Baby, Honey- Thirteen Studies in Exile, REVIEW, 28Sept 1995

 

Baby, Honey- Thirteen Studies in Exile by Deborah Levy

At  La Mama Wed - Sun pm until Sunday October 8, 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert (end Sept 1995)

 

Baby, Honey is 45 minutes of quirky, poetic absurdity. Deborah Levy's script is crisp, witty and fractured and is skilfully handled by director, Suzanne Chaundy and a delightfully playful ensemble of five.

 

The piece is subtitled Thirteen Studies in Exile. These cheeky actors tease us, holding up numbers to indicate parts one to thirteen. They taunt us with direct comments, glances and their very proximity at the infamously in-your-face La Mama space.

 

The work scuttles about amongst themes of abandonment, modern romantic love, alienation in relationships and loss and yet the writing remains intense and dense without becoming heavy.

 

Yes, there are characters. The obsessive and intuitive customs officer (Ian Scott) checks passengers' emotional baggage and asks, "Are you my mummy?" The alienated housewife (Victoria Eagger) wants to be like Marilyn Monroe: "Take sleeping pills and die."  Her husband (Carlos Sanchez) is a manic Spanish-speaking monarchist.

 

An inner-urban, groovy couple (Susannah Gregan, Grant Mouldey) ask interminable, esoteric questions, call each other "Honey" and "Baby" and fantasise their partner is someone else.

 

This production is both stylish and stylised.  It is beautifully paced and it's rhythms and mood are accented by a cunning musical selection and the ideas are elaborated in accompanying footage.

 

The twin TV sets read "Arrivals" and "Departures". We may choose either, we may travel from one to the other, but nothing ever stays the same.

 

Deborah Levy is visiting from the UK. She writes fiction and writes and directs her own theatre work, often collaborating with visual artists dancers and composers. There is also a reading of a second piece of hers at La Mama.

KATE HERBERT

Hamlet, REVIEW, 20 Sept 1995 *****

Hamlet by William Shakespeare, by STC and MTC 

At Playhouse Theatre, Melbourne Arts Centre until October, 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on around 20 Sep 1995

Stars: 5

NB: With hindsight from 2021, I know this was an exceptional 1995 production with an extraordinarily talented cast. Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Richard Roxburgh, Peter Carroll, and directed by Neil Armfield. This was a treat! KH

 

Nothing shatters the spirit like grief and Shakespeare's Hamlet is saturated with souls grieving for death, abandonment or betrayal. Richard Roxborough's Hamlet is a copybook study of grief: shock, sadness, disconnection from his body and environment, fear, disbelief, self-doubt followed by unbridled rage.

 

Roxborough has earned his Sydney Critic's Award for his idiosyncratic, compelling and prismatic characterisation which glints in the light as he turns it. His prince has a subtlety and dynamic range which resonates, shifting easily from underplayed youthful carping and melancholia, through physical incapacitation to cynicism, physical comedy then full-blown anguish. 

 

How easily we forget the effect of grief on we frail humans. Hamlet loses a father, a lover then a mother. Ophelia her lover then father and Laertes father and sister. Their grief is palpable, almost unbearable to behold. The men turn their aching anguish outward to revenge a wronged loved one. Ophelia turns her pain inward.

 

There is a delicacy and reality in Neil Armfield's finely tuned, rhythmic production which plays the actors like instruments which weep and wail with torrents of emotion. He gives them their heads, never overstating either comedy or pathos. It is an ensemble piece with many of this exceptional cast playing multiple roles.

 

Peter Carroll as the donnish "prating old fool", Polonius, almost steals the first half of the play. Geoffrey Rush commendably underplays Horatio, the loyal, ever-watchful eye of objectivity.

 

 Jacek Koman has a still and regal composure which makes Claudius all the more insidious. Cate Blanchett's mad scene as Ophelia was profoundly distressing yet lyrical. Her pale muddied skin and clothing heightened the fragility of her physical and spiritual self.

 

The whole piece is served perfectly by the soundscape (Paul Charlier) and the design (Dan Potra) with distressed warehouse walls and cold tiling create a chill, grey, discomfiting palace for this greatest of all tragedies. The tiny shrine lights and flowers on the wall remind us constantly of the dead who will be remembered.

 

KATE HERBERT

1995 Reviews by or about Kate Herbert, Herald Sun

1995 Reviews, by or About Kate Herbert, Herald Sun

 SNAKE PIT NEEDS MORE BITE   Herald Sun, 29-08-1995, Ed: 2, Pg: 043, 448 words , ENTERTAINMENT
The Snake Pit Where and when: La Mama, Carlton, until September 3 DECADES before Ariel Dorfman wrote Death and the Maiden, an Australian dramatist was writing her own version of "turn the tables on the torturer" set on the Gold Coast (of all places) ...

