Moonlodge by Margo Kane, Sept 24, 1997

Moonlodge by Margo Kane

Festival of the Dreaming.

At La Mama Oct 7-12, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Sept 24, 1997

Brecht said about Mother Courage that a slow silent scream was a more powerful expression of her grief than any vocal sound could ever be. So it is in Margo Kane's solo show, Moonlodge.

It seems that Stolen Children were not restricted to Australian aboriginal communities. Kane's moving, energetic show reveals one Native American-Canadian who was a victim of 'the scoops in the mid-50's. "Scooping" was the practice of the Children's Aid Department that sent black cars driven by priests, police or welfare to steal children.

What more effective way to decimate a culture than to sever its children's contact with it? As we know, it was criminal, particularly when perpetrated on a community that was kept unaware of its rights or processes of redress.

Kane performs with an inner fire generated by her commitment to telling the stories of her native culture. She peoples the stage with characters. We see Agnes, the stolen child, happy with her mother, then foster mother and as a rebellious hippy hitching to Nirvana - California - in the 60's. Finally, she reclaims her heritage in the women's Moonlodge ceremony.

The continual self-narration interspersed with character dialogue combine effectively with Kane's movement skills to colour the story and engage the audience. She employs seamless physical character shifts to introduce us to characters.

We meet Aunt Sophie the gossip with a good heart, Marlon the inarticulate and dangerous biker and the attractive Lance who takes her to her first Pow-Wow. Most affecting was Millie, the old Native American who gently invites Agnes into her family and the Moonlodge.

There are some hilarious depictions of white stereotypes of Native Americans. Kane dryly satirises cigar store Indians, the 60's song "Running Bear loves Little White Dove", Hollywood's Red Injuns and ditties she learned on Brownies camp. Ironically, she accompanies the rape scene and the Pow-Wow with Broadway Musical romantic ballads.

The Pow-Wow finally shows Agnes the wonderful variety of non-stereotypical people in her lost culture. Everybody dances differently and sings with her own voice.

The most deeply moving moments were the child Agnes' silent scream as she beats her little fists against the window of the car driving her away from her mother. The reincorporation of this image as she tells her dream in the Moonlodge is mesmerising.

Moonlodge comes to La Mama, the perfect space for it, for a limited season.

KATE HERBERT

Circus Oz , Sep 17 1997

Circus Oz 
Melbourne Town Hall until October 5, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 16 Sep, 1997

There's one thing about Oz. We give good circus and this year's Circus Oz season at the Melbourne Town Hall is no exception.

David Carlin's direction is slick giving the program a smooth structure. The show is stylish and segues efficiently between acts. Carlin has avoided any loose narrative and concentrated on highlighting individual skills developed into snappy routines.

The opening act is a crowd-grabber as six acrobats scamper up a pole like monkeys.  Just when you think there are no new ways to do balances and trapeze, they surprise us. The stage pictures are beautiful.

The marbled fountain statues spouting water are clever and funny. The sexy trapeze double act was like Ann-Margret and Marlon Brando in the air and the floor duo was a sensual and exotic follow-up. Genevieve Morris does the 'most difficult and dangerous of all circus feats: acting!" Juliet's balcony scene - backwards.

Michael Ling's tequila-soaked Matador with Tim Coldwell's Toro on a tight wire is a hit as is Per Westman's trick of dressing while juggling. We have a reprise of Coldwell's old fave of walking on the roof and of the hilariously dignified but nigh-naked drummer, Chris Lewis, playing horns in every nook and cranny of his body.

The second half is like being on the bus in the movie, Speed, but with better music and wilder stunts. Imagine, just as the bus is heading helter-skelter toward the unleapable gap in the freeway, some lunatic Australian acrobat hurling herself through the air, forming a human bridge.

The show is a juggernaut, building momentum until the audience begs for a break from jaw-wrenching astonishment. The skills of this company of multi-talented performers increase exponentially yearly. A two-year-old in the front row squatted, tongue poised millimetres from his choc-top, gaping at extraordinary feats of strength and dexterity in the ring.

And the Chinese hoop diving never ceases to astound me.

Phillip Lethlean and Gina Gascoigne's lighting design is exceptional with elaborate abstract shapes splashing over floor, ceiling and artists. Laurel Frank's costumes are a fiesta of visions in lycra.

The band, under musical director Carl Polke, provides pounding rock and dramatic background for every occasion. Does everybody in this company play instruments?

Take everybody you know. Go "Ooh! Aah!" Eat a choc-top. It's a great night at the circus.

KATE HERBERT

Festival of the Dreaming, Article, Sep 17, 1997

Festival of the Dreaming

Sydney Olympic Festival Sept 16 to October 6, 1997

Article by Kate Herbert Sept 17, 1997 (Herald Sun)

The Festival of the Dreaming, which is part of the lead up to the Sydney Olympics, is getting good press and audiences in spite of a boycott by some aboriginal artists and other members of the community.

Objections to the festival and director, Rhoda Roberts programming, include factors such as there being no commissioned works by aboriginal playwrights.

