Sunrise Boulevarde by Rod Quantock , June 30, 1997

Sunrise Boulevarde  by Rod Quantock

Trades Hall, June – July 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around June 22, 1997

I'm building a monument to Rod Quantock, the last of his species: political stand-ups.  It is a beautiful, historic construction with a bit of Victorian lacework around the top.

It harmonises with its surroundings and reminds us of the lost Paris End of Collins Street or Melbourne's terraces. It has no view of the Casino, the Grand Prix track, the new museum or the Tulla Tollway Gate.

Only hard-earned cash will be accepted: no 'speculative' or 'conservative' money. Walker cannot own it, Williams cannot invest in it, Elliott cannot sell it and Alan Stockdale will never privatise it.

It will be built by anyone who has walked up those well-worn stone steps of the Trades Hall where Rod is doing his show, Sunrise Boulevarde. It has Rod's boot firmly planted in the backsides of the 'Mates' who have uglified our city.

Quantock is heroic and angry. He chose the ugliest room in the Trades Hall to highlight the Ugliness of our political regime and its cronies. We may have bulldozed the Gas and Fuel but there is worse to come. "Money is ugliometric".

Rod is hilarious, accessible and passionate as he leads us through a disturbing chalk and talk lecture in Politics and Economics a la Quantock. His impeccable understanding of our political system is pickled in his satirical and wry point of view.

He points out the supreme irony of our 'Free-way Toll-way'. He draws comparisons between our new, thrusting 'Look at me!' architecture and Mussolini's. Our old AAA+++ Moody's rating must have been good " 'cos it's more than we got in woodwork".

He prophesies 'World Series Democracy' and proposes measuring the unemployed by weight. He decries a state slogan that can fit on a number plate and calls this paper 'The Hairoiled Sin'. Ron Walker called him 'Unvictorian', 'a terrorist' and 'a rabble'. "It's very hard to be a rabble alone" an d"name-calling is now a substitute for politics."

To overcome our helplessness he suggests three solutions, the final being a beauty. "They won't do any good but they'll make you feel better." His view is grim but must be heard. Social satire is one of the few remaining means of protest. As Rod says, " At least in Indonesia the government takes notice when you protest." Now that's depressing!

See this!

KATE HERBERT

Shorts by Soup Kitchen Theatre, June 30, 1997

Shorts by Soup Kitchen Theatre

Athenaeum II until July 11, 1997 At

12.10 & 1.10pm Mon-Fri

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around June 29, 1997

Does your lunch hour usually consist of jogging elbows while ordering a $10 gourmet sandwich or rushing out to buy a birthday gift at David Jones? For a change, try snack-size lunchtime theatre.

For $5 Soup Kitchen Theatre provides soup, (Rosella) bread (Pott's) and five quick, light sketch pieces. You are fed, entertained and out of there in well under an hour if you need to get back to the desk job. There is no stress, no noise and no hustle and bustle of the city at midday.

The strongest piece of writing is Igloo, a lyrical, romantic and witty monologue by Elizabeth Coleman. A woman (Amanda Armstrong) cleans her teeth and muses on the idyllic image of living in a perfect igloo where all her dreams materialise.

Another smart piece is The Message Routine that is a voiceover cleverly placed to cover the quick set changes. It satirises all those recorded message services that chew up your dollars as you wait for service.

A possibly unintentional theme throughout the pieces is romantic fantasy. Reading Between The Lines by Trudy McLauchlan is a broad comic glance at a woman's immersion in her lunch time reading matter: a Mills and Boon romance and its intrusion into reality.

Abe Pogos's Dream Girl looks at an awkward and heightened moment as a man reveals he has been dreaming about his girlfriend's sister.

Stress Management is the odd piece out being a satire on group therapy sessions. It makes a point about self-indulgent therapy junkies in a final dramatic revelation by the only silent group member.