    TRIP ON WAY TO CLIMAX   Herald Sun, 29-07-1995, Ed: 2, Pg: 034, 110 words , ENTERTAINMENT
TRIPTYCH is not just a whodunit, it is a "who-did-what?" A woman (Nikki Coghill) brings home a bookshop owner (Sarah Chadwick) to her writer husband (Joseph Spano). The two women met only that day, but the guest seems to know Mr Wrong rather too well...

    CUB SITE PLANS   Herald Sun, 17-07-1995, Ed: 2, Pg: 061, 526 words , ENTERTAINMENT
CUB site plans RMIT University has got the site, it's got the plan and all it needs now is the money. The site is the old CUB headquarters at the top of Swanston St, which it wants to develop into a media centre and student housing. Architectural fir...

Pearl Fishers, Victoria State Opera, 6 August 1995

 

By Georges Bizet

By Victoria State Opera

At State Theatre, Aug 5, 8,10, 12. 14, 17, 18, 26, 1995

Review by Kate Herbert: 6 August for The Melbourne Times

Georges Bizet was 24 when The Pearl Fishers hit the stage in Paris in 1853 and it smacks of the kind of love story a young man would write. It is a melodrama, almost a soap opera reliant on characters and emotions painted in broad strokes. Two men fall for the same goddess-like woman who sings like an angel and walks like a dream in the night. The resulting jealousy tears apart their friendship.

 

This is a co-production for Victoria State Opera with the Australian Opera and was first performed in November 1988 with Deborah Riedel in the role of Leila. Riedel has a full-bodied soprano, smoothly modulated through all registers perhaps a result of her early training as a mezzo.

 

Patrick Power as Leila's lover, Nadir, has a sweet, pastel tenor and their two voices are delightfully matched for duets. Baritone, Lucas de Jong's Zurga was creditable and bass, Gary Rowley, was appropriately wicked as the villainous High Priest, Nourabad.

 

Tony Bartuccio's choreography incorporated an interesting melange of jazz and contemporary dance with eastern images. Their physicality enhances the alluring tableaux which director, Jamie Hayes uses to such great effect to open and close each act. Some of the performance and direction is too melodramatic and "old opera" in style but it is difficult to work against the tone of both the music and libretto.

 

French conductor, Emmanuel Joel and the Victoria State Orchestra were superb. Joel will conduct this production in London later this year. The chorus strengthened after act one where it seemed a little thin. Stage design by Kenneth Rowell was imposing and effective in its grand simplicity. George Kulikovskis' lighting design added a powerful dimension to the stormy, oceanic night scenes.

 

KATE HERBERT 300 wds

Tosca , Victoria State Opera, 1 August 1995

 

 

by Giacomo Puccini

Victoria State Opera, At State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne,

 August 1, 4, 9, 17, 21, 26 1995

Reviewed by Kate Herbert on 1 August for The Melbourne Times.

 

Tosca was first performed in 1900 when melodrama was at its height in the theatre. In fact, he took his scenario from Sardou's original stage play with the title role performed by none other than the queen of histrionics, Sarah Bernhardt.

 

It is Puccini's extraordinary score and its combination of delicacy, vigour and tragedy which allows the tale of lovers lost to avoid the schmaltz which is so un-1990's. It reverberates with themes of judgement and danger, love and death.

 

The Victoria State Orchestra is conducted with subtlety by Roderick Brydon. The set design, the lofty grandeur which echoes the ruthlessness of Fascist architecture, serves to underscore the sense of portentousness but, during Act One, the double proscenium allows the orchestra to almost drown the powerful voices of the singers.

 

The direction was, at times, a little unimaginative and seemed to lack the obvious passion and sex intrinsic to Tosca. However, Acts Two and Three were dramatically most successful. The love story between Tosca (Joan Carden) and Caravadossi (Edmund Barham) is finally palpable.

 

Barham's final aria was inspiring. His voice is magnificent and his performance is more flexible and credible in Act Three. Carden's second Act lament as she pines for her lover then offers herself to Scarpia (John Wegner) was inspiring.

 

Which brings me to the star of the production for me. John Wegner, as the villainous, lusty and majestic tyrant, Scarpia, was sinister, sexy and dangerous. We believe him when he quips, "There are so many wines and so many women and I want to sample them all". He combines a superb, rich and vivid baritone with a riveting stage presence. How sad we have lost him to German Opera these days.

