthony Phelan is effectively warm but unpredictable as the cop/interrogator. O'Shea portrays Warren's emotional cowardice without losing our sympathy. He has been an escape artist but this time he must face the possibility that his nervy little girl took her game too far, that he ignored her cries for help and her wolf took over.

Bell's dialogue has a rapid edgy realism and David O'Hare's direction keeps the pace and dramatic tension high although the last third drags a little. Some scenes seem unnecessarily truncated as though something we needed to see or know is missing. Appropriately, she does not provide us with an answer to the couple's inner plea, 'Why our child? Was it our fault?'

Genevieve Blanchett's design of walls scribbled with the murderous graffiti and an oversized chair provides an appropriately claustrophobic environment for this tortured story.

This is not a fun play but it is challenging with some exceptional performances.

KATE HERBERT

Empty Shells by Ramez Tabit, May 29, 1997


At  Universal Theatre 2 until June 7, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around May 28, 1997

Ramez Tabit's Empty Shells, a play about the war in Lebanon, touched me in unanticipated ways. It is not sentimental but the universal experience of war and dislocation resonates like a stone in a pond. We couldn't stop talking about it.

The research-based text remains imagistic and evocative without reverting to the informational. The most potent scenes are drawn  from Tabit's own experience as a 13 year old in Lebanon.

[1]˘Ahmed and three friends crawl through gunfire to collect empty shells to sell. Their blase attitude to danger is a bizarre but common reaction. But war is no longer a game. He vomits after seeing the horrific dismemberment of Christians.

This highlights a premature coming-of-age.  A few months ago the boys were playing marbles and planning to build a boat to sail away. Now one is a soldier, another is shot, a third leaves the Muslim region with his Christian family and finally, in a superbly written, dramatic and tense scene, Achmed's family escapes to Australia.

The authenticity of the stories gives weight and integrity to the piece and the five actors in multiple roles bring freshness and commitment to the material and the lives they personify.

Nicholas Cassim is a warm, natural Achmed. Nadia Coreno is impassioned as his truth-seeking sister. Carmelina di Guglielmo and Senol Mat are versatile as the parents and two boys. Tabit himself is powerful and striking as the manipulative military commander. His terrifying plausibility reminds us that everybody believes their cause is right.

Patricia Cornelius' direction tilts away from the inherent naturalism of the dialogue without losing its intensity, balancing the real with the abstract by delivering scenes directly to the audience, using stillness or stylised action.

The content supports the piece despite a few flat spots, some distracting back- projections and a cumbersome unnecessary set (Clifton Dolliver) of painted walls.

Empty Shells is not simply a worthy political statement. It has joy, humour, passion and an edge of irony. "Who is fighting on our side today?" It reminds us that there is "nothing heroic about war" which is full of "arguments about religion, nationalism and money."

Too often one leaves the theatre unaffected but Tabit's play reverberates. It is about all migrant cultures, all war zones but, even more importantly, it is about the human condition.

KATE HERBERT 


Saturday, 24 May 1997

Little City, Melbourne Workers' Theatre, May 24, 1997


Written by Daniel Keene, Patricia Cornelius, Irene Vela, Melissa Reeves. 
Melbourne Workers' Theatre
 Brunswick Town Hall until June 8, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around May 24, 1997

It is always interesting to see a return season of a successful show such as Little City by Melbourne Workers' Theatre.

The first time round, in December last year, coincided with the year of the election of state and federal Liberal governments and the subsequent cutting of services, schools, welfare, hospitals, child care and libraries. The climate was ripe for such a consciousness raising show.

A second viewing did not rouse me to political revolution to the same degree but this is no criticism of the show. It still maintains its passionate outcry for equity and humanity from government.

Little City is really an opera. It is a provocative concept which is manifested in the rich collaboration between the 50 voice choir Canto Coro, eclectic composer Irene Vela, subtle musical director Mark Dunbar and a visionary director, Renato Cuocolo (IRAA Theatre).

The text (by Daniel Keene, Patricia Cornelius, Irene Vela, Melissa Reeves) is a simple, poignant, allegory drawing on two 1973 situations: the raiding of a people's "campamento" in Chile and a Greek student uprising.