Despite this particular deficiency, the program features many theatre works written and performed by indigenous artists not only from Australia. The series of solo shows under the common title 'Wimmin's Business' at the Playhouse at the Opera House is a delightful collage of pieces by international and local guests.

Ningali from Perth has remounted her autobiographical show of the same name in which she self-narrates her journey from Fitzroy Crossing to High School in Alaska then Dance School in Sydney. '

Seven Stages of Dreaming' written by Wesley Enoch and performed by Deborah Mailman is a deeply affecting performance about grief and reconciliation and 'Box the Pony' features the multi-talented Leah Purcell in another autobiography.

Canadian, Margo Kane brings the warm and moving 'Moonlodge' to La Mama soon.

Bangarra Dance Theatre premieres Stephen Page's new work, 'Fish', an absorbing and theatrical series of pieces on environmental themes in styles ranging from the traditional to the funky.

There are several collaborations with non-aboriginal artists, one being 'Bidenjarreb Pinjarra' about the 1834 massacre of the Pinjarra people which uses comedy and sensitivity in a move toward reconciliation.

Aboriginal casts play in classics such as 'Waiting for Godot' and 'Midsummer Night's Dream'. The latter integrates Dreamtime with Dreamland in its computer generated virtual backdrop representing a broody, Dreamtime desert landscape.

Aboriginal languages feature on stage. Godot is translated into Bundjalung and 'Wirid-Jiribin-The Lyrebird' is the first public performance for 200 years in Tharawal.

Locations vary from the Opera House theatres to Centennial Park where Sydney based Stalker Theatre perform 'Mimi' which was created with the Kundarlangnja community from W.A. Indigenous artists work with Stalker's stilt- walkers in this exceptional visual outdoor spectacle about the giant Mimi spirits who teach the people to dance, hunt and gather.

The festival features indigenous artists from all over the globe including Greenland, Korea, Samoa, New Zealand and P.N.G. It celebrates artists from ancient cultures and highlights the slow but inexorable global process of reconciliation. Sydney is alive with extraordinary art.

KATE HERBERT

The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, Hildegard, Sept 1997

The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov

By Hildegard 

at Theatreworks until Sept 7, 1997

This review was published in The Melbourne Times in Sept 1997.

Oh happy days for Chekhov lovers! This week Melbourne-Moscow hosts (accidentally) twin productions of his classic, The Three Sisters, A.K.A. The Six Sisters or Three Sisters Squared.

Hildegard Theatre Company has a reputation for doing exotic theatre integrating text with music and dance but, in this version of the Sisters, the movement and music are, rather, interpolated amidst the text which is primary. This was surprising but not disappointing.

The sisters Olga, (Angela Campbell), Masha (Bagryana Popov) and Irena (Samantha Bewes) spend their trivial lives in a rural army town in Russia, grieving for their dead father, pining for Moscow where they lived happily until their father removed them to the country after mother died.

Director, David Latham highlights the sense of 'open house'. Officers, civilians, family and friends trail through their museum-like rooms and miserable lives day and night, winter and summer. Everybody 'philosophises' and carps about lost dreams and broken promises. They live in the golden past, complain about the present and hope for a better future in Moscow - or in love. Years pass. Nothing changes. Nobody leaves.

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This is a fine ensemble of actors. Campbell brings a vibrancy and stillness to the often stolid Olga and Bewes allows Irena's naivete' and brightness to tarnish as she becomes more jaded. Popov is appropriately languorous as the self-centred Masha. As the manipulative and tasteless Natasha, Caroline Lee is delightfully shrewish and hateful.

Latham keeps the play bouncing along at a cracking pace, always maintaining a state of dissatisfaction and discomfort amongst the population. The humour of Chekhov which glitters amongst the melancholy, is honed to a playful or satirical edge.

Jim Daly as the drunken old Chebutykin, the  laconic Greg Ulfan as the stirrer, Solyony and David Wicks as Kulygin, the pedantic school master, all play the dialogue the jokes with excellent comic timing and delivery.

The dialogue emphasises  the ecstatic and the melancholic in the Russian temperament. Chekhov had a cruel honesty, a warts and all gaze on all his characters.

The piano (Izabella Mougeraman) and balalaika (Yuriy Mougerman) and strains of Russian song provided a lyrical atmosphere and Peter Long's gorgeous painted scrim is a gift for Paul Jackson's evocative lighting.

The piece could have allowed more silence, pauses, further detail in the characters or relationships. It skipped like a stone over the surface in parts. But I'm being picky.

Kate Herbert

The Butcher, The Baker... , Sep 4 1997

The Butcher, The Baker... by Ella Filar

 La Mama at the Courthouse until Sept 20, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 3 Sep 1997

(For Arts Editor, Herald Sun, Robin Usher)

Could it be Universal Consciousness that causes strange themes to emerge simultaneously on stage? This week Ella Filar's play The Butcher, The Baker... opens and so does Meat, another play about a butcher.

Filar is a musician/song-writer with a excellent selection of songs and a musical and lyrical style drawing on Kurt Weill who composed for Bertolt Brecht. Filar, in this instance, writes without the political edge.