 

By KATE HERBERT

Triptych, by Kate Herbert, REview by Chris Boyd July 29, 1995

Edition 2 SAT 29 JUL 1995, Page 034
TRIP ON WAY TO CLIMAX
By BOYD C

TRIPTYCH is not just a whodunit, it is a "who-did-what?"
A woman (Nikki Coghill) brings home a bookshop owner (Sarah Chadwick) to her writer husband (Joseph Spano).
The two women met only that day, but the guest seems to know Mr Wrong rather too well.
Suspicion builds when the bookseller attributes one of the most notorious couplets in English literature to John Dryden instead of Jonathan Swift.
Kate Herbert's plot squirms to a whip-cracking climax, but it falters with brittle characterisation and haphazard dialogue.
Triptych finishes at La Mama tonight.
END OF STORY
Keywords:  REVIEW
Section:  ENTERTAINMENT

© Copyright. All rights reserved. Most articles on Newstext are copyright News Limited. Some copyright is owned by third parties. You may read this article on-screen or print it once for your own personal use. You may not make further copies, forward it by email, post it on an internet or intranet site or make any other use of it without written permission from us. These and any copyright licensing queries should be sent to us at newstext@newsltd.com.au

Don Quixote, Victoria State Opera, 25 July 1995

 

 by Jules Massenet

By Victoria State Opera

At State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, July 25, August 3, 7, 11, 1995

Reviewed by Kate Herbert on 3 Aug 1995 for The Melbourne Times

 

Jules Massenet's " heroic comedy" (c.1910) has not been performed here before. The Victoria State Opera production directed by Ian Judge incorporates staging as sparse as the beard of our windmill-tilting hero and a strangely spare re-telling of the Cervantes tale of this idealistic "champion of virtue" and his unrequited love.

 

 Richard Van Allen with his fine, warm baritone, is impressive as the tragic, lovelorn knight, a relic of the Age of Chivalry.  Mezzo, Suzanne Johnston, is both sexy and dulcet as Dulcinea, the seductive queen who taunts Quixote then sends him on a quest to retrieve her necklace from bandits.

Roger Howell was enchanting as Sancho Panza. It is a role which requires a voice equal to that of Quixote but demands a vivid physical and comic presence, all of which Howell manifests with verve and magnetism.

 

Richard Divall, as ever, conducts the orchestra skilfully, but the score itself seems a little thin and lacking in drama which probably explains its rare productions. Some of the libretto is pretty and poetic but overall the story hurries to its conclusion without really penetrating the drama of the knight's journey.

 

There was some good chorus work and charming pseudo-Spanish choreography (Lindsay Dolan) but the dance seemed not to be integrated into the whole piece.

 

I commend the VSO for presenting us with a totally new opera for our stages.

 

KATE HERBERT

240wd

Beauty and the Beast, Princess Theatre, Melbourne, July 2, 1995

 

 Music by Alan Menken, Lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, Book by Linda Woolverton.

produced by Jacobsen/Edgley

At Princess Theatre, Melbourne opened July 11, 1995

Reviewed by Kate Herbert on July 2, 1995

 

Spinning plates are usually circus fare but Beauty and the Beast has a spectacular dinner scene with twirling human crockery, dancing cutlery and exploding giant champagne bottles. The scene, Be My Guest, is pure Ziegfeld Follies.

 

Now, I'm pretty attached to Jean Cocteau's 30's film version with its subtle black and white images but this Disney production, re-directed by Richard Wherrett, is a knock-out visual treat. Costumes are superbly quirky, (Ann Hould-Ward) the design (Stan Meyer) is classic fairy-tale with spooky forest and enchanted castle. The choreography (Matt West) is classy, and the lighting (Natasha Katz) is transformational. The castle seems to float on air.

 

Features are the pyrotechnics and the astonishing levitation as Beast transforms into Prince. The set has everything that opens and shuts, including actors who play a singing dressing table, (Gloden Mercer) a teapot (Robin Arthur) a walkin' talkin' clock, (Bert Newton) and a glittering performance by Grant Smith as Lumiere, a foppish candelabra.

 

Rachael Beck as Belle (the Beauty) has a fine musical voice and a warm presence. Michael Cormick as the Beast balanced perfectly the roughness with the evolving humanity and joyfulness of the Beast. Cormick is a rising star with the voice, face and presence of the Prince he plays.

 

The score is not a classic, but it has a couple of memorable songs, namely the title tune and Human Again during which all the servants, who are turning into furniture, pine for their humanity.

 

The lyrics by Tim Rice and Howard Ashman are both romantic and witty. Gaston (Hugh Jackman) the conceited village He-Man has some gems such as, "We'll make a perfect pair/ Just like my thighs", and the Beast's solo love song, If I Can't Love Her, is genuinely moving.