In this global, historical context we cannot be complacent about our cosy lifestyle. Totalitarianism can sneak up on us in a nanosecond. Never mind the Ides of March, beware the Witch from Ipswich.

The narrative deals with a drowned child whose death symbolises government carelessness. The grieving mother demands services, dignity and revolution. These ordinary people barricade themselves into their Town Hall, roused to action and under siege like the Chileans.

The story was much clearer this season, even though no new text has been added. The moving sea of singers who are the set design gives the piece an abstract quality and allows the tale to be told in a non-naturalistic mode. The piece does not have the same edginess and driven quality as it did the first time but, just like the rebels in the Little City, it is difficult to stay in a state of revolt forever. One needs a rest from the adrenalin and the pain.
Vela's music is stirring and impassioned. Ronaldo Morales as the sceptic, Deanne Flatley as grieving mother, Penny Glass, the hard-liner, Glenn Haydn, the cynical drunk, are touching as are soloists, Jeannie Marsh and Gioconda Vatcky.

The moving sea of singers becomes the set design in the hands of Cuocolo responding to the emotional levels of the tale. The story seemed clearer this season. It lacks the original edginess but, like the rebels in the Little City, it is difficult to stay in a state of revolt forever.

KATE HERBERT   


Thursday, 22 May 1997

Tap Dogs, May 22, 1997


At Forum Theatre, May 1997 (no finishing date available)
Reviewed by Kate Herbert round May 21, 1997

If you've ever wondered like I have what's happening on those inner city building sites behind those huge wooden fences, now we know.  Tap Dogs have revealed all the secrets. Those TLF blokes (Tappers Labourers Federation) are tap dancing on scaffolding, sheets of galvo, wooden palettes, any damn bit of industrial waste they can find.

Tap Dogs is Bloke Tap, Tough Tap, Butch Tap, Tap with Attitude. It is a visit to the Land of Testosterone. Six Glen Waverly types and one Broady boy, directed by visual theatre whiz kid Nigel Triffitt, create a feast of Tap that balances great chorus dancing with individual showing off. Snatches of blokey roughhousing combine with dangerous stunts on ladders, platforms or upside down on a harness.

I can see them tap-mountaineering next in their tapping Blundstones.

The show is a bevy of rhythmic delights. So many time steps, so little time. They tap out every possible industrial noise: chain saws, jackhammers, trains and factories. It was so loud I had to stuff a tissue in my ears. Ever tried Tap Welding? These boys have. Tried dancing in a tray of water? Remember your raincoat like the two front rows.

These six chunky movers, led by Sheldon Perry, who does a great line in smug bastard, stomp and preen and pose and charm, each with an individual style. They smack each other around good-humouredly, slapping high fives, winking, pointing and raising eyebrows at their captive audience. They tease us, almost tossing themselves off the stage. We can feel the heat and sweat. They even dance on the tables.

The music is integral, state of the art interactive technology. MIDI pads on the stage floor are each programmed with a different electronic percussive sound and react when stomped upon. The feet are tapping, the floor percussing and the keyboard and guitar thumping. It's a high tech noise-fest. 

Triffitt's experience in visual theatre is evident. Even the set changes become a feature. He leaves all the mechanics of backstage visible to enhance the industrial feel of the show. Trifitt has updated the show since the 1995 season and it is more cohesive less tiring and just the right length at 80 minutes. David Murray's lighting design provides the perfect environment with dramatic back lighting and floor floods.

It's a good fun noisy thrash show which proves that when left alone, blokes like to make noise, run fast, smack each other, be athletic, sweat and - well, Tap Dance!!!

KATE HERBERT

Wednesday, 21 May 1997

The Drought by Tom Petsinis, May 21, 1997


The Drought by Tom Petsinis
At La Mama until June 8, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around June 20, 1997.

The script of Tom Petsinis's play, The Drought, although set in contemporary rural Greece, owes a great deal to ancient Greek drama. It uses a chorus which sings in verse, focuses on a blood feud between brothers and is riddled with religious iconography, references to God and a 'soothsayer' to prophesy the impending doom of the protagonist.

