In this radio review spot on Arts Weekly on Saturday 21 March 2026, I talk to Nick Tolhurst about Little Absences by Grazia Marin, and about Maureen Hartley’s Life Achievement Award at Victorian Green Room Awards 2026.
It's about 7-8 mins.
Sunday, 22 March 2026
Friday, 20 March 2026
Little Absences REVIEW 19 March 2026 **1/2
THEATRE
Written by Grazia Marin
At Chapel off Chapel until Sat 21 March at 2pm & 7.30pm
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: **1/2 (2.5)
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 21 March, 2026. KH
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| L-R: Piera Dennerstein, Janet Watson Kruse-Image by Bernard Peasley |
The premise and intention of Grazia Marin’s play, Little Absences, has great potential for a short play with a small cast, and some elements of this first season are successful. In an ageing population, many of us are faced with the declining health of parents and grandparents. It is a confronting and challenging experience.
Chris (Janet Watson Kruse) is an older woman suffering escalating dementia, but fiercely denying the increasing problems she has coping with living independently and alone. She struggles with basic tasks such as feeding and washing herself, keeping her house clean and the fridge stocked. However, she does manage to keep a secret stash of alcohol that she hides from her attentive, worried daughter, Jenny (Piera Dennerstein).
Chris has another precious secret that she keeps hidden even from her daughter: as a young woman she had some success as an emerging writer, particularly of poetry. In her demented state, she craves the creativity of the written word but wrestles with memory, language and the capacity to frame and retain an idea. It is heart-breaking to watch her struggling to retrieve that creative state – perhaps almost as distressing as watching her struggle with her alcohol abuse and inability to do the most basic activities.
Kruse is committed and immersed in this fraught but determined character, capturing her frustration and intermittent confusion. Dennerstein embodies the despair and concern of the daughter who respects her mother‘s wishes to be left alone but knows that her intervention is inevitable. An unexpected visitor, Alex (Veronicka Devlin), a young writer who crashed her motorbike nearby, provides some perspective and triggers Chris’s memories of her own writing.
This production, directed by Elnaz Sheshgelani, runs two hours with interval, but needs some vigorous and astute editing to reduce it to perhaps 70 minutes. The dialogue is unnecessarily repetitive, there are some logical inconsistencies, and the structure needs some reshaping.
The play lacks dramatic conflict and has limited dramatic tension and dramatic action. Most of the action is described rather than being “Now“ action. It needs more compelling revelations and stronger turning points in the narrative. All these issues make the play more like an extended monologue interspersed with some character interactions.
The daughter and the visitor’s roles could serve the action better, but perhaps more interesting would be having an actor to play various roles from Chris‘s past: her husband Frank and Eduardo, the exotic lover from her youthful sojourn as a writer in Spain. This actor could also play the visitor.
It is clear that Chris didn’t like her husband Frank, so it is surprising that she chooses to use him as her invisible confidant. It might be more interesting to see her savaging him in her memory with a real actor playing the character.
A flashback to the sensuality of her youth with Eduardo might add an interesting scene. The memories and dreams are captured only by a few slides, scenes of locations and characters and this could provide a visual background to other scenes, rather than being a distraction or interruption.
The fact that Chris was a successful writer when she was young, is insufficient. Perhaps there could be clear revelations about Frank’s extramarital affair and dysfunctional marriage.
Here’s another idea: Jenny’s song, based on Chris’s poem, Little Absences, could begin the play and punctuate it until we become aware, at the end, that it is a eulogy. This might give the piece a dramatic shape and a clear structure. The daughter could then become a kind of narrator, thus avoiding Chris having to constantly explain to us what she’s experiencing as a dementing, but determinedly independent woman.
However, much of the latter part of my review is dramaturgy, and my role here is to be reviewer and critic. There’s certainly potential in Little Absences but, at this stage, neither the script nor the production have fulfilled that potential.
By Kate Herbert
Cast
Chris - Janet Watson Kruse
Alex - Veronicka Devlin
Jenny - Piera Dennerstein
Creative Team
Writer - Grazia Marin
Director - Elnaz Sheshgelani
Saturday, 14 March 2026
RADIO REVIEW Arts Weekly 3MBS Sat 7 Mar 2026 - La Mama Theatre’s program 2026
KATE HERBERT-3MBS-SAT-07-MARCH-2026
In this radio review spot on Arts Weekly on Saturday 7 March 2026, I talk to Nick Tolhurst and Phillipa Edwards about La Mama Theatre’s new program of theatre events and I talk briefly about Moongazing that I saw On Demand (on screen).