 

Get a look at this if you like a light musical or your kids loved the movie. It's a great family show.

 

KATE HERBERT

 

Lilies by Michel Marc Bouchard, 9 June 1995

By Hoy Polloy

At North Melbourne Town Hall, Tues - Sat until July 1995

Reviewed by Kate Herbert for The Melbourne Times on June 9, 1995

 

Lilies by Michel Marc Bouchard is an interesting play that moves between Canada of 1912 and 1952. In '52, Simon Doucet confronts Bishop Bilodeau with his dirty secrets from their youth. The 1912 narrative deals with Doucet's youthful, illicit romance with the young French Count Vallier, or "Lilywhite" as Bilodeau dubs him. The story of secret love and suppressed sexuality is tragic and romantic.

 

The text has potential, and director Wayne Pearn has found most success in the more intimate scenes between Doucet and Vallier or Vallier and his mad mother.  Larger scenes are often too static. Justin Fowler's performance as Vallier shows great potential. Much of the acting was uninspiring, unfortunately.

 

In the manner of Genet, all roles are played by male actors. This treads a thin line between avant-garde and drag.  There are moments when the campery works and others where it tends toward histrionics.  It seems to thin the emotional layering of potentially moving scenes in which the surface of passion and madness is only skimmed.

 

KATE HERBERT

 

Pericles, Bell Shakespear, 4 June 1995

by William Shakespeare

By Bell Shakespeare Company

At Athenaeum Theatre 1, Melbourne, until June 10, 1995

Reviewed by kate Herbert around 4 June, 1995, for The Melbourne Times

 

Pericles was one of the 17th centuries most popular plays, but it fell out of favour later. John Bell captures its entertainment potential and bawdiness in this rollicking production which has a coherent vision and tight physical direction.

 

The story tumbles on like waves echoing the inclement sea, and Neptune's fury which propels the series of events.  It concentrates on narrative not character. Theories that Shakespeares wrote Act One at an early age or that he didn't write it at all, could explain the flaws in the text: too-obvious dialogue and lack of subtlety in the verse in the early scenes.

 

It feels like the precursor to The Tempest with the silliness of Twelfth Night, too. It is really entertaining and quite light until the emotional reunion scene.

 

Whatever the reason, the text remains a bit flabby. It is not quite a history, nor a tragedy happy ending) nor a comedy (too much pain). It is, rather, a romantic saga, a quest, a hero's journey as Pericles escapes evil, seeks mentors, searches for spiritual fulfilment and love which is very popular in cinema these days (Star Wars, Raiders,). Tragedy is a good man facing disaster at the hands of the gods.

 

Bell takes advantage of the comic potential in the text, making it accessible and funny in the most unexpected places. The tacky, "Persian" brothel utilises very funny caricatures. There is great generosity in the ensemble work and performances are generally very strong, particularly from Vic Rooney (Narrator), Duncan Wass (Helicanos) and Lucy Bell as Pericles daughter, Marina.

 

Jeremy Sims is magnetic, passionate and unpredictable as Pericles. As the young man, he is light and joyful, but he is potent as the grieving, near-catatonic older king, bearing the weight of a life gone awry. His reunion with his lost daughter is a delicate and moving scene with great control and no melodrama.

 

The most telling moment was the satisfied audience's sigh of approval as the Narrator says, "Here our play has ending."

 

KATE HERBERT

=

Oh My God I'm Black! June 4 1995

 

by Mary-Anne Sam

By Melbourne Workers' Theatre

At Budinski's Wed-Sat 8pm until June 10, 1995

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around June 4, 1995 for The Melbourne Times

 

We eavesdrop happily on other people's lives because others' loves are interesting and we are, by nature, sticky-beaks. Oh My God I'm Black! is a biographical narration with songs performed by Mary-Anne Sam and her life has been a doozy. I mean, tough!

 

Sam is one of two children of a Torres Strait Island woman and a white Melbourne lad who nicked off early in Sam's life and was eventually discovered to have three families. Sam gives us snatches of her life from early childhood, the death of her mother, homelessness, life and death with her white Nana, school, love, the Aboriginal network. And the moment when she recognises in the mirror "Oh my God, I'm black!"

 

Her love of singing is her major link with her dead mother and songs, mostly American or Carribean-influenced, pepper her personal story. The story is interesting but the script screams for a tough dramaturgical hand. It flits from moment to moment without any focus or dramatic content.

 

Theatre needs a dramatic structure to give dynamic energy to a life. The issues of belonging, acceptance, family and colour are complex and a clearer focus on specific moments might have served this piece better.