Vangel  (Matthew Crosbie) has returned to his family's Greek village after twenty unsuccessful years in Australia. He finds the country in the grips of a ravaging drought, his mother dead, his brother Kosta (George Harlem) over-worked and his father forgiving.

Vangel is a shadowy character torn between two cultures and struggling to find his 'home'. He decides to marry a local girl (Maria Limberis) but Anna, (Anastasia Malinoff) Kosta's wife, is suspicious and in Lady Macbeth style, convinces Kosta that Vangel plans to take half the land he has worked so hard to cultivate.

We already know Vangel's number is up because the Gypsy (Laura Lattuada) foretells it all with bones and dirt and blood. Lattuada is a fiery and multi-dimensional presence on stage providing vital mystical undertones with a passionate performance and beautifully resonant voice.

The Drought, which won the Wal Cherry Award in 1993, is a rich and poetic text which treads carefully with its worthy subject without being precious. The problem is that all its metaphor and symbolism is struggling to crawl out from beneath this very ordinary production. It is a difficult play to stage, requiring layering and detailed acting to make visible its subtext. Otherwise it remains a good piece of poetic writing.

 The play, directed by Suzanne Chaundy, seems too large for La Mama's tiny space. Peter Long's huge Greek icon and red sand look wonderful but the sand hinders the actors who look uncomfortable and uncertain. Shifts from chorus to naturalism are clumsy and direction is often static and unimaginative.

 Melodic chants composed by Tassos Ioannides enhance the piece but the simplicity of the final clarinet soundtrack might have served the play better in parts.

The acting is uneven but, in addition to Lattuada, Malinoff is a strong presence and Limberis a charming and credible Sofia. Much of the casting works against the production and some melodramatic acting and slow responses leave it feeling laboured and over-cooked.
There is a much better play begging to get out.

KATE HERBERT 

Friday, 16 May 1997

Ben Elton, May 16, 1997

Ben Elton
Melbourne Concert Hall May 15, 16, 17 May, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert on May 15, 1997

Ben Elton is like an over-wound mechanical toy. He careers and twirls and skips across the stage with an awkward grace, bouncing off the microphone, vivid and bubbling like some insane toy soldier.

Unlike the Eveready Bunny, he winds up not down. He is more like a Whirling Dervish or a Juggernaut or some reckless object falling from a very great height.

Or else - just like Ben Elton: fast, furious and funny with an injection of speed laced with Bolshie political fervour. He is alone on stage for well over two hours leaping from topic to topic in a breath-takingly physical routine. He's funky, warm and disarmingly sexy live.

His absorption of Australian culture and politics is total. He has a better grasp of it than most Australian comics which is perhaps a symptom of the outsider's objective eye combined with the incisive mind of a good scholar.

He opens with some clever observations about our political system. What with being Jeffed in Victoria and Costello-ed nationally, Melbourne feels like Britain under Thatcher. Hanson is "the love-child of Bob Menzies and Jo Bjelke-Petersen."

Our sporting life and England's lack of both get a slapping. "If it was a kids' party, you wouldn't let the big kids beat England every time." "Bowl under-arm", "make drinking an Olympic sport". "Sport was invented so men would have something to talk about between beers."

Elton cunningly gives a succinct political diatribe then drops joke bombs all over it. One theme permeating the routine is Cool versus Uncool, the victory of "style over content". He stands up for the Ug booted, the track-suited. "They're mad but they're not killing anyone."  

After too much of the pre-interval 'Men's Group' sperm test, Elton goes into comedy hyper-space after interval, attacking marriage rituals, wine snobbery, "Heroin is cool" image, style fascists. He performs with dynamism and such apparent ease we could be in his living room.

His pet topic is the great global fraud, 'Marketing'. "Next you'll have 'Vegemite Lite' ", 'You can't make chips in a Kettle,' 'I want well-shagged olive oil, not extra-virgin.' He mourns the demise of the Aussie ad. What happened to the gravelly voice that did "Tip-Top's The One'?

