Decoupage Skin by Michelle Griffiths, May 25, 2005

Decoupage Skin  by Michael Griffith

La Mama, from May 25, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 25, 2005

Both writing and performing a solo play are enormous challenges. Decoupage Skin, written by Michael Griffith, is only partially successful on both counts.

Jennifer Andersen plays Helen, a woman married with two children. We see her anxiously awaiting the return of her husband and sons after a soccer game.

As she waits Helen addresses the audience directly, almost conversationally, as if she is peeling back the layers of her skin, revealing for us the underlying flaws or truth.

Helen's decoupage or cut out collage skin cover is not complete. It has cracks and peeling edges.

Griffith writes Helen as a woman living a veiled, even disguised existence, an uneventful life that she wishes to be more dramatic, even tragic.

She secretly hopes that her entire family is killed in a car crash on the way home from soccer. She reveals that, in spite of her inability to grieve over her youthful abortion, she faked grief, tears and even her subsequent mental breakdown.

As a seemingly harmless and trustworthy teenager, she was secretly a thief and a compulsive liar. As an adult she fantasises about leaving polaroids of her genitals secreted amongst the frozen foods in the supermarket.

Helen is clearly troubled but manages to live a superficially normal life shielded by her capacity for lying.

Barbara Ciszewska, directs Andersen's performance in and around a contraption shaped like the inner framework of a huge crinoline.

 Those sections placed inside the frame are the most effective. When she runs or stands outside it the space is cramped and Andersen's movement awkward and constrained.

Griffith's writing has some witty observations and interesting moments but the dialogue is often uncomfortable and the through line of the narrative incoherent. The character becomes muddled and the intention unclear.

Andersen engages the audience often but there is a disconcerting shrillness to the performance that keeps reminding us that is an actor, not a character we are witnessing. There is little emotional connection with Helen. In fact, Griffith paints her as a rather dislikeable person.

 Decoupage Skin is not without merit but the various components of the piece does not quite make an effective whole.

By Kate Herbert

The Room by Raimondo Cortese, May 24, 2005

The Room by Raimondo Cortese

The Store Room, May 24 to  June 12, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 24, 2005

In The Room by Raimondo Cortese, Greg Ulfan plays a man alone in a claustrophobic room. He struggles to understand the world outside his room and the increasingly confusing world inside his own head.

The script and Ulfan's performance are both disturbing and comical. The man's erratic behaviour and rapid shifts between unrelated topics are clearly the signatures of a fractured mental state.

However, they are often so absurd and sudden that we laugh as we might catch ourselves laughing inappropriately at the antics of a drunk on the street.

The man's predicament and obsessions are both grim and absurd. He awaits the postman, surrounded by scattered sheets of paper he has, perhaps, previously filled with his own scribblings.

He expects a letter or a visit from a mythical "General" whose invitation he will refuse.

He reminisces about times when he did leave his jail-like room and walk the litter strewn streets, drinking in bars, entering shops, compulsively collecting useless objects.

He pines for "The Angel," the woman he lived with and battled with for years.

The play references, to some degree, Samuel Beckett's play, Krapp's Last Tapes: an isolated man contends with his past and himself.

Cortese's writing is poetic and dense and the Man's speech is formalised and colourful rather than conversational.

Ulfan is compelling in the role. His dark, brooding intensity suits this quirky and volatile figure. He plays with the dialogue, using the voice to heighten the fractious and fractured thought patterns of the man.

Ulfan with director, Ben Harkin, developed this version of The Room. In the tiny enclosed space of The Store Room one feels the claustrophobic state of the Man's mind.

The design (Luke Pithar) is sparse and effective, creating with a few boxes, papers and frames a sense of a hollow oppressive space. Almost inaudible and distant sound (Kelly Ryall) adds an eerie quality.

Efterpi Soropos' lighting is dramatic and isolates areas of the stage that, in turn, isolate the man.

Although this is not one of Cortese's major works, it is definitely an interesting exploration of the machinations of mental illness.

By Kate Herbert 

The Room by Raimondo Cortese, May 24, 2005

The Store Room, May 24 to  June 12, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 24, 2005

In The Room by Raimondo Cortese, Greg Ulfan plays a man alone in a claustrophobic room. He struggles to understand the world outside his room and the increasingly confusing world inside his own head.

The script and Ulfan's performance are both disturbing and comical. The man's erratic behaviour and rapid shifts between unrelated topics are clearly the signatures of a fractured mental state.

However, they are often so absurd and sudden that we laugh as we might catch ourselves laughing inappropriately at the antics of a drunk on the street.

The man's predicament and obsessions are both grim and absurd. He awaits the postman, surrounded by scattered sheets of paper he has, perhaps, previously filled with his own scribblings.