 

A solo show is a tough call demanding of the performer a strong stage presence and theatrical range. This piece was more effective when it physicalised scenes and attempted to bring secondary characters to life.

 

 Otherwise it remained too static with Sam attached to the microphone. It swerves too close to melodrama and indulgence with too obvious songs selected for their relevance.

 

 

 

Twelfth Night, Bell Shakespeare, 4 June 1995

 

 by William Shakespeare.

By Bell Shakespeare Company

At Athenaeum Theatre until May 27, 1995

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 4 June 1995 for The Melbourne Times

 

In addition to wanton revelries, melancholy is undoubtedly a component of Twelfth Night It dominates David Fenton's production for Bell Shakespeare. The dark brooding of the grief-stricken Olivia (Jennifer Kent) spills over in large splashes into Feste, the jester (Darren Gilshenan) whose "Hey Ho, the wind and the rain" and final song are profoundly bleak.

 

There is little of the usual revelry of Twelfth Night carnival celebrations. Even Andrew Aguecheek (Sean O'Shea) and Sir Toby Belch (Vic Rooney) are somewhat restrained in their witty repartee and Belch almost victimises his compadre in drunkenness. O'Shea plays an hilariously goofy Sir Andrew and the two gambol about playfully but there is an over-weaning sadness in them which is moving but not wholly successful.

 

Darren Gilshenan as Feste is an intense, intelligent, taunting fool who watches the whole debacle with a modern cynical eye. With his red lame' vest and languidly sexy style, he is a Johnny Lonely cabaret singer with a bitter wisdom.

 

John Bell plays the smug, dull civil-servant-ish Malvolio in an inspired piece of campery. His performance is, as ever, the most complete and satisfying. Lucy Bell is vivacious and energetic as Viola and as her twin, Jeremy Sims was a terrific cameo.

 

The backdrop of an outsize face of Botticelli's Venus is an interesting representation of love and idealism. The second darker version symbolises the degradation of romanticism but is somehow more intrusive than effective.

 

There is some problem with the coherence of the whole of the production. There being no overall vision or concept.  The modernisation is fine but it lacks clarity or overview. The characters work as individuals and particular performances work as cameos but they seem to all be in isolation.  It is valiant effort to alter the dynamic of a usually light play, but unfortunately there is little sense of ensemble work.

 

KATE HERBERT

 

305 wd

Dead White Males by David Williamson, MTC/STC, 4 June 1995

 

Dead White Males by David Williamson

By MTC / STC

At Playhouse, Melbourne Arts Centre until July 8, 1995

Reviewed by Kate Herbert round June 4, 1995 for The Melbourne Times

 

David Williamson's brand of social satire sits adjacent to Frontline and Fast Forward. Dead White Males is a marriage of literary theory and sketch comedy.

 

From the outset Williamson is determined to prove his particular premise that humans do not need ideologies to live.  This is obvious because all the visible ideologues are complete dickheads, albeit very funny dickheads.

 

The literary theory professor, played with uncannily accurate smarmery by John Howard, is a post-structuralist, feminist, multiculturalist philanderer who despises the strictures of Liberal Humanism. This smug hippie manipulates his students, demanding tacitly that they toe his particular "ism" line and seducing them if they successfully mirror him: absolute narcissism.

 

The malleable undergraduate mind of Angela (the dynamic Michelle Doake) undergoes a great transformation as she realises that people's lives are more fluid and less doctrinaire than theory.

 

Wayne Harrison's direction is crisp and intelligent. The production gallops along and is really very funny if you can tolerate your sacred cows being dashed to the ground.

 

Now everybody gets an hilarious, metaphorical bashing in this play but radical feminists fair worst. Most characters remain fairly two-dimensional with the only truly sympathetic character being Angela's warm, slightly badgered, almost "reconstructed male" dad, played by an adorable Henry Szeps.

 

The women are unremittingly oppressive, shallow harridans. Even pithy, racist Grandpa (the exceptional Simon Chilvers) gets a soft and squishy scene. And Shakespeare, the most prominent "dead white male" writer in the western world, is played as a charming fellow, well-met by Patrick Dickson.

 

There is a sort of glib arrogance about everybody. The rather didactic argument about male/female differences is divvied up between characters but there seems to be a single narrative voice. The often-academic language may alienate some people but there are enough gags and wacky characters to satisfy everybody.

 

KATE HERBERT

300wd

An Inspector Calls by J B Priestley, April-May 1995

 At The Comedy Theatre 

Tues- Sat 8pm Until May 20, 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert for The Melbourne Times. Reviewed late April 1995

 

The most extraordinary thing about J B Priestley's An Inspector Calls is director Stephen Daldry's inspired staging. An elevated doll's house, home of the nasty, superior Birling family, teeters on stilts above a blasted war-time London streetscape.