Her Crow's Bar Cabaret, a band of seven, including three singers, play on a raised platform. The arrangement is syncopated and percussive with rhythms and voices reminiscent of 1930's Berlin Cabaret and evoking a nightmarish quality.

This ominous atmosphere supports the narrative played below in the netherworld of Honey, (Joanna Seidel) her non-sexual partner, Alex, (Sue Ingleton) who is a brain surgeon and Honey's new lover, Johnny, the butcher (Howard Stanley).

There is a seething, seamy eroticism in Filar's text, directed by Daniel Schlusser, which is grotesque and disarmingly lurid at times. It is sexual not sensual. The characters are intensely dislikeable, presumably intentionally. They manipulate, seduce and deceive. There is a body count by the end: two human, one rodent.

The juggling of brain surgeon and butcher as partners is an obvious - perhaps too obvious - analogy for the cerebral versus the physical. Alex talks on the phone, deals with heads and ideas while Johnny pounces on Honey's body, treating her as a slab of meat. Johnny is all barely restrained passion, lewd references and roving hands. Alex is aloof, smug and clever. Both are obnoxious.

The play is intercut with songs, my favourite being, "Give it to me one more time". The voice of Elissa Gray is extraordinarily chilling. It is textured with harmonies by Iris Walshe-Howling and the spine-tingling vocal acrobatics of Roni Linser.

Ingleton gives Alex a wry ironic edge and Stanley is wild and seductive as the butcher. Seidel shifted with flair between sexual abandon and frustration.

There are problems arising from the structure of the narrative and a profusion of styles and images which reach overload and become incoherent or, at least, difficult to follow. Poetic verse bounces against straight dialogue and storytelling. 

The static nature of the staging and direction does not help to clarify or integrate the whole. However, the songs and some imagistic writing are terrific.

KATE HERBERT

Meat by Nick Meenahan , Sep 4 1997

Meat by Nick Meenahan

at Universal Theatre 1 until October 5, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 3 Sep 1997

My mum's favourite shopkeepers were a comic double act of local butchers. What is it about meat that makes them jolly, warm and flirtatious in a way acceptable to the oldest, most conservative women?

Meat, a solo show by Sydney actor and clown, Nick Meenahan, explores The Joy of Meat. 'Pleased to meet ya. Meat to please ya,' he quips with a cheeky cock of the head and a knowing wink.

Meenahan, an ex-butcher, blends pathos with comedy in this hilarious, touching hour. Stan the butcher has a charming vulgarity. He is adorable and crass. He loves women and flirts with every single one. He has even had flings in the cool room. 'Even die-hard feminists come in to be chatted up in secret.'

There are parallels drawn between the carcass, which he so skilfully and dispassionately carves before our eyes, and the fleshly pursuits of the human race he studies through his customers. He casually suggests he has always wanted to carve a human; perhaps he'll use his unreliable apprentice as a guinea pig.

Stan is 'a dreamer in a world which does not tolerate dreamers.' He pines for the days when quality meat meant quality service and his sixteen workers were committed to fine butchery. He loaths the inhumanity of supermarkets where there is no love for meat or customers.

Meenahan is a lovable whiteface clown with a wicked gleam in his eye. He engages the audience directly, asks questions and launches into songs and dance routines that are part of Stan's fantasy to be a performer.

With crafty direction by Peter Hayes and some clever, well-observed writing, Meenahan peoples Stan's world with off-stage characters. Pete the drunk pops in for a fry-up between flashing himself at local shoppers. Pete's brother, Ronnie, Stan's workmate, was killed in a car accident out front. Meenahan has an uncanny way of making the tragic hilarious.

The sound design (James Vickery, Mel Broe) provides a colourful, evocative character and musical background. The vivid and inventive lighting by Geoff Turner allows Stan to travel through time and space. John Studmore's set of cow carcass and butcher's paraphernalia imbedded in sawdust evokes the old family butcher shop.

Stan's collection of knives is scary but the show is hilarious, skilfully constructed and playfully performed.

KATE HERBERT

The John Wayne Principle, STC Playbox, Sep 4 1997

The John Wayne Principle by Tony McNamara

Sydney Theatre Company at Playbox until October 4, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Sept 3 1997

 This is just a stab in the dark but could the term, 'The John Wayne Principle' mean 'Be a real man. Kill the guy in the black hat before he kills you'? Any other clues?

The phrase, is never mentioned in Tony McNamara's play but the rule of thumb, 'slaughter or be slaughtered' is chronically employed by the bevy of immoral corporate pirates who people this cleverly written dark comedy.

Robbie Slater (Paul Bishop) has a Harvard MBA but his father's ugly corporate behaviour and his own corporate failure, compelled him to alter his life. He lived iv isolated Queensland, became a New Man, primary care-giver to his child and supported by his wife. (Kelly Butler).

Then Daddy blows half his face off with a shotgun that precludes him from running the company, given his comatose state. Here begins the roller coaster of manipulation, greed and betrayal. Robbie, if he is to inherit, must run the company for a year. Serena (Alison Whyte) is his sister and Dad's obvious successor, but she is loathed by the board for her hardball tactics.