Directors Lucy Jones and Catherine Hill have kept the style broad and light. The staging is simple, the content light and the performances competent (Steve Adams, Ariane Vrisakis, Drew Tingwell, Amanda Armstrong). At times the writing cries out for a little more depth and less effort on the part of the actors who seem to be pushing too hard with the lines.

However, you can't go wrong for $5 and the audience really enjoyed it. We don't want too much headwork for lunch, do we?

KATE HERBERT

Marty Putz, June 19, 1997

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Arthouse Theatre Universal Theatre II until June 28, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around June 17, 1997

It is a brave company that tackles Macbeth. Arthouse Theatre, directed by Bruce Alexander who also plays the lead, has taken the plunge but has simplified the task by whittling Shakespeare's four-hour text down to a pithy ninety minutes.

Now, this means the company of fourteen actors and two musicians can get their hands on all the meaty speeches without the filler. It is intelligent editing but it often forces the action along too swiftly and scampers over significant details such as who is playing whom.

The piece is stylised and approaches the murderous plot by abstracting scenes. This allows the cast to chant, to stylise fight scenes, feasts and murders and the musicians to provide with an evocative soundscape by Nick Livingston. Alexander has created some vivid, startling images that are enhanced by a striking lighting design by Jilly Judges.

The stage design (Mark Anstey) is a stark collection of wooden posts and metal pole construction. The witches perch precariously up poles throughout the play, emphasising their constant control and connection with the Macbeth's fate.

A great text, however, does not automatically make a great performance. The words become banal in the mouths of actors who cannot meet the challenge. Macbeth and his girlish wife might have been worrying over his running over the neighbour's dog rather than murdering the king and most of the rest of his court.

Their superficial passion for each other becomes risible. The weight of the tragedy and impact of the dark, portentous world of the witches loses potency as the minutes drip away.

Many of the cast skim the surface of the language, disconnected from the layers of meaning and with no vocal power. Nothing appears to be happening inside so they rush those magnificent speeches like shopping lists. It became a series of fairly static talking scenes strung together with physical-visual scenes.

There is some good text work from Emily Buxton as Lady Macduff and the witches are interesting if a little predictable in their mud-spattered, bare-breasted rag outfits. It was a valiant but perhaps too ambitious project.

And remember that old theatre superstition. If you say 'Macbeth' inside the theatre you have to go outside, spin around three times, cough, sneeze, spit, knock and be invited back in - or something like that. I think the witches say so just after "hubble bubble”.

KATE HERBERT 

Macbeth, Arthouse Theartre, June 18, 1997

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Arthouse Theatre Universal Theatre II until June 28, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around June 17, 1997

It is a brave company that tackles Macbeth. Arthouse Theatre, directed by Bruce Alexander who also plays the lead, has taken the plunge but has simplified the task by whittling Shakespeare's four-hour text down to a pithy ninety minutes.

Now, this means the company of fourteen actors and two musicians can get their hands on all the meaty speeches without the filler. It is intelligent editing but it often forces the action along too swiftly and scampers over significant details such as who is playing whom.

The piece is stylised and approaches the murderous plot by abstracting scenes. This allows the cast to chant, to stylise fight scenes, feasts and murders and the musicians to provide with an evocative soundscape by Nick Livingston. Alexander has created some vivid, startling images that are enhanced by a striking lighting design by Jilly Judges.

The stage design (Mark Anstey) is a stark collection of wooden posts and metal pole construction. The witches perch precariously up poles throughout the play, emphasising their constant control and connection with the Macbeth's fate.

A great text, however, does not automatically make a great performance. The words become banal in the mouths of actors who cannot meet the challenge. Macbeth and his girlish wife might have been worrying over his running over the neighbour's dog rather than murdering the king and most of the rest of his court.

Their superficial passion for each other becomes risible. The weight of the tragedy and impact of the dark, portentous world of the witches loses potency as the minutes drip away.

