Cyrano de Bergerac - as told by three idiots, Sept 29, 1998

Another review from last century for your delectation. This one's a mad, clown version of Cyrano. KH

 

Adapted from Edmund Rostand

La Mama at the Courthouse Theatre until October 17, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If you do not know the original Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmund Rostand, you might know Steve Martin's film, Roxanne, based on Cyrano. A similar comic-poignant balancing act informs the style of Cyrano de Bergerac - as told by three idiots.

The idiots are three actors: David Adamson, Glynis Angell and Bruce Naylor who are directed by Alex Pinder. The three, according to the program notes, "share, perform and fight for all the roles" which allows the actors' own personae to be part of the performance.

As themselves, they bicker over their individual interpretations of the poet-fighter and vie for the privilege of playing the heroic, poetic, love-soaked Cyrano or, more to the point, who gets to sport his enormous, ugly honker.

Part of the play is classic clown with slapstick fight scenes, goofy caricatures and absurd references. These are interspersed with slabs of Rostand's fine text which is essentially poetic, romantic and, finally, tragic.

Cyrano has a reputation as a rabble-rouser, fearless soldier and fine poet. He suffers unrequited love of his pretty cousin, Roxanne. He finds himself in the invidious position of writing ardent love letters to her which are signed by Christian, a handsome young soldier beloved by Roxanne.

The dramatic, text-based scenes take precedence in the latter half of the 90 minute show and are poignant but less successful than the earlier idiocy. The clownery is often hilarious, although it could be pushed further to maintain its edge. When the energy drops and the voices and actions are too restrained, the show falters.

The director's balancing of the styles is awkward. They need to go further towards both the tragic and the comic. There are also some clumsy scene changes which cannot be covered by the trio singing prettily.

The ensemble is strong after developing this piece over a long workshop period. All three are charming and engaging and all have hilarious character cameos.

Naylor's loud brash servant woman is a hoot and Adamson as the evil, grimacing Comte de Guiche is suitably slimy while Angell, in several small roles, demonstrates her excellent physical clown skills; the more extreme their interpretation, the more effective the result.

This piece could benefit from tighter direction, further editing of the text and some more wildly over-the-top clowning. My gauge of their success became the giggles from the six-year-old in the front row. He loved it.

By Kate Herbert September 1998

INFECTIOU$, Sept 27, 1998

The 90s really had some mad theatre. Here's another archived review. KH
 
by Maude Davey and Marcia Ferguson

Lower Melbourne Town Hall until Oct 11, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

INFECTIOU$ is a psycho-pop-sci-fi-medical-satire with songs. Please explain? A megalomaniacal capitalist, Mr. Sphinx, (Karen Hadfield) employs medical researchers Drs. Pathology (James Wardlaw) and Drip (Jane Bayly), to isolate a world-threatening virus.

A patient called Infection (David Pidd) is turning into a chair. Yes, a chair. Claudia, a Fitzroy resident with a social conscience, (Maude Davey) is enraged by the insensitive, capitalist trend and laments her own fading empathy for the troubled: the losers, loners, street-people.

A granny in pink dressing gown (Marcia Ferguson) is losing her grip on this world and no-one seems to care - except her grand-daughter, Claudia. This ugly, impersonal world values the virtual and the lucrative above the actual and the personal. A 2-dimensional, screen queen (Pidd) coolly comments on the virtual versus the real.

There is a social and political message. We are infected with selfishness. We are blind to poverty, anguish, age and illness. Our sense of community is virtually(!) gone. Without a dollar value to society we are dispensable.

The script for this wacky show was written by Marcia Ferguson with Maude Davey, Madam of the Fringe, She Who Guides Us through the lurid halls of alternative theatre.

The six actors, directed by Melanie Beddie, sing, dance and quip their choreographed way through 90 minutes of goofy hospital cabaret, reminiscent of the television grotesquery of Let the Blood Run Free.

The narrative is interspersed with diverse, original music by Pete Farnan (Boom Crash Opera). The songs are the most inspiring and satisfying component, making their political points with pithy lyrics and big, live sound. Titles such as, "What will happen if nobody gives any more?" "I object. I'm not an object," " I want to be human,” "If money is a disease, I've got it," and " Give me a dollar or I die," reveal the whole story.