McNamara, prior to his writing career, worked in the money market and he provides a vicious indictment of the mercenary, narcissistic and inhumane corporate world.  His witty, rapid-fire dialogue is often hilarious and the plot moves swiftly and relentlessly to its totally immoral conclusion.

Director, David Berthold, keeps up a cracking pace. Scene changes are minimal within Justin Kurzel's design of a wood-panelled corporate boardroom where screens display money rates, company valuations and Dow Jones indexes.

This is a spectacular ensemble. Bishop skilfully portrays Robbie's journey from charming boyishness to insensitive bullying. Alison Whyte plays the abrasive but vulnerable Serena with sympathy and humour. Christopher Stollery, as the totally amoral Stafford Ellson, plays this socially acceptable sociopath with superb comic coolness. He is matched by Helen Thompson's portrayal of his dreadful wife. The two have a wonderful idiocy usually seen only in British upper-class twits.

To quibble a little, individual character voices are not clear. Almost all have a similar acerbic, hard-nosed verbal style that seems to be the voice of the writer. This is a smart and entertaining satire but, despite its cleverness, it leaves one decidedly unmoved.

KATE HERBERT

Camille by Vault Theatre, Aug 26, 1997

Camille by Vault Theatre

at The Herbarium Botanical Gardens until Sept 20, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Aug 26, 1997

Transposing a novel to film is difficult and requires editing. Transporting that screenplay to stage is a further artistic risk. Doing this sixty years after the original Hollywood movie Camille was made is taking a leap of faith with regard to the modern audience. Doing all of this to a movie starring Greta Garbo, a legend on screen and in life, is near madness.

Wayne Pearn, director of Vault Theatre, has done just this with his production of Camille which uses almost word for word the 1936 screenplay of the movie with a couple of additional speeches from the novel La Dame aux Camellias by Alexander Dumas jnr., from which the film is derived.

The movie is a lavish period romance starring a gorgeous Garbo as Marguerite, the consumptive Parisian courtesan and a very youthful Robert Taylor as Armand. It is difficult to compete with such exotica and, furthermore, such a budget.

The movie's pretty, sanitised version of decadent Parisian society is inappropriate for the 1990's, so Pearn adds some gritty realism in monologues by a prostitute, a misogynistic priest and Gaston's (Jeff Keogh) grubby jokes and story of a dead whore.

Marguerite (Reece Adams) has expensive habits and a rich Count to pay. She is 'neither respectable nor a virgin'. However, the under-funded Armand (Alan King) falls passionately in love with her and, finally, love conquers her; poor choice for a consumptive with no prospects and almost past her prime.

As the program suggests in its quote from Darwin, 'The forms, which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement, will naturally suffer most.' Theatre cannot and should not attempt to compete with film on its own ground. The rhythms of a film are not transferrable to stage, particularly a promenade space with poor sight lines, spine-twisting angles and split focus staging.

The production has a narrow dynamic range and most of the performances are very mannered, self-conscious and on a single emotional note apart from some yelling from Armand Duval late in the piece.

Adams as Marguerite struggles with the difficult task of recreating Garbo's role. It was valiant to even attempt it. Louise Du Val (no relation) has authenticity as the insensitive costumiere, Prudence.

Music of the period enhances the piece but it cannot compete with Verdi's version of the story, La Traviata. Really, it was all just too hard.

KATE HERBERT

The Way of the World, by William Congreve, VCA, Aug 26 1997

The Way of the World, by William Congreve

Victorian College of the Arts, School of Drama, until Sep 6, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 25 Aug, 1997

After Charles II returned from France post-Cromwell, London was one big party. The latter part of the 17th century heralded a new era in entertainment during which theatres were reopened and plays became bawdy and satirical again and women performed.

Audience members could sit on stage and wreak havoc: heckling, smooching with their paramours and tossing tomatoes. Some even participated extemporaneously.

The VCA production of William Congreve's The Way of the World, directed by Robert Draffin, designed by Libby O'Brien, draws on these conventions but cunningly blends 17th Restoration Comedy and 20th century styles.

Congreve's characters are named for their follies. Lady Wishfor't (Rachael Tidd) plays the adolescent coquette at fifty and wishes for love. Her niece Millamant, or 'thousand lovers' (Miria Kostiuk) tantalises her retinue of lovers while Petulant is sullen and silent and Witwoud (Oscar Reding) a foppish wit.

The audience surrounds the performing space and is invited to dance to the live band prior to the show and is served champagne between acts. One witty inclusion is Petulant being a ventriloquist doll.

The ensemble of graduating students tackles a difficult period piece with relish under Draffin's capable direction. Some of the men just missıng the raw comic potential in the characters but the women are particularly strong.

Tidd is the highlight in a gem of a portrayal of Lady Wishfor't that is like Joanna Lumley meets Lady Diana. Kostiuk has 'Va-Va-Va-Voom!' as Millamant and Sophie Gregg prowls like as cat as Mrs. Fainall. Justin Smith is a great comic presence as the yokel nephew, Wilfull, and in a cameo as the maidservant Mrs. Mincing.