 

 In the first scene our view is restricted. We peer through windows just as do the working class on the street.  Even the staircase is disconnected from the outside world. The building and the family appear inaccessible, impenetrable and invincible from their privileged upper- class position.

 

Not so. An inspector arrives to bring them to task about the suicide of a working-class girl they have all known in some capacity. He blows their world and their house wide open to his piercing eye and the torrential rain which pours onto the stage.

 

The script written in 1946 and set in 1912, is a humanist / socialist commentary on the invidious class system of Edwardian Britain and it remains pertinent today. Daldry's production for the National Theatre has revamped it for the London, New York, Tokyo and Australian stage.

 

There are moments of Brechtian political diatribe such as Inspector Goole's departing speech and director Stephen Daldry has accentuated the alienation through stark lighting effects, addressing the audience directly and by adding roving, inquisitive children and a silent majority of adult observers.

 

The maid, (Georgina Beer) who is unheard and invisible for most of the script, remains on stage constantly, tipping rubbish, carrying chairs, even rolling out a red carpet for the terrifying matriarch, Mrs. Birling, (Helen Lindsay) all as a reminder of the class distinction.

 

Barry Foster as the Inspector / Confessor gives an impeccable performance, both passionate and vigorous. The other performances are all exceptional as the characters face their judgement day in a crumbling world under a drenched sky.

 

Buy Kate Herbert

Nil, Cat and Buried, Stephen Sewell, 28 April 1995

 

Nil, Cat and Buried by Stephen Sewell

At La Mama at Courthouse until May 13, 1995

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 28 April 1995 for The Melbourne Times

 

There are two stars in Nil, Cat and Buried by Stephen Sewell: David Pledger's crisp, vigorous direction is the first and he is evidently also responsible for suggesting to Stephen Sewell that he combine three short pieces into this one script.

 

Pledger has developed a powerful kinetic style which relies heavily on the ensemble. As in his Taking of Tiger Mountain, he has created an economical and often witty physical language of repeated gesture and movement which is concentrated in the three-person chorus. (Danielle Long, Paul Bongiovanni, Greg Ulfan) who comment, quip, mimic and abuse.

 

They make broad, simple statements which translate as a chorus of breakdown underlying the fraught and often violent communication of a man and woman (Leon Teague, Tamara Saulwick) dealing with being stranded in an isolated house together as their relationship collapses.

 

Shane Feeny-Connor is the second star. His intense and strange persona as Cat is riveting. His presence draws the eye and his words shock, lull and reverberate in the unadorned Courthouse space. Sewell's words in his hands are like poison darts, his imagery of "the unnameable horror" of which we are all capable, is relentless.  His extraordinarily powerful role as Mal Hennessy in Janus was no fluke.

 

The whole piece leaves one shell-shocked. I was less concerned with the content and the actual words, which are pungent but not particularly new, than with the mode of delivery. The actors confront and challenge us directly. Feeny-Connor climbs onto the scaffold seating and gets right in your face. It is a very fine exercise in style executed with great finesse by Pledger and his cast.

 By Kate Herbert

Rigoletto, Verdi, Australian Opera, 24 April 1995

 

By Giuseppe Verdi

By Australian Opera (Now Opera Australia)

At State Theatre, at  Melbourne Arts Centre

On May 4, 6, 9, 13, 16 1995. Followed by Peter Grimes

 This review published in The Melbourne Times in April 1995.  KH

Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto is an operatic novelty, having a baritone as the title role. Of course, he is a hunchback with a sharp tongue and no friends who loses his daughter, Gilda, to his Duke's lusty tastes while the Duke - the tenor - is the romantic lead who gets the girl, in fact all the girls and lives to get some more.

 

Director Elijah Moshinsky's production is reminiscent of Mussolini's vengeful Italy with Michael Yeargan's designs of opulent palazzi and back street bars in conjunction with some colourful choreography for a sycophantic male chorus. The Victorian State Orchestra is conducted with flair by Richard Gill.

 

Gregory Tomlinson's flavoursome, muscular tenor gives the ideal passionate tone to the promiscuous Duke. His stage presence was relaxed, credible and pretty damned sexy and his "La donna e' mobile" exhilarating.

 

Rosamund Illing's bell-like, crystal soprano is perfect for the ingenue Gilda and gives a light joyousness to "Caro nome." Bass baritone Arend Baumann's Mafioso-like Sparafucile has a wicked, lackadaisical quality, particularly in Act Three.