He expects a letter or a visit from a mythical "General" whose invitation he will refuse.

He reminisces about times when he did leave his jail-like room and walk the litter strewn streets, drinking in bars, entering shops, compulsively collecting useless objects.

He pines for "The Angel," the woman he lived with and battled with for years.

The play references, to some degree, Samuel Beckett's play, Krapp's Last Tapes: an isolated man contends with his past and himself.

Cortese's writing is poetic and dense and the Man's speech is formalised and colourful rather than conversational.

Ulfan is compelling in the role. His dark, brooding intensity suits this quirky and volatile figure. He plays with the dialogue, using the voice to heighten the fractious and fractured thought patterns of the man.

Ulfan with director, Ben Harkin, developed this version of The Room. In the tiny enclosed space of The Store Room one feels the claustrophobic state of the Man's mind.

The design (Luke Pithar) is sparse and effective, creating with a few boxes, papers and frames a sense of a hollow oppressive space. Almost inaudible and distant sound (Kelly Ryall) adds an eerie quality.

Efterpi Soropos' lighting is dramatic and isolates areas of the stage that, in turn, isolate the man.

Although this is not one of Cortese's major works, it is definitely an interesting exploration of the machinations of mental illness.

By Kate Herbert 

Naming Rights (family matters), May 19, 2005

Naming Rights (family matters)
 By Meg Courtney, Chris Howlett & Xan Colman Dancing with Strangers

150-156 Dante's, Gertrude St, Fitzroy, May 19 to May 28, , 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on may 19, 2005

Small theatre company, Dancing with Strangers, presents three new, short plays in its season, Naming Rights (family matters). They have varying degrees of success.

The most effective is Plum, written by Xan Colman (OK) and directed by Rochelle Whyte. The style is abstracted and formalistic with the entire ten-minute dialogue being repeated in every detail.

The effect is to heighten the dilemma of this young couple, Jack (Sam Davison OK) and Kate (Mikaela Martin OK), who we surmise are anxiously awaiting an appointment for a pregnancy termination.

The repetition also clarifies the situations of their off-stage friends, one lesbian couple having a baby and the male gay couple who has assisted them in the conception.

There is little emotional engagement in the piece but the actors are competent and the direction exploratory. There is an effective sense of urgency in the dialogue and a restrained panic in the characters.

Turn, written by Meg Courtney and directed by Bruce Hughes, tackles the delicate subject of an adult daughter (Sharon Kershaw) managing her changing relationship with her mother (Marie-Therese Byrne) who has a debilitating stroke.

Although the issues are important, the play has too many short scenes and too little dramatic or character development of character.

The daughter acts as narrator which disallows any real communication between characters, the mother is shrill and unengaging and the father (Ian Rooney) is almost invisible.

The final play is the least successful. Lucy Devil Has Wealth Syndrome, written by Chris Howlett and directed by Justin Murray, is a parody of a soap opera but without the acerbic quality or cunning detail of Desperate Housewives.

Lucy Devil (Nicola Alexopoulos) is a fading starlet suffering Wealth Syndrome, a mythical illness caused by too much wealth. Her agent (Michael Cooney) and her assistant (Sophie Good) are conspiring to rip her off but Lucy prefers their dubious attentions to that of her sister (Liza Kennedy).

This piece feels like an undergraduate review with limited acting skill, clunky dialogue and unimaginative direction.

One of the highlights of the productions is the inventive lighting by Richard Vabre. Who uses a few lamps and colours to create atmosphere.

By Kate Herbert

Savage Grace, May 18, 2005

Savage Grace by Alana Valentine 

Steamworks Arts Productions & La Mama

La Mama  May 18 until June 5, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The argument over euthanasia is heated, emotional and exhausting. In the hothouse environment of Alana Valentine's play, Savage Grace, the issues are personalised in an unexpected way.

The argument between the two characters in the play is about the right of a young AIDS victim to choose when he will die and the responsibility of his doctor to assist him.

We never meet the young man, Jeremy, but his case is represented by his doctor, Tex, (Gibson Nolte) a youthful American medico who is under suspicion of assisting deaths in his hospital.

Tex is compelled to attend a series of sessions with a medical ethicist, Robert Bavarro (Humphrey Bower).

The plot leads us into the murky territory of religion and faith, humanism and choice, death and hope.

Valentine's story takes some surprising turns that intensify the tangle of issues to be dealt with by these two men from such differing ethical and social perspectives.

Robert is a cool debater, a philosopher who tries to remain detached and professional in his sessions with Tex but who finds himself being antagonised and baited by the hostile young doctor who is on a quest.

What complicates their professional meetings is that Tex starts flirting with Robert. Both men are single and gay and, despite being polar opposites, they are attracted to each other.

Once sex and intimacy interfere in their heated but rational debate, al bets are off and each seems driven to corral the other into his own belief structure.