Draffin has injected a couple of modern songs into this Club Lounge environment that reeks of gaming dens and the superficial, delusory glamour of nearby Crown Casino. Actors engage directly with the audience in a way that was a convention of the period.

The world of the Restoration was decadent. England reacted like naughty children to its newfound freedom and the Restoration comedies revel in the conflict between intellect and desire. Congreve's Comedy of Manners deals with adultery, cuckoldry and plays with deception and affectation in his characters.

All present a false self to the world and are revealed to be duplicitous either for gain or as protection against their sneering aristocratic 'friends'.

Kate Herbert

Visions of Poe by Michel David Treloar, Aug 26, 1997

Visions of Poe by Michel David Treloar

 Christ Church St. Kilda until Sept 20, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Aug 25, 1997

 The master of Horror long before Stephen King was American poet and short-story writer, Edgar Allen Poe. His style was Gothic, spine-chilling imagery provoked by sublimely colourful and evocative language.

Michael David Treloar, a graduate of the VCA Drama School, has leapt, polished boots and all, into Poe with a solo performance integrating his writings. Treloar locates the piece in a church that provides an immediate design concept and other-worldliness impossible to achieve with a theatre set.

The design elements he does introduce are effective. Ceiling-high scarlet velvet curtains, a bolt of red taffeta, a heavy Victorian chair, table and candles all enhance the sense of impending doom inherent in Poe. The delicate life-size doll adds a surreal edge to images of loves lost or murdered.

Treloar selects two poems, a ballad 'Annabelle Lee' and 'The Black Cat', a horror story of the drunken husband who entombs his wife's murdered body in the wall of his house with the couple’s tell tale cat.

He punctuates the performance with verses of 'The Bells', accentuating the onomatopoeic language that reverberates with the increasingly tormenting bells. His least successful selection was the story of a masquerade ball but he follows with the skin-creeping gruesomeness of 'The Black Cat'.

Poe's rhythmic form and percussive rhyming style is never more insistent and successful than in 'The Raven', that infamous bird of doom "which quoth 'never more' " as it perched on the door of the narrator, mad with grief for his lost love.

Treloar has excellent technique that supports his performance in the not inconsequential task of creating a solo show without the aid of a director - or a net.

He creates compelling images with his body in conjunction with Kathryn Anderson's dramatic lighting and has almost flawlessly mastered Poe's blindingly difficult Virginian accent and uses his resonant voice to great melodramatic effect with Poe's language.

Treloar takes his performance seriously. His playing is relentlessly fraught, intense and tortured which sometimes tilts into the earnest and indulgent. There is little irony in his use of Victorian histrionics and posturing and, particularly early, the focus is on his technique leaving one strangely unmoved by the horror and preoccupied with his method as an actor.

However, it is a commendable and generally absorbing production from a talented young artist with some spectacular text by Poe.

KATE HERBERT

Mass by Arena Theatre , Aug 23, 1997

Mass by Arena Theatre 

Universal Theatre 1 until Aug 30, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Aug 22, 1997

 If Mass were on TV, it would be preceded by warnings, 'Some violence, Sex scenes, Language, Adult themes.'

It is titillation for teenagers. Director, Rosemary Myers, in the second of Arena Theatre's anthroPOP trilogy, stimulates the senses with huge screen video projection, amplified live techno-music, verbatim Vox-Pops and snap-shot characterisations.

 All elements are designed to key into the sensory and social context of the 90's teenager. One can hear the echo of teenage voices: 'The videos were grouse.' 'A giant inflatable baby. Cool!' 'Excellent techno-music.'  'Sex in a photo booth. That's gross!'

The narrative, thin as it is in a production that focuses on other dynamics, derives from an interviewee's answer to the random survey question, 'When have you most felt like an animal?' She describes a casual sexual encounter with a complete stranger in a photo booth on a railway station.

What follows, we must presume, is intended to demonstrate that random actions have far-reaching consequences. In this case, pregnancy, fraught relationships and a custody battle over an unborn child.

 Daniel Crooks video is a potent, frenetic collage of images, data and text that parallel the dialogue.  Stylish visuals by Myers and funny dialogue from characters portrayed by Fiona Todd and Bruce Gladwin are effective and Band of Hope's music provides an edgy background.

Mass runs at breakneck pace but reaches no clear destination. It proposes to investigate mass communication and conformity but inadvertently celebrates the juvenile communication of two adults behaving like tantrum-throwing children. Perhaps other survey questions, "What is the most important relationship in your life?' and 'When have you felt most alone?' might have provided more substantial content. 

This hack may be hooked on old Theatre-in-Education philosophy but what message is this sending? Younger teens might miss the metaphoric and ironic. Older youth could handle more complex analysis of character and theme.

They may simply hear, "Greed is good. Casual sex is hilarious.  Anything and anyone can be bought.' This is not Arena's intended statement but the primary message is blurred. "What happened?" said the 8-year-old behind me at the end.  I didn't know either.