Many of the cast skim the surface of the language, disconnected from the layers of meaning and with no vocal power. Nothing appears to be happening inside so they rush those magnificent speeches like shopping lists. It became a series of fairly static talking scenes strung together with physical-visual scenes.

There is some good text work from Emily Buxton as Lady Macduff and the witches are interesting if a little predictable in their mud-spattered, bare-breasted rag outfits. It was a valiant but perhaps too ambitious project.

And remember that old theatre superstition. If you say 'Macbeth' inside the theatre you have to go outside, spin around three times, cough, sneeze, spit, knock and be invited back in - or something like that. I think the witches say so just after "hubble bubble”.

KATE HERBERT 

Panayiota & Locked In, June 17, 1997

Panayiota by Angela Costi & Locked In by Tricia Bowen

By Knock Knock Theatre

Brunswick Mechanics Institute until June 29, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 16 June, 1997

Two writers, Angela Costi and Tricia Bowen, decided to mount their own plays at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute rather than wait for someone else to do it for them. More power to them.

The two plays, Panayiota and Locked In, are unrelated except by theme.

Angela Costi's Panayiota is the second in the program and by far the more successful. Lisa, previously known as Athena, is at a watershed in her 27-year life. For ten years she has denied her Greek-Cypriot heritage, her parents' wishes, her school friends and has followed he dream to be Anglo-Australianised, to live with a dinky-di Aussie and to be an artist.

The play has a complex structure that works mostly in its favour. It shifts between "Lisa's" present and her past, layering her developing relationship difficulties with her abandonment of her school friends.

As she struggles with Pat's (Caleb Cluff) need for a more predictable and conservative life she surprisingly reunites with her two pals. Stella (Bridget Haylock) has the model Greek marriage and baby Panayiota, (the Virgin Mary) while Silvana (Daniela Farinacci)  is still unfulfilled  in her role as tart craving love.

Director Kim Baston has created some lyrical moments and slow-motion dream-like sequences set against the well-observed ordinariness of the women's dialogue. Back projections of seashore echo Lisa's drawings, dreams, memories and fears of water that reverberate with Jungian images of an emotional sea.

The actors are more comfortable and challenged in Panayiota.  In Locked In, they are confined by a rigid, simplistic structure and narrative. It is a play more for voices than action, better suited to radio.

Three women sit 'locked in’ their homes. One is young, insecure with romantic visions of her ideal man coming to rescue her. A second is a stitched-up mother obsessed with locks and air freshener. The third is a working class divorcee who mistrusts neighbours.  They are all three stereotypes.

A man knocks at their respective doors. He has forgotten where he lives. Locked In is a play about how suburbia subsumes people's identities. It smacks of 70's Agit-Prop theatre when it was novel and in vogue to comment on the facelessness of the great suburban sprawl.

Any such social observations needs, in the late nineties, to take further the argument or imagery. There is nothing substantial or new being said in this text no in the style of its production that is rather unimaginatively realised.

Locked In feels like a play from the 70's when it was new and hence in vogue to comment on the facelessness of the great suburban sprawl. Any such social observations need in the late nineties, to take the argument or the imagery further. There is nothing substantial or new being said in this text or in the style of its production that is rather unimaginatively realised.

KATE HERBERT

Effie X-Posed by Mary Coustas, June 13, 1997

Universal Theatre 1, Fitzroy, June 1997  (no closing date)

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around June 12, 1997

Effie's people spoke to my people saying they didn't want too many press people at her three (yep!) opening nights. It would upset the balance of laughter. Now that's paranoid - even for a Boofhead Superstar!

Effie X-Posed is the next episode in the rise and rise of Effie Stephanides, altered-ego of the more benign and eminently more talented Mary Coustas. Effie stimulates the laugh glands of her predominantly "wog" (her word and theirs) young audience.

She begins by goofing about with a front row Sicilian. "Geez, a yuppie wog from Port Melbourne." What follows is a journey round Effie's return from her US tour, media coverage by Ray Martin (on huge screens) and her subsequent fall from Tall Poppy grace when Ray rolls footage of a naked Effie in soft porn, "Dean Man Bonking."