 There are a few weaknesses that do not affect the fun of the evening. There are too many narrative threads to be resolved. In the end, whose story is it? Nanny's? Claudia's? Patient Infection's? The humour sometimes relies on bad puns and under-grad jokes. If it were not for the quality of the performers it might be mistaken for the Uni Med School revue.

But this is an hilarious, lively, impassioned night of satirical humour which touches the bleeding, ugly core of our shallow world. We do not want to " get over the empathy thing."

 By Kate Herbert 27 Sept 1998

I Cyclops by Robert McNamara, Sept 23, 1998

 I Cyclops by Robert McNamara

At La Mama until October 4, 1998

Reveiwed around Sept 23 1998

Cyclops is a sad old creature. He lives, blinded, on an island off Sicily with only his flocks for company.in the absence of his Cyclopian brothers.

American writer, Robert McNamara, in his comic-tragic monologue, I Cyclops, has extrapolated on the one-eyed monster who is encountered by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. The giant, before his blinding at the hands of the Greek sailors, is represented as a farcical figure who craves company, is a virgin and delights in the ambrosia given to him by the cunning marooned sailors.

William Gluth, directed by Malcolm Robertson, plays Cyclops as a scruffy, crippled grumbler wearing a tail coat and John Lennon sunglasses. He scuttles about the space, telling his tale of woe and bemoaning his fate. with only a table and chair to assist him on his journey.

McNamara derives his comedy from the pastiche of styles which works better at some times than others. There are snatches of Black American songs and characters, bad puns and witty references. There are some vulgar gags such as Cyclops' brothers being called Copraphilius, Necrophilius and Prophilaxis.

Gluth works hard in this solo show and has some high points, particularly when he plays the drunken Cyclops. His early nerviness gives way to a more relaxed and funny performance in which he more fully inhabits the giant, both vocally and physically. His comic timing is much better and his performance less mannered than in early sections in which he seems less connected with the character.

He peoples the stage with characters as he plays the group of smarmy, devious sailors as well as Cyclops and other incidental characters.

McNamara's text is patchy and wanders towards the end. There is a very odd interpolation of a court case in which "Dr. Cyclops" is tried by a Germanic judge who seems to resemble Freud. It takes a long time to reach the climax when Cyclops is blinded and there are unnecessary and unclear detours on the way.

Malcolm Robertson's direction keeps this one hour play simple and uncluttered. The tragedy of poor, lonely, blinded Cyclops is evident in the production although it could be milked further. the balancing of the grotesque,the comic and the dramatic is difficult but mostly effective.

By Kate Herbert

Rising Fish Prayer, Sept 17, 1998

Rising Fish Prayer by Adam May

 Playbox Theatre Malthouse until October 3, 1998

Review Sept 17, 1998

It seems to be the week of the fish plays with Rising Fish Prayer at Playbox following hard on the heels of Shark Fin Soup at MTC.

The rising fish of Adam May's title relates to the unlikely return of fish to the polluted waters around the fictional Australian "Menzies" gold mine in Papua-New Guinea. Christian missionary style prayers have been the daily fare of the local villagers who have worked the mine for years under a tyrannical lunatic, Captain Melcroft.

When 50-year-old Ken Peterson (Robert Grubb) arrives to take over, he is unaware that his recent double by-pass, divorce from his wife (Janet Andrewartha) and his looming redundancy were a picnic compared to life at "Menzies".

 His dream escape to PNG becomes a nightmare. He faces a workers' rebellion, a closed mine and damning secrets about the death of his predecessor. He cannot escape without risking his life.

Here is a delightful recipe for farce and May, with director Aubrey Mellor, milks the culture clash for all it's worth. Characters are cartoon-like. Robert Grubb  plays Ken with a bluff, lovable coarseness. The dual-culturalism of Sam Tiko, his urbanised secretary, is played by a wry Theo Burns.

 The child-like Christian zeal of Ubuku, a uniformed volunteer who leads daily prayers, is a perfect foil to Ken's gruffness. Ubuku is played with relish by the adorable Kilori Susuve, from Playbox's co-production company, The Performing Arts Troupe of PNG.

Tiko is protective of his village and his daughter,.Sophie (Dobi Kidu) who has no respect for Ken because he, "Doesn't wear a uniform. Doesn't even make us pray." This is an indictment of our generally paternalistic relationship with PNG as is Sophie's fear of Australian men.

May's narrative is entertaining and potentially provocative but dialogue is repetitive, characters underdeveloped and some clunky dream sequences interrupt the story.