KATE HERBERT

The Three Sisters, Hildegard, Aug 21, 1997

The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov

Hildegard at Theatreworks until Sept 7, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Aug 20, 1997

Oh happy days for Chekhov lovers! This week Melbourne-Moscow hosts  – accidentally – twin productions of his classic, The Three Sisters, A.K.A. The Six Sisters or Three Sisters Squared.

Hildegard Theatre Company has a reputation for doing exotic theatre integrating text with music and dance but, in this version of the Sisters, the movement and music are, rather, interpolated amidst the text that is primary. This was surprising but not disappointing.

The sisters Olga, (Angela Campbell), Masha (Bagryana Popov) and Irena (Samantha Bewes) spend their trivial lives in a rural army town in Russia, grieving for their dead father, pining for Moscow where they lived happily until their father removed them to the country after mother died.

Director, David Latham highlights the sense of 'open house'. Officers, civilians, family and friends trail through their museum-like rooms and miserable lives day and night, winter and summer. Everybody 'philosophises' and carps about lost dreams and broken promises. They live in the golden past, complain about the present and hope for a better future in Moscow - or in love. Years pass. Nothing changes. Nobody leaves.

This is a fine ensemble of actors. Campbell brings a vibrancy and stillness to the often stolid Olga and Bewes allows Irena's naivete' and brightness to tarnish as she becomes more jaded. Popov is appropriately languorous as the self-centred Masha. As the manipulative and tasteless Natasha, Caroline Lee is delightfully shrewish and hateful.

Latham keeps the play bouncing along at a cracking pace, always maintaining a state of dissatisfaction and discomfort amongst the population. The humour of Chekhov that glitters amongst the melancholy, is honed to a playful or satirical edge.

Jim Daly as the drunken old Chebutykin, the laconic Greg Ulfan as the stirrer, Solyony and David Wicks as Kulygin, the pedantic school master, all play the dialogue the jokes with excellent comic timing and delivery.

The dialogue emphasises the ecstatic and the melancholic in the Russian temperament. Chekhov had a cruel honesty and a warts and all gaze on all his characters.

The piano (Izabella Mougeraman) and balalaika (Yuriy Mougerman) and strains of Russian song provided a lyrical atmosphere and Peter Long's gorgeous painted scrim is a gift for Paul Jackson's evocative lighting.

The piece could have allowed more silence, pauses and further detail in the characters or relationships. It skipped like a stone over the surface in parts. But I'm being picky.

By Kate Herbert

I Only Want to Be With You- The Dusty Springfield Story, Aug 16, 1997

I Only Want to Be With You- The Dusty Springfield Story
 devised by Terry O'Connell Comedy Club 

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Aug 15, 1997

My neighbouring table at The Dusty Springfield Story had travelled from Adelaide especially for the show and a Melbourne weekend. Now that's dedication.

 The eight of them had a ball, doing the Hitchhiker, the Swim, clapping in time and singing along with Wendy Stapleton and The Stayawhiles.

 Stapleton plays the Diva Dusty in a 60's wig- and costume-fest, the wackier outfits being designed by Laurel Frank. The list of hits is peppered with self-narration, some schmaltzy filler and interesting anecdotes about her childhood, early career with her brother (who wrote 'Georgie Girl') and her eventual image change.

Dusty's hits were manifold and Stapleton gives them new life with her rich and powerful voice. Hers is not an impersonation of Dusty's voice but the tone and style are accurate. She is engaging and warm to the audience who loved her. Her performance is relaxed as only a seasoned professional can be. This show has toured for two years and still has energy and life.

Dusty's hit song list is formidable but the Bert Bacharach/Hal David songs are my favourites: 24 Hours from Tulsa, The Look of Love, This Girl's in Love with You, Anyone who had a Heart. If a song made her weep, she recorded it.

She reveals her struggle to overcome her past as little Mary O'Brien, who looked like a librarian, and to maintain her stage persona as 'the blue-eyed soul singer' as the U.S. dubbed her.

Gossips will relish snippets about Dusty's alcoholism and drug abuse and reputed homosexuality.  She is an icon for gay men and women. The patter has oblique references to lesbianism: "I followed the women's tennis circuit", and later more specific references to her sexual preference.

Musical director, Robert Gavin has wonderful arrangements and is a significant, unobtrusive presence at the grand piano. Backing vocalists, The Stayawhiles, choreographed by Alana Scanlan, have fab voices, lame' minis and the best legs outside Carnaby Street.  Their medleys set the context for 60's U.K. and U.S.

Director, Terry O'Connell, keeps the pace up apart from some dull early patter and utilises Alistair Fleming's set that includes slides of Dusty at various stages of stardom and decline.

If you were there in the 60's or you're a retro aficionado you'll love this show. The Finale, 'You don't have to say you love me' is hot.

By Kate Herbert

The Popular Mechanicals, Aug 8, 1997

The Popular Mechanicals by Keith Robinson, Tony Taylor
 Shakespeare Mudfest

At Dancehouse until August 16, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Hebert around Aug 7, 1997

Acting badly is easy. Pretending to act badly is really difficult. Performing a parody of a Shakespearian comedy that requires comic actors to satirise bad acting is near insanity. Such is the bravado of a group of Melbourne University students as part of the Mudfest.