Few comics can make  "the globalisation of culture through multi-nationalism" a tasty comedy treat. It was his final routine about road rage on footpaths that is worth the wait. I had tears pouring down my cheeks.
KATE HERBERT      

Wednesday, 14 May 1997

The Last Gasp, 'Dance Noir', May 14, 1997

The Last Gasp
At  Napier Street Theatre until May 17, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 13 May, 1997

The beams of light stream through holes in a galvo roof or dirty windowpanes. The warehouse is piled with packing palettes. The atmosphere is thick with fog and umpteen cigarettes. Ironically, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes filters downstairs from Leon's club, The Magnolia Room.

This is not San Francisco but 1930's Port Melbourne docklands, not Sam Spade but slightly scruffy nice-guy P.I., Eddie Cleary (Darryl Pellizer).  Neville Bryan (Joseph Spano) has "something dodgy going on" in the property development line on the docklands. The Premier (Andrew Gray) is in on it too. Sound familiar?

The Last Gasp is billed as "Dance Noir" and draws heavily on film noir, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett detective novels. The design, created by the production team and Ben Cobham's seamy evocative lighting, set the scene for the genre. Nancy Black's text is appropriately witty and laconic, utilises the genre extremely well and shifts location to Melbourne without too many hiccups.

Director Anne Thompson has used movement and choreography to abstract moments and to heighten tension, both sexual and dramatic. Couples linger, tilt, loll and seduce with lyrical shifts of weight. The piece really takes off at the first real sniff of sex between the vamp, Lily (Rinske Ginsberg) and Neville, the dodgy bastard.

It paces up considerably in the second half-hour after recovering from some shaky opening night technical hitches with voice-overs and musical cues.

There are a couple of very funny moments and characters. Joe Spano's club manager Leo the "dago shark" is a pure comic combo of Peter Lorre and Manuel from Fawlty Towers and he plays with relish cowardly business-bastard, Neville who is bored with his dowdy wife (Shona Innes).

 Darryl Pellizzer is lovable and true to the genre as the rough Aussie bloke detective who has a heart of gold and a mean two-step.

Unfortunately, despite its entertainment and nostalgic value, the piece lacks a coherent vision, never quite declaring its style. The balance between drama, melodrama and dance is unclear. There are flat spots during scene links, chunks which might benefit from more choreography and some overwhelming audibility and acting problems from a couple of actors. 

The Last Gasp may not quite do justice to the genre but the audience certainly adored its references and hooted for the whole hour.

KATE HERBERT  

Saturday, 10 May 1997

The Austral-Asian Post-Cartoon Sports Edition, May 10, 1997

By Not Yet It's Difficult
Merlin Theatre Malthouse until May 24, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around May 9, 1997

We are NYID!" sounds like Hitler Youth but it is the chant of the impeccably well-drilled squad of nine actors which is Not Yet It's Difficult.

Not only the company name is tinged with irony. Director David Pledger's latest production is entitled "The Austral-Asian Post-Cartoon Sports Edition". It is a scrapbook of physical-visual images of Australian sport and not all is heroic songs of praise.

This company has more muscle per square inch than the AFL and performers run for a gruelling 90 minutes that requires constant vigilance and engagement from audience.

In the cavernous, emptied Merlin Theatre, we at first peered through the cyclone wire at performers on gym equipment while a live interviewer roamed the crowd like a likeable version of Sam Newman and audience members appeared simultaneously on a huge, Big Brother-like screen.

The likeness to Orwellian propaganda continued as soccer bouncers herded us inside the arena to shift locations as the action raced throughout the "stadium". It's unnerving but that's intentional.

NYID both celebrates and challenges the representation of sports. The raving "coach" siks his athletes onto a player who "does not belong". The fact that he's Vietnamese makes their violence profoundly distressing.

The actors/athletes tell personal stories. "Because I did gymnastics my dad thought I was - delicate". "Sculpted near-naked bodies are scrawled with price-tags while Voice- Overs discuss the unfemininity of muscles, the status of women's sports and men's huge sponsorships. The medium is the message here.
The style of NYID in the last three shows has a pattern but is not yet tiresome. Dramaturg, Peter Eckersall, has developed a brisk, ironic word games and uses the richness in minimal, repetitive language, semantics and definitions. "Sport: noun, verb, adverb",  "Hit him Mark. Hit him Mark. Whack him son!" Most are chanted in unison like a pack of one-eyed supporters.