 Often the glib humour undercuts the more serious indictments of Australia's relationship with PNG: colonialism, economic exploitation and personal abuse. PNG forces are also criticised for hasty, violent action; shades of Bougainville.

This play was the winner of the Playbox Asialink Playwrighting competition in 1997. Its tropical feel is enhanced by an evocative lighting design by Philip Lethlean and sleek sea-grass set 

design by Trina Parker.

By Kate Herbert

Sept-Oct 1998 Shows in Melbourne

Sept-Oct 1998 Shows in Melbourne

Some of these shows also have reviews posted here from 1998.

• Scissors Paper Rock, by Daniel Keene at Trades Hall Tues Sept 15 -27    
• Bodysongs - The Fatman Tour at Theatreworks 
• Calculated Risks Opera  Sept 19 -Oct 3 
• Infectious Maud Davy et al, Fri Sept 25-Oct 11  
• Alice is a Big Girl Now, Scott Felstead Sept 11-27, Nth Melb T Hall 
• Cabaret of the Absurd ,at Theatreworks Sept 18 
• La Mama, Ricefields installation Sept 15 -19               
• La Mama, The Goldilocks Affair - An Opera,  Daniel Kahans Sep
• Heavy Metal Hamlet, A Frank Production, St Martins Sept 30 
• Wild Turkey Sept 30  at Cherry Tree Hotel Richmond
• Conversations with my Father Saltpillar Theatre St Martins Oct 3-18   
• Estimated Time of Arrival by All and Sundry Oct 1,  Lev 2 400 City Rd S Melb 
• Dream Kitchen, Toni Lamond Universal Theatre Oct10 
• So Wet, Samantha Bews Oct 13 8.15 N Melb T Hall

Shark Fin Soup by Michael Gurr, Sept 9,1998

Shark Fin Soup by Michael Gurr,  MTC

Fairfax Studio until October 10, 1998

Reviewed by Kate Herbert on Sep 9, 1998

Michael Gurr has a couple of hits on his hands already. Sex Diary of an Infidel toured Australia to critical acclaim and Jerusalem won Literary Awards for Drama in both Victoria and NSW.

These plays and others in his repertoire address political or social issues. Shark Fin Soup, directed for the MTC by the deft hand of Bruce Myles, is more concerned with relationships and fate, making it more clearly focussed on character than issue.

This production is a really good night in the theatre. The characters are colourful and eccentric in spite of their inherent ordinariness. Performances are uniformly excellent and the writing is witty, often hilarious.

Vera Benn (Catherine Wilkin) is a famous clairvoyant who "sees" people's fates only by touching objects owned by them. She is married to Frank (John McTernan). Her daughter, Lucy (Tammy McCarthy) has abandoned her failed fashion design career to start an innovative restaurant called The Common Dish. Her partners are her ex-engineer and security guard boyfriend, Daniel (Paul English) and their randy chef pal, Ewan (Simon Wilton). The manifesto is, "just soup, bread and no bullshit"

Their lives seem newly hopeful, charmed, as do the lives of Alan (Kevin Harrington) and Rosemary (Alison Whyte) who are just engaged. But there is a creeping sense of doom. There are misunderstandings, deceptions, financial problems are solved in unorthodox ways. And Vera's heart disease requires a transplant. Things start to fall apart and despair replaces hope.

Myles has woven together the various lives by allowing scenes to bleed into each other. Characters remain on stage after their scenes are finished or hover behind the huge, transparent jagged triangles of Judith Cobb's startling set.

Wilkin is stately and considered as Vera travelling her uncharted path. English is a fine study of the crumbling of a pedant's dream.  Alison Whyte plays Rosemary, a delightfully familiar fast-talking salesgirl, with relish and impeccable timing.

Vera is the conscience of the play although this is not really followed through satisfactorily. In fact, the ending leaves many issues unresolved and most characters' journeys through the play remain unsatisfyingly incomplete.

The significance of Shark Fin Soup eludes me although soups feature in the menu of the cafe. However, the notion of luck, fate and future ruling lives is pervasive. Our dream castles are built on sand. Nothing is predictable - not even a human heart.

By Kate Herbert

Crossing The Line, Part One, Aug 17, 1998

Part One of Crossing The Line Merlin Theatre until August 20, 1998

 The Look by Alexa Wyatt 

The Floating Girl and the Man Who Whirled by Jack Feldstein 

 Review Aug 17, 1998

The lure of screenwriting for playwrights is well documented. There is no brain drain in the opposite direction because there is no money in theatre – and no jobs.