The Popular Mechanicals is a witty send-up of the "mechanicals" or tradesmen   who rehearse and perform 'the very tragical story of Pyramus and Thisbe' in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.ˇ

Writers, Tony Taylor and Keith Robinson have integrated the original scenes from The Dream with some hilarious backstage Amateur Dramatic Society antics of the characters from the play. They draw on numerous comic styles ranging from Flanagan and Allan vaudeville routines and stand-up comedy to musical comedy chorus lines and puppet play.

The Am-Dram references abound and anyone who has ever rehearsed a classic with an amateur drama club will recognise the rigid artistic hierarchy, theatrical ignorance, waspish behaviour and poor acting of its members. The group's mindless adoration of a ring-in professional artiste from London is a scream, particularly when he is revealed to be a drunken hack with an ego the size of the MCG.

The text is fast and funny if a bit too camp for some tastes. It emphasises word plays and confusions, utilises linguistic and theatrical anachronisms and gives an after-life to these well-loved characters in a simpler manner than does Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but he was adapting from a tragedy, not a romantic comedy.

This student cast, directed by Simon Day who also performs, give the play their all. They are enthusiastic, lively and obviously having a great time that is the whole point of student drama.

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There are a few moments that are in tune with the fast and furious slapstick of the play. The shark puppet aqua-ballet to Strauss is one and the comic business in the background of the Pyramus and Thisbe story is a hoot.

The problem is that the whole piece needs to pace up and cues need to be tightened. Much of the comic 'lazzi' or slapstick is laboured. The cast miss so many of the stylistic allusions and have such limited clown skills that the production is no longer a parody but an example of its comic target.

KATE HERBERT

Are You Evil Tonight? by Daniel Lillford, Aug 8 1997

Are You Evil Tonight? by Daniel Lillford

La Mama until August 31, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Aug 7, 1997

Pub. Herald Sun – Robin Usher ed.

How good it is to see a piece of theatre written, directed and acted with wit, truth and subtlety.  Are You Evil Tonight? by Daniel Lillford is just such a play.

Lillford continues his love affair with the dusty Texan desert in this play that has reverberations and reprises of themes and characters from previous plays. He uses isolated locale to examine under a microscope the twin-headed god of good and evil.

Like his beloved western movies, Lillford's good guy is also a bad guy with a heart and a spirit but his guy in the black hat or, in this case, the deputy's tin badge, has a black heart.

Tammy (Carolyn Bock) runs a truck stop way off the beaten track. She has no company except for her no-hoper brother, whom we never meet, and Joe (Chris Wallace) a Comanche tracker who is hunting a rogue coyote who is eating his goats. Tammy is single and lonely but not so desperate that she would marry Dan, the redneck deputy (Simon King).

Enter Matt, (Jeff Kovski) ex-marine who arrives on a motorbike carrying a secret and destined to become the good-bad guy who falls for the good-bad girl.

Lillford weaves magic with his narrative. His dialogue is pithy and laconic. He creates an atmosphere that is both evocative and provocative with its violence, bitterness and edginess. There is sex and love and fantasy to balance the wickedness of the irrational violence of Dan. The heat and dust of the Texan day and the chill of its night are palpable.

All four performances are three-dimensional and beautifully paced. Bock is like a wild Texas rose in her brittle, vulnerable portrayal of Tammy.  Kovski's stranger is wonderfully defensive but passionate, guarding his secrets jealously. The wisdom and irony of Wallace's Joe is a delightful foil for the other characters and King is artful in his brisk characterisation of the repulsive Dan.

There is another layer that is an allegory for Australia. Writing about Texas highlights issues of abuse and appropriation of land by invaders. The Native Americans are not alone in their confusion about whites believing they can own the land.

This is Lillford's swansong before he leaves us to live in Canada. Someone should have grabbed him before we gave away one of our finest locals. Farewell!

KATE HERBERT

Samson and Delilah, Saint Saens, Aug 5, 1997

Samson and Delilah (Samson et Dalila), composed by Camille Saint-Saens, libretto Ferdinand Lemaire

Opera Australia State Theatre August 2, 7, 9, 11, 13, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert on Aug 2, 1997

In Camille Saint-Saens' opera, Samson et Dalila (1857), Sam is a hero, Delilah a vengeful whore. Misogyny rules. O.K.

Samson, a lusty thug, rescues the Jews from Philistine slavery. His weakness is his taste for women – lots. The Philistine, Deliliah, disguises vengeance on her former lover as religious zealotry. Her High Priest believes she does it for Dagon, a Philistine god with a name like a pesticide.

Lindy Hume's production focuses on two marvellous voices. Georgian tenor, Badri Maisuradze (Samson) has impeccable control and a rich, subtle tone. Bernadette Cullen's (Delilah) warm mezzo is a fine complement.

Samson succumbs to the 'femme fatale' Delilah who discovers, for her High Priest (Gary Rowley), the secret of his strength. He is blinded, incarcerated, humiliated until he begs God for the strength to destroy the temple and the enemy.