 

Accolades go to Barry Anderson as the jester, Rigoletto. His warm, velvet baritone captures both the jovial and despairing, the teasing and pain. His aria "Cortigiana, vil razza damnata" after Gilda's rape, is ripe with pathos and his duets with Illing were inspiring and well-matched. In fact, Rigoletto is unusual in being intentionally composed by Verdi as virtually a string of duets rather than virtuoso arias.

 

The drama hurtles toward its magnificently tragic third act, fulfilling "La Maledizione" (Curse) laid upon Rigoletto by  Monterone. All Rigoletto's sardonic humour has vanished, replaced by vengeance and shame. This act is perfectly constructed dramatically, musically and vocally.  It finishes poignantly, without finale, on Rigoletto's lone despairing cry, "La Maledizione.

 

See it and weep.

 

KATE HERBERT

Turandot, Pucccini, Australian Opera, 19 April 1995

 

By Giiacomo Puccini by Australian Opera.

At State Theatre until May 10, 1995

This review was published in The Melbourne Times in April 1995

 

Turandot, the icy Chinese Princess and first self-declared Radical Celibate, has vowed to take her revenge on all men for the abduction, millennia earlier, of her beautiful ancestor. A grudge grandissimo!

 

The story of Turandot, Puccini's final masterpiece, is man's perennial pursuit of the inaccessible, resistant beauty. Unfinished at the time of his death in 1924, the opera was adapted from the fairy tale by 18th century playwright, Carlo Gozzi.

 

Puccini's score is both playful and regal. It shifts from heraldic trumpetry and weighty drama of impending execution to the delicate emotional unrequited love aria of Liu'. Carlo Felice Cillario conducts the VSO with grandeur, ease and fluidity.

 

Ruth Falcon in the title role has a powerful and imposing voice in its upper register but rather stilted acting. As her masochistic suitor, Calaf, Kenneth Collins's tenor is warm and rich but perhaps not sufficiently full-blooded for this demanding role.

 

It has always been a mystery to me why Calaf marries the nasty baggage, Turandot, instead of the loving, loyal and passionate Liu' but he didn't have the mesmerising Arax Mansourian singing Liu'. In addition to having a haunting, delicate and perfectly controlled voice, she is an exceptional beauty.

 

John Pringle, Graeme Ewer and Christopher Dawes (Ping, Pang , Pong) cleverly walked the edge of comic-dramatic and Donald Shanks as Calaf's father has a voice with great heart.

 

John Montgomery's lighting enhances Graham Murphy's dramatic staging and carefully composed stage picture. An uncluttered stage accommodates the enormous, rippling chorus but fills the upper reaches with Kristian Fredrikson's emblematic design of Chinese filagree dragons, Peking Opera masks and a huge, symbolic moon.

 

The Emperor (Robert Gard) appears as a spectacular 10 metre mountain swathed in golden ottoman. Turandot emerges from beneath his robes, equally impressive and lofty, her initial massive height highlighting her later disempowerment at the hands of Calaf.

 

This really is a lavish production well worth seeing.

 

KATE HERBERT

Julius Caesar, , Australian Opera (Opera Australia), April 1995

 State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne

Closed April 10, 1995

Followed by Turandot and Rigoletto

until May 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert for The Melbourne Times. Reviewed in April, 1995

 

Julius Caesar is epic entertainment. It has one of history's great love stories: Cleopatra and Caesar, (to be topped only by Cleo’s next great love), a series of exceptional arias designed to showcase the eight principals' vocal gymnastics, and an extraordinary design.

 

Its story is both moral and hedonistic and has more action than the usual, late baroque "opera seria". Handel's orchestration is more restricted more than modern opera scores so that a single flute or bassoon over the strings is striking. It resonates with what we recognise of Handel's religious music. The Victorian State Orchestra is impeccably conducted by Graham Abbott and includes an instrument called a "Theorbo". Heard of it?

 

Francisco Negrin's spectacular direction is riddled with fascinating paradox. The set is minimalistic yet enormous, colourless and vivid, it dwarfs the actors and emphasises them, the battle fields are peopled with superb dancers, its potentate is a countertenor.

 

The design is magnificent with echoes of Egyptian hieroglyphics, weaponry, statues, temples and palaces. It has the dark brooding quality of stone surfaces with flashes of a single colour shattering the monotone. It all works to create an hypnotic, ageless atmosphere which hovers in space and time.

 

Yvonne Kenny's effortless, warm honey voice with its humming-bird tones, lingers in the air. Graham Pushee's phenomenal countertenor is at once delicate and powerful. He is comfortable on stage and manages to be both cheeky and stately.