Robert sees Tex as "casually assisting death" and defying God's own plan. Tex vies Robert as a ivory tower intellectual and snob who uses his version of faith to justify ignoring the pain of the victims of grave illness.

Bower manages to find charm in the supercilious and almost dislikeable Robert.

Is maddening rationality is credible for such an academic.

As Tex, Gilmore vibrates with a barely contained anxiety and energy, his passion for his patients equalling his delight in flirting with Robert and causing him  discomfort.

The spare light and set design (Andrew Lake) and economical and intelligent direction by Sally Richardson make this a compelling piece of theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Through the Wire by Ros Horin, May 11, 2005

Through the Wire by Ros Horin 

Performing Lines & Melbourne Theatre Company

Grant Street Theatre  May 11 to  22, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on   May 11, 2005

Through the Wire, written and directed imaginatively by Ros Horin, is the next in a growing list of plays about asylum seekers in Australia - and perhaps the best so far.

The play is composed from verbatim transcripts of interviews with refugees from Iran and Iraq. One of these refugees, Shahin Shafaei,  an Iranian playwright and actor, plays himself on stage.

This production is compelling because of the richness and authenticity of the stories it tells. Like other plays on this topic, it puts a face to the refugee and enables even sceptics to feel a connection to the victims of our detention centres.

This is nto to suggest that Through the Wire is emotionally manipulative. The play is quite restrained in its style.

The frequent direct address to audience and viewing of the horrors with hindsight, provides some Brechtian distance. This allows us to view the stories compassionately, but rationally.

The focus is on four men in detention and three women who befriend them.

Shahin, we hear, was banned from writing plays or performing in theatre but, when Iranian authorities discovered that one of his plays was being performed in a university show, his life was at risk.

He fell in love with, and still lives with, Gaby, (Eloise Oxer) a young detention centre guard.

Farshid, (Wadih Dona) discovered a plot to poison a prominent a young Iranian and his life was at risk. His mistake was to believe that being honest and telling authorities in Australia that his New Zealand passport was false would work in his favour.

Mohsen (Ali Ammouchi OK) was a whistleblower on judicial corruption in a court case regarding an intelligence officer and therefore under threat. He was befriended and supported by Suzanne, (Rhondda Findleton OK) a psychotherapist who took his desperate phne calls day and night.

The fourth man, Rami, (Hazem Shamas OK) was not even politically active. While doing work experience as a concierge in a five-star hotel, he went against authorities' directives by giving directions to a restaurant to a Westerner during the period of UN weapons inspection. 

Rami's comrade was a woman of Jewish-South African background. His panic and despair was assuaged to some extent by her concern and love.

Heide Riederer's design provides a marvellously spare and abstract set of metal bars and cyclone wire cages. Live music by Jamal Alrakabi not only evokes the Middle East but provides a vivid soundscape to these remarkable tales.

By Kate Herbert

Fool for Love by Sam Shepard, May 4, 2005

Fool for Love by Sam Shepard

 Trades Hall, Council Chambers  May4 to 2, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Fool for Love is a superbly crafted short play. The narrative unfolds seamlessly, the characters are compelling and the denouement shocking.

Sam Shepard's play is set in a Southern US desert state. In an isolated motel, May, (Karen Day) a young woman working as a cook, is reunited with Eddie, (Joe Clements) a rodeo cowboy she knows form high school.

There past and the nature of their relationship is mysterious but obviously fraught with rage and intimate secrets.

Into this tightly wound situation between Eddie and May comes poor, gormless Martin, (Peter Heward) May's doting date for the evening. The progressively drunker and wilder Eddie taunts Martin with outrageous stories  of Eddie's past with May.

This is witnessed by an old man (Bruce Kerr) seated in a rocking chair on the verandah and swigging whisky. At first he appears to be unseen and later he is a ghost from the past.

Fool for Love is a passionate, menacing play built around a dysfunctional relationship.

Clements is a potent presence, making Eddie primitive and threatening, a raw, violent cowboy with no hidden heart of gold. He gives Eddie an animal energy, both repellent and sexual.

As the overwhelmed and desperate May, Day moves between powerless victim one minute and screaming harpy the next.

The balance of power between the pair shifts constantly and the stage is a dangerous and sexy place.

As the hapless Martin, Heward is absolutely credible and Kerr is a potent counterpoint and commentator as the old man.

Gorken Acaroglu (OK) directs the play with a firm hand, keeping the pace rapid, the energy high and the passion turned up to full.

At times, in the first half, there is too much shouting and the performance is too much on one note, but the second half find a more balanced level of impassioned performance.

Shepard is relentless, grim, rich in imagery of the dusty heat of the remote desert and this production a fine example of his style.

By Kate Herbert