Richard Divall conducts the State Orchestra with distinction. The First Act's sonorous tones echoing the enslavement of the Jews, is musically the least interesting but Hume's opening image of chorus high behind huge scarlet walls, is spectacular, if too brief.

Much of what follows remains unsatisfyingly static, relying on John Gunter's design for visual interest. The final act is more impassioned visually and musically, with focus on Philistine revelry and taunting of Samson.

Unfortunately, the static staging does nothing to enhance the limited acting. Maiduradze is not credible as the heroic Samson, although Cullen plays a stately Delilah. It is a passionless depiction of a relationship built exclusively on lust. The earth doesn't move for anybody except the delightfully sultry dancers who represent all their inner life.

KATE HERBERT  

These Foolish Things & Trapped, La Mama, Aug 3, 1997

These Foolish Things by One Toe & Trapped by Trudy Hellier

at La Mama Thursday July 31, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Aug 1, 1997

Pub. Herald Sun – Alison Barclay

 

The second evening of La Mama's Birthday Theatre marathon was a double bill. The more successful of the two was Trapped by Trudy Hellier (from Frontline) a slick half-hour script with a clever plot and witty dialogue.

A young woman (Hellier) finds a new flat mate (Sally Cooper) for her house that has a fabulous view - of Pentridge and its inmates. The two women develop a strange mutual obsession with their two special convicts who take turns to view the women's ordinary daily activities and fantasise.

The old hand crim (Marcus Eyre) has wangled a new cellmate (Jerome Pride) who is an explosives expert. He is planning an escape to be with his fantasy girl while his bomber pal gets hooked on the new gal next door. She, in turn, eventually does not leave the house at all, in case he misses her.

This is a quirky narrative with well-observed and economical dialogue. In spite of being a reading rather than a full production, the performances by all four actors were uniformly strong. The slight adjustment in the twist at the end in this draft of the script is much more effective than the earlier version.

These Foolish Things is light entertainment that works in part because of the naivete of its style. A man has sneaked into his ex-wife's apartment to check if she has kept mementos of their life together. When she finds him they relive moments.

The two animate funny little objects, toys and memorabilia - their 'foolish things' -to tell their story. One funny scene is the toy suicide. Teddy teeters on the edge of a table then dives. A Banana in Pyjamas totters off after him followed by Barbie. A crowd of tiny footy trophies cheers.

A suburban-style slide show of their travels draws us in while we share chips and anecdotes with them.

 There are problems with an incohesive structure and a confusion of styles. The naturalistic and serious relationship form does not gel with the other more successful and wacky style and, for most of the piece, the actors remain trapped behind a table cluttered with paraphernalia.

There is a gaucheness and charm about this show's unadorned amateurism. The form and style may be scrappy and the performance level limited, but it is sweet and fun.

KATE HERBERT 

Sodomy & Cigarettes by Stephen Sewell, Aug 3, 1997

Sodomy & Cigarettes by Stephen Sewell

 Melbourne University Mudfest until Aug 9, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 2 Aug, 1997

There is a fine tradition of political theatre that confronts contemporary social issues and challenges government. Agit-prop (agitational propaganda) was an innovative and colourful form popular in Britain in the 60's and 70's but we have our own heritage.

Sodomy & Cigarettes by Stephen Sewell is such a play and its blatant criticism of the Kennett government is heightened by being performed on a university campus, once the site of heated political activism.

The term 'didactic' is positive in this context.  There are references to Casino, selling off state utilities, building deregulation, police corruption, cuts to welfare, hospitals and education. The problem in this production lies not in its intention but in the execution of its political commentary. Sewell is inclined to over-write and his political diatribes need editing.

The text is a chaotic collection of styles and scenes in a 70's patchwork. Uni revue satirical sketches (Sale of the Sanctuary) are intercut with songs, scenes and a narrative about Jeff Canute (Nick Virginis) our "much-loved' Premier and his counterpart, a corrupt Chicago mayor from 1941.

This is an unflattering portrait so it is no wonder, in these times of arts censorship, that State money was withdrawn from the project.

Evocative and provocative songs in the style of Kurt Weill and the Berliner cabaret of the 20's alternate with some wonderful cameos, a feature being Angus Cerini's John Howard who whimpers, ' I have a mandate." Helen Gagliano has a glorious voice in the chorus.

Director Kim Hanna has done a fine job with this youthful ensemble and Richard Jeziorny's epic design of a fallen temple is a visual treat.

Most scenes are satire but there was one truly theatrical scene. A woman's nightmare of cannibalism is counterpointed against voices from the stock market. This simple theatrical juxtaposition comments on a society that is devouring itself by focussing on market rather than human issues.

 In many other scenes this point is laboured.  The piece is entertaining but often incoherent and unwieldy and some scenes make no sense at all. Robespierre and Saint Juste appear twice but the analogy of the French Revolution becomes clumsy and disconnected. References to philosophers Didera, Heideger and Descartes are used but are obscure.

Sewell questions whether theatre can effect social change but I suspect this play merely reflects it after the fact.

KATE HERBERT