Crossing the Line is a momentary lapse, the exception to the rule. Under the umbrella of the Melbourne Writers' Festival, actor-writer-director, Gary Files has put together staged readings  of five plays by established screen writers.

These two media, stage and screen, demand very different techniques from writers. Naturalistic detail and dialogue is generally demanded on television whereas, on stage, styles range from realism to the abstract and physical.

Screen writers, so often constrained by the requirements of television executives, can be excused for forgetting the skill of the actor and the versatility of the stage.

The first program is two short plays: The Look by Alexa Wyatt (E Street, Heartbreak High, All Saints) and The Girl Who Floated and the Man Who Whirled by Jack Feldstein (Head Writer, Brilliant Digital Entertainment) Both are directed by John Wood, famous for his Blue Heelers role but also a seasoned theatre performer.

Ailsa Piper (Neighbours) alone on stage, apart from a Narrator (Tony Rickards) reading stage directions. Marilyn, a comic-tragic figure, is running a training session for Estelle cosmetics. Piper is poignant and funny as Marilyn's prepared lecture slowly disintegrates into a tortured and embarrassing rave

She was the first Estelle girl, the lover of Monsieur Dupont the owner. She is a shattered, disillusioned, dislocated woman who has no identity without her beauty or her make-up.

The piece is cleverly written but too long for its content. It is reminiscent of the women's theatre of the 80's which challenged role models and female stereotypes.

Feldstein's play is clearly written by a very capable screenwriter but it is not a theatre script because of its rapid cinematic scenes, very involved naturalistic stage directions, specific locations, costumes, props and numerous extras.

It is a tale of two inner-urban, self-indulgent, angst-ridden Jewish artists (David Tredinnick, Fiona Walsh) whose fraught relationship involves tormenting each other about their bisexuality, jealousy, intensity, neurosis and their Jewishness.

If this were staged in an abstract form it could be an interesting performance piece but, at present, it is still a short art-film script.

Other writers to come are John Wood's The Subterraneans, John Misto's Gossamer and Snoop by Patrick Edgeworth.

By Kate Herbert

Mechtron: Education from Womb to Tomb, Aug 6, 1998

Mechtron: Education from Womb to Tomb by Stefo Nantsou

A Brunswick Mechanics' Institute until August 23, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

 Review Aug 6

Our sense of Community is becoming a distant memory. We can bank by phone, shop on the Web, work from home. We change addresses, fear strangers, feel insecure in the workplace and are expected to be computer literate rather than simply literate.

Schools, at least, remained a community - until the State government hacked budgets, closed schools, sold sites, increased class sizes and reduced teachers. Free education is a thing of the past.

A thing of the very near future in 2004, postulates Stefo Nantsou in his community theatre play, Mechtron: Education from Womb to Tomb, is the nightmare of Educard. Educard is a hypothetical, computerised, centralised education system by which children, from birth, accrue points to pay for their future education. The poor suffer, the rich win.

Children work alone with a virtual reality program and a digitally recorded "Education Navigator": a teacher in old-speak. Learning is depersonalised. The only teacher who succeeds in Mechtron, is the cool, competent, detached Miss "T" (Nadja Kostich) who values technology more than human contact.

In the early time period of this story, '92-94, a primary school is threatened with closure, as were many schools in the 90's. (My local schools are now townhouses) Some teachers and families occupy the buildings and resist the authorities. Remember the violence at the occupation of Richmond High and the battle to keep Northland Tech. open to cater for the Koori population? People care about children's education.

Nantsou, with co-ordinator Steve Payne, developed this project with assistance from organisations including The Brotherhood of St. Laurence and The Victorian Council of School Organisations.. This team was responsible for The Essentials, the controversial play about a state politician/wife-beater.

Mechtron is a community effort. The cast has some professional actors including Kostich and Anne Phelan as the Headmistress but, in the tradition of the Community Theatre of the last two decades, most of the 26 performers are non-professionals. Nine or ten are children.

It may be didactic in its approach and message, but Mechtron is entertaining and challenging political theatre. We need more of it. When theatre stops questioning the status quo, it is dying. If artists continue to be militant and raise awareness, perhaps we can regain our sense of community and counter these impersonal modes of being.