 

The other principals are all fine voices. Rosemary Gunn (Cornelia) has a rich mezzo and Stephen Bennett (Achilla) a resonant baritone. Rodney Gilchrist (Nerino) must be unique in being both a countertenor and a dancer. Solo violinist Tony Gault makes a perky appearance on stage as Cleopatra's musician.

 

The A.O. looks like having a string of hits this season.

 

Kate Herbert

Melbourne Comedy Festvial short reviews, April 1995

 5 short reviews of some of my favoruite shows in 1995 Melbiurene Comedy Festival.  KH

Curtains by Lano & Woodley

At Athenaeum Theatre 2. Tues-Sat 8.45pm & Sun 5pm until April 23, 1995

Lano and Woodley do my favourite brand of slapstick: dangerous and hilarious. I laughed till I wept. Frank (dare-devil with rubber bones) and Colin ( bent-est straight man ever), do totally sshtooopid knockabout, unforgivably silly songs and ad-lib with ingenuous and wicked charm.

Big, unadulterated "Haa! Haa!"

 

Totally Wicked by Flying Fruit Flie

Big Top City Square 3. Tues -Sat 7.30pm  matinees 2pm (Check days). Until April 2, 1995

Fruit Flies show, Totally Wicked, is full of cute and very skilful kids from Albury who are so totally unaffected and un-wicked it's adorable. Take the family and thank God it's not your kid up there without a net!

It is more "Ooh! Aah!" than "Ha! Ha!"

 

Decadence, by Steven Berkoff

 Reception Room Melbourne Town Hall Tues-Sun 9.30 pm, Sat & Sun also 5pm (No show April 8), 1995

 

Decadence is everything its name prophesies and more. Berkoff's lewd, erotic and outrageously funny verse play, is a scarifying indictment of London's Sloane Rangers and the obscenity of over-indulgence in sex, food, alcohol and violence. Rhyss Muldoon and Alison Whyte are masters of the complex text, giving it a vigorous physicality and impeccable comic timing. The sex romp during the Fox Hunt and the ensuing Tequila drinking rave are stupendous.

Both "Mmmm! Mmm!" and "Ha! Ha!"

 

Judith Lucy in King of the Road

At Lower Melbourne Town Hall Tue, Wed, Thurs, Sun 8.30pm, Fri & Sat 10pm

 until April 22, 1995

Judith Lucy’s new show, King of the Road, still has the hilarious laconic laid-back style we know and love but it also has a new level of theatricality. Accompanied by a very silly selection of slides, she spills her guts with poignant, truthful and funny and appalling tales of bonking and drinking her way unsuccessfully across several continents. A big "Ha! Ha!" and some "Oh, my God!'s".

 

Glynn Nicholas in Crossing the Line

At Comedy Theatre Tues-Sun 9pm Mon April 10 9.30pm  (no show Sun April 9 or Fri 14)

until April 22, 1995

The Rebetes , Antipodes Festival, 29 March 1995

Written by Rhondda Johnson

At Beckett Theatre, Malthouse

March 29 -April 15 1995

Antipodes Festival, Melbourne

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 29 March 1995. KH

 

In the Greek cafe featured in The Rebetes there are plenty of drug references, a hookah and lots of joints on stage, enough ouzo and cigarettes to sink a migrant ship.

 

The Antipodes Festival annually celebrates Greek culture but Rhondda Johnson's play for the festival celebrates specifically the Rebetika blues music and its associated drug, alcohol and liberation culture.

 

It is a fairly accurate representation of a very ugly side of the Greek migrant culture and its sadness, bitterness, conservatism. In short, it shows us the Blues. The scene is uncannily like peeking through a window of a cafe in Sydney Road but this time we see the men playing cards, drinking, dancing, singing and reminiscing as well as harassing any woman courageous enough to walk within coo-ee.

 

Kate the Celt (Helen Rollinson) takes a job in the cafe as a "hostess'. She ends up leaving her gambling loser of an Aussie husband (Steve Adams) and becomes immersed in the Greek culture warts and all.

 

There are some entertaining moments in this production, but they become very lean after three long hours. The script is well-observed with a few good gags but is repetitious and unnecessarily long. The direction is clunky and the style shifts from almost TV-style naturalism to abstract flashbacks with no clear distinctions made.

 

The Rebetika music was at times an integral part of the piece at others it was a thin cover for yawning gaps and interminable scene changes.

 

The cast ranged from good amateurs to quite strong performers who eventually, are struggling to keep the audience's attention. Helen Rollinson was energetic as Kate, the ring-in Aussie sheila, and Jason Raftopoulos, as her young second generation lover, gave a very credible performance. Steven Grapsis was terrifyingly believable as the sleazebag, Apostoli.

 

KATE HERBERT