It is the "one-eyedness" which remains with me. The dreadful potential for chauvinism of all sorts that is inbuilt in any divisive competitive arena, be it sport, politics or race. NYID is a very astute company. If your idea of theatre is sitting comfortably in the dark watching a good yarn then this is not for you but take a punt on a skilfully executed and diverting piece of contemporary theatre. As they would say, "And Go!"
Kate Herbert



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The Austral-Asian Post-Cartoon Sports Edition
By Not Yet It's Difficult
 Merlin Theatre Malthouse until May 24, 1997

We are NYID!" sounds like Hitler Youth but it is the chant of the impeccably well-drilled squad of nine actors which is Not Yet It's Difficult.

Not only the company name is tinged with irony. Director David Pledger's latest production is entitled "The Austral-Asian Post-Cartoon Sports Edition". It is a scrapbook of physical-visual images of Australian sport and not all is heroic songs of praise.

This company has more muscle per square inch than the AFL and performers run for a gruelling 90 minutes that requires constant vigilance and engagement from audience.

In the cavernous, emptied Merlin Theatre, we at first peered through the cyclone wire at performers on gym equipment while a live interviewer roamed the crowd like a likeable version of Sam Newman and audience members appeared simultaneously on a huge, Big Brother-like screen.

The likeness to Orwellian propaganda continued as soccer bouncers herded us inside the arena to shift locations as the action raced throughout the "stadium". It's unnerving but that's intentional.

NYID both celebrates and challenges the representation of sports. The raving "coach" siks his athletes onto a player who "does not belong". The fact that he's Vietnamese makes their violence profoundly distressing.

The actors/athletes tell personal stories. "Because I did gymnastics my dad thought I was - delicate". "Sculpted near-naked bodies are scrawled with price-tags while Voice- Overs discuss the unfemininity of muscles, the status of women's sports and men's huge sponsorships. The medium is the message here.
The style of NYID in the last three shows has a pattern but is not yet tiresome. Dramaturg, Peter Eckersall, has developed a brisk, ironic word games and uses the richness in minimal, repetitive language, semantics and definitions. "Sport: noun, verb, adverb",  "Hit him Mark. Hit him Mark. Whack him son!" Most are chanted in unison like a pack of one-eyed supporters.

It is the "one-eyedness" which remains with me. The dreadful potential for chauvinism of all sorts that is inbuilt in any divisive competitive arena, be it sport, politics or race. NYID is a very astute company. If your idea of theatre is sitting comfortably in the dark watching a good yarn then this is not for you but take a punt on a skilfully executed and diverting piece of contemporary theatre. As they would say, "And Go!"

Kate Herbert



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˜The Austral-Asian Post-Cartoon Sports Editionˇ

˜ by Not Yet It's Difficult. Merlin Theatre Malthouse until May 24

ıˆ"We are NYID!" sounds like Hitler Youth but it is the chant of the impeccably well-drilled squad of nine actors which is Not Yet It's Difficult.

Not only the company name is tinged with irony. Director David Pledger's latest production  is entitled "The Austral-Asian Post-Cartoon Sports Edition". It is a scrapbook of physical-visual images of Australian sport and  not all is heroic songs of praise.

This company has more muscle per square inch than the AFL and performers run for a gruelling 90 minutes which requires constant vigilance and engagement from audience.

In the cavernous, emptied Merlin Theatre, we at first peered through the cyclone wire at performers on gym equipment while a live interviewer roamed the crowd like a likeable version of Sam Newman and audience members appeared simultaneously on a huge, Big Brother-like screen.

Tuesday, 6 May 1997

Mary Shelley and the Monsters, MAy 6, 1997

 by Tim Robertson
La Mama at The Courthouse until May 17, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert round May 5, 1997

Tim Robertson's play Mary Shelley and the Monsters is messy but funny. It was written in the hey-day of the Pram Factory and has the chaotic scent of Melbourne's theatre in the 70's. Occasionally the dialogue sounds glib and arch but the play did, after all, emerge from a period of lefty, intellectual smart-arse theatre.