There are lots of laughs. Effie attacks everybody sometimes with a real nasty streak which can tip from funny into unpleasantness. She does a lot of Anglo-bashing, wog-smacking and American star taunting. Comparisons with our icons, Edna Everidge and Norman Gunston are inappropriate. Effie lacks their highly developed sense of satire, irony or subtlety.

The last clip is one of the most successful parts of the show. T.V. comedy director, Pino Amenta is no stage director but his Current Affair footage, shot mainly in New York, is hilarious.

Effie highjacks Dennis Hopper, who calls her "Iffie". Micky Rourke tries her on the casting couch. A real gem was the Method acting class where Effie plays opposite a Bronx Brando look-alike.

Coustas has a couple of secondary characters. Her sleezy old velvet-suited stalker, Vasili, has potential but Tammy the cocaine-freak club dancer is a clever study in phobic speed hallucinations.

She is supported by Annie Jones, who plays Sara, club owner and Blond Bitch, and Geoff Paine as Phil the woossey bartender. Paine's irrepressible comic persona intermittently busts out of straight man mode. A high point was his silly podium dance routine and "cheer up Effie" love song medley.

Writing by Coustas and television writer, Chris Anastassiades, is appropriate for TV sketches but lacks the form and narrative required of theatre or the joke quotient of stand-up. Maybe the character is best suited to the box. But the crowd seemed to go for it. Go Boofhead!

KATE HERBERT

Hideous Portraits by Tom Wright, June 11, 1997

Hideous Portraits by Tom Wright, by Mene Mene Theatre

at La Mama until June 29, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around June 10, 1997

The unexpurgated observations of the deranged can shed a glaring and unflattering light on a family's neurotic relationships. Such is the case with Burchett, (Ben Rogan) in Tom Wright's Hideous Portraits.

Burchett, youngest and maddest brother of three, is ripped untimely from his psychiatric institution and whisked away by his sentimental oldest brother Moncrieff (Christopher Davis) to the family home and middle brother, dilettante actor, Melba (Jerome Pride). The Australian diva references may reflect the pretensions of this family to high art and "Anglo-Saxon good taste."

The paranoiac Burchett is not alone in his madness. Moncrieff rehearses playing a blind woman in front of the mirror and irons Burchett's special underwear. The histrionic Melba is passionate about his youngest brother.

It is evident immediately that the bosom of brotherly love is not Burchett's ideal haven. he hates Moncrieff's dullness and Melba's histrionics. They pander to him and perch nervously on chair-edge awaiting his next peculiar outburst.

The play, which is based heavily on Austrian Thomas Bernhard's 1980's play , Ritter, Dene, Voss, is swiftly written and directed by Wright in a broad black clown style. Its stark green-black and white design combined with its stop-frame action echoes its central image of photographic portraiture.

The text is riddled with literary and philosophical allusions, witticisms and grim observations about anything that niggles the writer. It slings abuse at wealthy arts patrons, psychiatrists, anything American, pretentious photographers but, most significantly, it attacks "insipid boulevarde plays" and dilettante artists. Occasionally it is too glib.

The three actors give vigorous and intense performances. As Moncrieff, Christopher Davis prattles and mothers the young 'uns and Pride is supremely arch and prissy as Melba. Rogan grabs with both fists the challenge of Burchett, the "humanist-megalomaniac", and wrestles a nervy, pungent and hilarious character infested with quirks and staccato tics, gasps and double takes.

It is a superbly timed comic piece but it lets itself down by playing too lightly the darkness. It skims too easily across the surface of the dark psychological pond. It is so frenetic and mannered at times it undercuts its own power.

The opening night friendly crowd may have skewed the laugh response but there is a deeper resonance to this play.

KATE HERBERT

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 

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 

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   

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

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 

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      

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  

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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˜ 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.