By Kate Herbert

Some Mother's Son, Aug 5, 1998

Some Mother's Son by Jill O'Callaghan

At La Mama until August 23, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Review Aug 5, 1998

The attentive Gennazano Convent girls at Some Mother's Son, would be familiar with Irish Catholic references such as Christmas midnight mass and St. Patrick but it is unlikely they had any direct experience of mediaeval mummers play, Irish jigs and the IRA or Sinn Fein.

Written and directed by Jill O'Callaghan, the play, which is on the VCE Drama list, has a return season at La Mama that replicates the intimacy of a B and B in Ballymalone Ireland, complete with blazing fire.

But the warmth and cheer of the hearth is not echoed in its residents. Maura Kelly's (Libby Stone) husband, a member of Sinn Fein, was murdered in his armchair, in front of her son Diarmuid, (Joseph Clements) 27 years earlier. Diarmuid is now a member of the IRA.

To upset the apple cart, two Australian tourists arrive. Rene (Maureen Hartley) and her dead son Emmet's girlfriend, Therese (Kath Gordon) are on a bizarre quest to avenge Emmet's murder.

O'Callaghan's play raises issues about revenge as a solution to violence. When does the murdering stop? Can justice be achieved with the gun? Can we take the law into our own hands?

Maura's painful telling of her husband's murder is powerful. Another affecting moment is the midnight mass overflowing with victims: the baker's widow whose husband was roasted alive, two brothers, one's arm shot off, the other is knee-capped. It is a litany of crimes against humanity.

The pain of grief from violent death would make one mad and Therese's grief is near-deranged. The mellowness of Hartley is a good foil. Stone's Maura is somehow fragile while remaining earthy. Clements is a potent, brooding presence with an edge of danger and desperation.

Relationships become more complex as the protagonists become acquainted and one mother realises she cannot wreak further pain on another.

The dialogue is sometimes too informational, with unnecessary detail of landmarks, history and legends such as St. Patrick. It is also never made clear how and why the Australians decided on their target for vengeance.

The traditional Christmas mummers play about St. Patrick's defeat of Prince George is hilarious. The players improvise and romp wearing huge raffia condoms on their heads. A clever choice was to integrate the La Mama book raffle into this wacko scene.

By Kate Herbert

Shows opening August 1998

SHOWS OPENING in AUGUST 1998

Fri Aug 7 Steel City
Wed Aug 12  Bring on the Talent by Rosemary John Courthouse
Tuesday Aug 18 Third World Blues by David Williamson, STC at Alexander Theatre
Mon 17 -Thurs 20 Aug Crossing the Line Melbourne Writers' Festival Plays written by famous screen writers local.
Monday Aug 17  The Look and The Floating Girl and the Man who Whirled, both directed by John Wood
Tues Aug 18 Gossamer by John Misto, director Gary Files
Wed Aug 19 The Subterraneans by John Wood, director John Ellis
Thus Aug 20 Snoop by Patrick Edgeworth
Wed Aug 19 - Taking the Floor New  Short Works

Combo Fiasco, Aug 4, 1998

Combo Fiasco, at Capers Restaurant until August 22, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

REvie Aug 4 1998

"Hey! Let's do a show!" said three musical escapees from Phantom of the Opera. And so was born Combo Fiasco., a cabaret trio which has been wowing 'em in New York recently at the 88's Club.

If you like to hum along to a show tune, toe-tap to a Bacharach or Fats Waller medley or croon the odd Sinatra number, this is the perfect night out. It is a snazzy, colourful, low-budget music theatre show with good a la carte food.

Sharon Millerchip, who was a very fine Beauty in our Beauty and the Beast, teams with singer-pianist Shaun Murphy and musical director-accompanist to the stars, Tony McGill.

 The program is broad and lively. The harmonies are sweet and tight, the musical arrangements novel, satirical lyrics are clever, the choreography perky. The vocal arrangement on Rhythm of Life was spectacular.

All three have a warm presence and perform like show ponies.  They swap evening wear for lounge outfits after interval, lean over the baby grand as McGill tinkles the ivories and goof about with silly dance steps.

Millerchip's bright, versatile soprano is the vocal feature and is well supported by the two tenors. She is magnetic with has real star quality. If someone doesn't grab her for a major role when they return to New York for the Cabaret Convention, we'll be surprised.