The title is deceptive. Mary (Helen Hopkins) is not really the focus of the play. Rather it is the men in and around her life, her monsters according to Robertson, who have centre stage.

Her father, philosopher William Godwin  (Jim Daly) is a grotesque old vulgarian who studies his excreta. Her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, " writes like an angel, looks like a twerp". His poetic pal, the club-footed Lord Byron, (John F Howard) sings the Byronic Blues and quips, "gotta put my foot up."

Clayden and his jaunty cast have had a hoot creating a wildly entertaining show. They make the most of Robertson's poorly structured text that is essentially a collection of scenic reflections on the Romantics with lateral links between scenes.

The style is, appropriately, absurd and black with some cleverly devised physical comedy routines such as a journey by Italian donkey during which the donkey ends up riding Shelley. Howard's Byron is sexily lugubrious and Jerome Pride in a minor role as John Clare is compelling. Jim Daly plays a series of unremittingly hilarious characters. His Italian youth's seduction of Byron is a scream.

Music is an essential component in the play and is composed by pianist Briony Marks and played by a trio including guitar and violin. It is Brechtian-Berlin cabaret in both musical and theatrical style and is rather erratically strewn throughout in snatches of verses or full chorus numbers.

Clayden's design magically transforms the normally dour Courthouse Theatre with enormous drops of cheesecloth - very 70's. This curtaining provides an oversized screen for projection of fragmented images from Italian paintings and pallazzi which accentuate the other-worldliness of these Romantic poets.

Death is a continuing theme in both the play and the Shelleys' lives. Mary says, "To examine life I must first have recourse to death": hence her obsession with the dead and the monstrous in Frankenstein. Robertson's play emphasises this indulgence in the funereal by visiting charnel houses, portrait galleries of the dead. Even John Major was amongst the dead on election night.

KATE HERBERT 

The Essentials, May 6, 1997


Written by Stefo Nantsou
Trades Hall Ballroom Tues-Sat 8pm until May 17, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around May 5, 1997

 A screaming ambulance careened by as we left The Essentials, a play about the decimation of the Victorian ambulance services. Simple irony, or Jeff (Kennett) and Intergraph cocking a snoot at their critics?

The play, written and directed by Stefo Nantsou, has two distinct storylines which link in the final five minutes, too long to wait for the pay-off. One thread deals with the privatisation process of the ambulance officers, the second with John Punch, (Steve Payne) businessman and Liberal supporter, who treats his wife (Sue Jones) as chattel and punching bag.

Research is effectively integrated into well-observed, scathingly witty dialogue . The first half is the more successful, the second being less cohesive and coherent.  However one of the strongest pieces of writing is the final monologue by Niko, played with passion and commitment by Nantsou, about one disastrous night of botched ambulance calls, thanks to Intergraph.

The play, staged in the round, is directed with deceptive simplicity in the style of early political theatre. The soundscape (David Franzke) is evocative but sometimes intrusive. Performances are generally strong, not merely because of actors' commitment to the issue. Colin Hall, a real Ambo driver, brings authenticity and gentle warmth to the role of Keith.
The script tackles two issues, ambo service and domestic violence, almost toppling under the weight. It also under-estimates the terrifying subtlety of the manipulation used so adroitly by the very powerful. The manager of the New Order is a blatant villain. His tame psychologist, who runs team-building weekends is merely blunt and aggressive.

Generally, these people employ less obvious and more insidious methods than outright abuse, in order to demean and subjugate "team members". Watch your back people. It could be your workplace next.

This play was originally banned because it was thought to criticise Kennett specifically. It was thus guaranteed an audience when rescued by Trades Hall. Although there is some soap-boxing, it is not merely a vehicle for a well-meaning Leftist diatribe.