Click the link nelow to listen. Its about 7 mins.
Friday, 6 March 2026
La Mama Program 2026
Program 2026 Summary
Currently playing:
Back to Te Maunga -Courthouse
Some Secret Should Be Kept -La Mama HQ
Moongazing & Saints -On Demand
1. La Mama Presents: Feb, March, April, May
Productions: 1 month block, 2 shows per month -one show at La Mama & Courthouse,
Education (March & May) selected productions)
On Demand season to follow all 8 shows (Feb – May)
Support: Robert Salzer Foundation.
2. Play: Scratch, Explorations, Immerse: June, July, Aug
Scratch- a live platform for performance makers to test new ideas in front of peers and community
Support: Cybec Foundation
Explorations- Artists are given three nights of public presentation (both venues)
Immerse - deeply focused 12-week practice-led program for 16 mid-career writers
Support: Cybec Foundation, John T Reid Trusts, and the City of Melbourne Multi-year Arts Grants Program in partnership with Arts Centre Melbourne and Regional Arts Victoria.
Partnerships:
3. Hope Punk Climate Festival: 1-20 Sept (TBC.)
storytelling and skills development in climate advocacy and action,
Support: in partnership with Learning Experiences Program Science Gallery Melbourne and Griffith University's Performance Ecology Research Lab (P+ERL)
4. Melbourne Festival of Puppetry: 21-27 Sept
Support: City of Melbourne and Arts Centre Melbourne.
5. Melbourne Fringe Festival at La Mama
October
6. Cultural Conservation in Action: November: First Nations-led month. Directed by Glenn Shea.Conservation of our First Nation's story, songs and dances
7. Faradays: December
Party month: music, poetry, cabaret
A Carlton takeover
Support: Local Business Partnerships.
Wednesday, 4 March 2026
Moongazing (Online) REVIEW 4 March 2026 *** (3)
THEATRE ONLINE
Written by Maki Morita
At La Mama Theatre, La Mama On Demand until Tues 10 March 12.00am (Stage season finished 1 March)
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: *** (3)
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 7 March 2026. KH
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| Anna Fujihara image Darren Gill |
Moongazing, written by Maki Morita and directed by Ari Angkasa, is elusive, visually striking and more felt than understood. It drifts between waking life and digital dreamscape, exploring what guidance means in an age of disembodied voices.
A young Japanese-Australian woman (Anna Fujihara) is tethered to her online adviser (Sean Yuen Halley), a kind of Siri-of-the-future; a sleek, insinuating presence that offers affirmation, correction and algorithmic comfort. Fujihara, as the young woman, is tightly coiled, perpetually mid-scroll, her body pitched forward over her phone. Her performance is considered, albeit too evenly pace and emotionally muted, with the character’s interior life more suggested than fully revealed. Halley’s digital oracle’s calm cadences are faintly menacing and tinged with control.
Hovering at the edges of the woman’s flickering world is a mysterious woman older than the hills (Yumi Umiumare), a dreamlike mentor who may be ancestral memory, alter ego or moon spirit.
Umiumare’s stylised Butoh movement is slow, sinewy and exquisitely controlled and provides the production’s beating heart. Each gesture unfurls with ritual deliberation: a hand tremors, a spine curves, a foot roots to the earth. Umiumare doesn’t so much enter a scene, as seep into it. Her presence feels elemental, in contrast to the slick, oily digital patter.
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| Yumi Umiumare - image Darren Gill |
The design is spare is shaped by evocative lighting that bathes the stage in lunar washes and pockets of shadow that breathe with the performers. Pale light halos Umiumare’s white-painted form, while cooler, sharper tones delineate the technological realm, subtly reinforcing the play’s thematic divide.
Angkasa’s direction emphasises this visual and physical quality, although the dramaturgy occasionally wanders, the pace and rhythm lack variation and scenes accumulate, rather than building dramatic tension or action. Its central metaphor resonates: the moon as guide, algorithm as false prophet. Certain images in this production linger: a body folding and unfolding like a tide, a pale face lit by an unforgiving light. It is a meditation rather than a manifesto.
By Kate Herbert
Cast
Anna Fujihara
Yumi Umiumare
Sean Yuen Halley
Creative
Team
Writer: Maki Morita
Director: Ari Angkasa
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| Yumi Umiumare - image by _Darren_Gill |
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