Poignant ballads and bluesy numbers are peppered with funky show tunes and jokey songs. Bacharach's melodic Walk on By is teased into a choreographic satire. They relish the wickedness of Stephen Lutwich's song Beware of Soft-Spoken Men.

Phantom, which they all persevered in for two and a half years, takes a musical beating in their eight-minute parody. Millerchip is hilarious as a squeaky, tone-deaf version of ingenue, Christine from the hit show. Earlier, her rendition of I Wanna Be Rich, Famous and Powerful, was raucously funny..

The more serious songs include the tragic Games I Play (from Falsettos) and a cleverly combined version of Sondheim's salutary lesson for parents, Children Will Listen (from Into the Woods) and the 70's social commentary, One Tin Soldier.

This is a slick show with bright talented performers. Their patter is charming and effortless, their manner warm and natural with the audience and the segues between songs are smooth.

by Kate Herbert

Hotel Sorrento, Aug 2, 1998

Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson

HIT Productions at Merlyn Theatre Malthouse until August 15, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Review Aug 2, 1998

Australian expatriates are an odd breed. When away, they may complain about their adopted culture and defend their homeland to the death. On returning home, all that patriotism vanishes and home becomes parochial and uncultured.

In Hannie Rayson's very popular play, Hotel Sorrento, expatriatism serves not only as an escape from Australian culture but as an avoidance of grim family secrets.

The play focuses on three sisters who reunite at their family home in Sorrento after a death. Hilary Moynihan (Janet Andrewartha) has remained in Sorrento with her son (Samuel Johnson OK) and father, (John Flaus) running a cafe and being everybody's support since her husband died in a car accident ten years earlier.

Pippa (Christine Harris), the youngest sister, has returned briefly from her advertising job in New York. Meg (Celia de Burgh) has lived in London for ten years and her latest novel, Melancholy, has been nominated for the Booker prize. The novel is the pivot of their mutual antagonism. Its narrative and characters are clearly autobiographical, despite Meg's refusal to acknowledge this.

Rayson addresses not only expatriatism and cultural cringe, but also issues of love, loss and nostalgia. The ethics of plundering the lives of one's family for literature are questioned, as are those of intrusive journalism.

The writing is smart and the play well crafted with full characters and rich comic dialogue. My only quibble is that the revelation of the 'secret' is too rapid, rushing the play to a sudden end.

The performances are strong. Andrewartha is warm and poignant as the stay-at-home Hilary and de Burgh is suitably maddening as the hot headed over-achiever, Meg.

As her husband Edwin, Brian Lipson is the perfect meld of loving partner, intellectual snob and awkward Brit. The two non-family members, played by Jan Friedl and Ken Radley, provide us with outsiders' commentary on the family which is nonetheless biased by their own obsessions.

This production is directed by David Latham who was, ironically, responsible for Chekhov's Three Sisters last year. It starts slowly but gathers momentum after interval when the real conflict escalates and characters communicate more directly in the one location. The split stage of the first half leaves the narrative feeling disconnected.

Judith Cobb's design provides multiple locations with its old wooden pier and platforms. Real water on stage reminds us constantly of the sea that eventually takes one of this fraught family.

By Kate Herbert

The Drover's Boy, July 30, 1998

The Drover's Boy by Ray Mooney

at Athenaeum 2 from July 29, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Reviewed July 1998

The wrongs done our aboriginal population by the English are myriad. We know about stolen land and children, murdered tribes and disease. Many other abuses go uncatalogued. Ray Mooney's play, The Drover's Boy, deals with one.

Last century, drovers travelled with flocks over vast tracts of the outback. It was illegal for black women to 'fraternise' with white men, so drovers who were attached to an aboriginal woman took her on the track dressed as a 'drover's boy'. Was this abuse or genuine attachment?

Mooney's play began in 1985 as a one-acter which director Peter Oyston combined with others by Jack Davis and Jennifer Playnter. Its characters appeared in Black Rabbit (Playbox 1988) but it has taken 13 years for The Drover's Boy to be staged.

Archie, the seasoned drover, (Jim Daly) travels with his flock accompanied by callow youth, Stanley (Wilde Mooney) and Jackey, an aboriginal 'boy' (Pauline Whyman) They cook, yarn and tease. Archie teaches Stanley about the wild and tells him stories of the tribes.