KATE HERBERT

Thursday, 1 May 1997

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for Seven Audience in Seven Parts, May 1, 1997

By Lloyd Jones
At La Mama until May 14, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around April 30, 1997

It's one minute to midnight by the clock on the wall which I didn't notice it until the very last moment, the eleventh hour, as an actor untied my wrists and removed my red gag whispering, " Look what we have done to each other."

Lloyd Jones new work at La Mama is called, enigmatically but appropriately,
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for Seven Audience in Seven Parts. It is not a play but a work done in the theatre with theatrical concepts and a sequence of seven scenes in seven-minute units spanning the human life cycle.

It is described as an "exploration of intimate theatre" and, in the cosy La Mama space with an audience restricted to seven only, one feels like an elite group invited for an exclusive occasion.

 There is nothing predictable about the piece. We seven were greeted at the door by "Mein Host" who offered shots of Ginger Wine and reading material to keep us happy until the "start". The tilt is that there is no real start. The five intervals, also divisible by seven, blur into the performance.

The long interval (42 minutes) is a dinner served at table by the entire cast who take turns providing not only fabulous food but serving our every whim, even holding the table-top which shifted about like a continental shelf. It was like eating at sea.

During the other long interval (35 minutes)  when we attempted, as instructed, to toddle off up Lygon Street, each of us was accompanied by or bailed up in the theatre by a talkative actor. It was as if we were at a dinner party where the ground keeps shifting.  The social parameters are familiar but mutable. Nobody accosts the audience but there is a  constant flutter of excitement and anticipation.

The director is on stage all night, moving our chairs, seating us, instructing, making us comfortable telling stories. He even gives one of us the cue sheet to hold for the actors. It is interactive theatre in which the audience-actor relationship is irreparably altered. Watch the performers or the intermittent video of the Seven Brides movie or a video about the Vietnam War protests.

The questions persist throughout the night, "What is performance? What is interval? When are they performers? When are they themselves?" It is a long night but so is a dinner party. The piece is fluid, warm and creates a distinctly different night in the theatre.

KATE HERBERT      

Dock 39 by IRAA Theatre, May 1, 1997


Dock 39 by IRAA Theatre
At Theatreworks until May 18, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around April 30, 1997
 
Deconstruction is a funny thing. In theatre it can enlighten and heighten issues with its prismatic effect or it can merely obscure them. In Dock 39, the latest production from IRAA Theatre, both are true.

Director Renato Cuocolo has written the text but includes scraps from Beckett, Brodsky, Dickinson and Duras. The piece explores immigration and alienation using documents from the Department of Immigration and community welfare organisations.

Most importantly, it highlights the real life of Agata, a young Italian woman who was caretaker of Dock 39 where immigrant arrivals checked their belongings. Agata is the mouthpiece of dislocated persons, all those in exile for political, social or economic reasons.

The floor of the theatre-in-the-round is strewn with clothing. Acclaimed Italian actor, Roberta Bosetti, artist in residence with IRAA, paces around the square of her entrapment, hanging clothes from shipping ropes, folding them roughly, dressing undressing, wearing a coat which reminds her of a lost lover. Clothing is identity. Each article represents a name, a person, a lost past. "People don't like their old clothes." They are painful reminders.

Projections of unreadable words litter the already littered floor - like a foreign language. The actor talks and talks. Initially it is wordy and incomprehensible because of Bosetti's accent and the density of the text but she connects more fully with the words as it becomes more personal and we are drawn in to Agata's passionate, frightened, lonely world.

There is no narrative thread, just snatches of thoughts, memories, names and concepts of alienation and loss. It is accompanied by a wonderful vocal and musical soundscape by Elizabeth Drake. This play is less lyrical than much of Cuocolo's previous work. It does not leave us swimming headily in a sea of images and sensations. Perhaps it has a more didactic intention. Perhaps he wants us to leave thinking rather than feeling this time.

The piece is most successful from about twenty minutes in when Bosetti's power starts to drive slowly and assuredly towards a final crescendo. As she dropped to the now partially stripped floor, we experienced the first moment of absolute silence for an hour. We waited, shifted, wondered. "Is it the end?"  She lay there fully three minutes as we waited for the first courageous applause.

KATE HERBERT