They listen to the wild life, stop mid-sentence to watch an owl, listen to a dingo, stare at a snake. Time is elastic. The night seems endless. The space is enormous, the light is startling and the land is dry and ominous.

Their quiet world changes radically when Macca, (John Brumpton) the racist violent drover hunting for a sheep thief, invades.

The Drover's Boy is a worthy work. The script, like a Bertholt Brecht play, is didactic, educating us without involving us in the victims' emotional torment. Mooney peppers the play with poetic language, snatches of drover's songs, rhymes and old Aussie slang.

My reservations are that the narrative leaves us craving more information about the 'boy' and there is a too sudden dramatic leap towards the end, although this does lift the level of dramatic tension.

Daly plays Archie with an edge of lunacy and as Jackey, Whyman is engaging. Brumpton brings a whiff of danger and Wilde Mooney, the writer's teenage son, makes a fine debut as the ingenuous Stanley.

Director, Greg Carroll, takes risks, sometimes unsuccessfully. The style is inconsistent with some awkward moments but the sense of the wildness of the environment is strong, enhanced by Joe Dolce's soundscape and the splashing of real rain through the old roof of the Athenaeum.

Theatre Summit,l June 26 & 27, 1998

Theatre Summit

At North Melbourne Town Hall June 26 & 27, 1998

by Kate Herbert

"We want theatre to have a sexy future not just a noble past." Liz Jones, Artistic Director of Melbourne's precious theatre institution, La Mama in Carlton, voiced the desire of theatre workers who devoted two days to devising a five year plan for the Victorian theatre industry.

One resolution proposed that we be called a "theatre community" not "industry" :a term used to legitimise artists in a world committed to 'product', financial outcomes and economic rationalism.

The sense of isolation experienced by theatre artists is merely a microcosm of our society. People feel undervalued and insecure in workplaces, face redundancies, unreasonable hours, short contracts and alienating work environments. The wider community is experiencing the insecure lifestyle which artists have endured their entire working lives but to go any further into insecurity would be the death of the arts.

With the new philistinism that seems to be creeping into our politics, theatre workers are having to defend themselves against those calling, "Why give you money? What use is theatre?"

A country is defined by its social and cultural policy. The latter predetermines who is subsidised. With the shrinking arts funding pie we have lost our best middle-level theatre companies. Actors are out there hunting for waiter jobs - probably competing with their administrators.

State and federal funds still go to state theatre companies via the Australia Council's Major Organisations Fund and Arts Victoria. Individual projects are still funded. However, the middle ground has been eroded and companies that provided work for theatre artists and an exciting alternative to major companies, are in hibernation.

Theatre has its own eco-system. Its parts are interdependent. Mainstream companies are worried that this may diminish the development of new audiences for their own work: a trickle-up negative effect.

A huge marketing push is needed to inform the general population that theatre is not just for the elite. Yes. It is a risk. New plays, unlike movies, do not have the advantage of runs all over the world and $20 million budgets. But the beauty of the theatre is its immediacy. You can see and hear the actors. In some cases you are so close you could touch them, hear them breath, see them sweat.

Every night is different and you, as audience, are part of the equation. Unlike film, without you, the show does not exist. It can transport you in a way nothing else can. Remember, theatre stems from mystical, ritualistic and religious canons.

Few other industries need to constantly justify themselves as does theatre. It is exhausting. We need a catch cry "Theatre is sexy!" or "Go to a Show!" Playwright, John Romeril, suggests a "Go to a Show Week".

Melbourne needs to relish and promote its extraordinary theatre scene. It is unlike any other city in the country. Huge musicals are not the key to our identity. The diversity of our theatres, the proliferation of small companies, unusual shows , street theatre, festivals and quirky venues is what makes Melbourne's theatre scene idiosyncratic.

It is the fact that, in any one week, there are 6-8 new Australian productions opening unlike any other city in the country, in fact, the world. It is not the blockbuster musical which, as Kennett suggested, will make Melbourne the third "theatre city" after London and New York.

The five year plan includes resolutions such as developing a Theatre Centre which provides not only master training for actors as does the Actors' Centre in Sydney, but a whole administrative infrastructure for smaller companies an individual artists and houses a Peak Body to argue for the survival of the industry.

Theatre needs to reach more people so touring must be further fostered. Cheaper ticket prices for industry members and students would help keeps theatres alive and attract new young audiences.

The forging of relationships with local governments will provide a new source of funding and venues and enable theatre to go back into specific communities. This is reminiscent of the heyday of Community Theatre but in a new modern form.

Diversity is what makes Melbourne special. Why not sell this to the tourists? "See ten shows in five days. Visit the Playhouse, La Mama, a garage in Footscray, a cupboard in Fitzroy - and see great theatre."

KATE HERBERT

Behind Closed Doors, July 26,1998

Behind Closed Doors adapted writings of Robert Walser

at La Mama until August 2, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Tucked into La Mama's snugness is a literary and theatrical gem.

Howard Stanley's solo show, Behind Closed Doors, is a truly delightful, 'must-see' performance of adapted writings of Robert Walser (1878-1956).

"We don't need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much," demonstrates the simplicity of Walser's poetic vision. Stanley is the perfect representation of the humble, peculiar and hilarious voice of the writer.

Disconnected writings join seamlessly in this adaptation by Stanley in conjunction with Wayne Macauley and director, Adrian Guthrie who has returned after a 20 year absence. His work in the 70's with Stanley and others at Claremont Theatre was part of Melbourne's early experimental theatre.

The performance is stripped bare and so is Stanley. When the piece begins, he is crouching cramped in a tin tub in an almost Munch-like silent scream. His mad grin and odd physical antics punctuate Walser's naive and poignant words. His timing is impeccable and his quirky delivery adds an ironic note to the lilting music of the text.

There is a sweet sadness in Stanley's simple fool who is reminiscent of Geoffrey Rush's character in Diary of a Madman. Stanley has always been Melbourne's answer to Sydney's Oscar-winning Rush but has remained inexplicably undiscovered.

He is the perfect charming clown - and I do not mean fuzzy orange wig and white face. His past work has always been exceptional, unpredictable and on the cutting edge. In one show, he scampered about naked then let loose a dozen stray dogs amongst the audience. In a gallery show, he required people to pay with a cheque that bounced. He was known on the comedy circuit as "The Comedian's Comedian" for his character Howard Slowly.

The man in the bath-tub pre-empts a later reference to a writer who lived in a woman's bathroom. He attends a job interview - naked - from his tub. He searches for a room, seeks romance with a potential land-lady, marvels at women's legs, their desire to wear trousers and to vote: "Voting so boring!"

He jitters about his ageing and his nervousness. He acknowledges his weirdness. He dresses coyly, behind a striped sheet, adding silk shirt, vest and jacket in his journey from tub to poetic visionary. Walser's words reflect his warmth, his childlike joy, his love of the landscape and, tragically, his own later madness.

This is a must-see show.

By kate Herbert

CLOSER , MTC, July 24, 1998

CLOSER by Patrick Marber MTC

At Fairfax Studio until August 22, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

"Liar, liar. Pants on fire!" Everybody lies in English playwright, Patrick Marber's Closer. Like his chronic gamblers in Dealer's Choice, they are all out of control but in Closer the lack of control relates to love..

Dan (Marco Chiappi), a needy, aspiring novelist who writes obituaries, meets Alice, (Asher Keddie) a brazen 20 year-old stripper, when she walks into London traffic without looking. This is how she lives her life.

Anna, (Jane Menelaus) a stylish photographer, meets Dan when she takes his publicity shot for his soon-to-fail novel. Larry, (Robert Menzies), a dermatologist and social primitive, encounters Anna, by Dan's contrivance, in an aquarium. They all fall in love: serial monogamy. Ah, the nineties!

The characters are not likeable but the actors are. Menelaus is subtle and magnetic as Anna, Chiappi plays Dan as the hopeless romantic, Keddie is a perky Alice and Menzies is a suitably unpleasant and vulgar Larry.

The secrecy of guilty sex is attractive. These modern people are easily bored or disillusioned. They crave their fantasies made real.

Designer, Judith Cobb's romantic blue moon looms over the space that is piled with furniture echoing the temporary state of all four relationships.

But Marber's people, despite several split ups and lots of tears, never manage to gain our sympathy or elicit our compassion. They remain shallow and lack warmth. The actors rattle around in the cavernous space as if it is too huge to allow them to be intimate.

The problem is not in performances nor in Bruce Myles sleek direction, but in the writing. The dialogue is often funny but never penetrates the surface. They speak in glib phrases that alienate us. The narrative is entertaining but thin. Marber places all dramatic moments off stage.

His history in stand-up comedy writing may keep Marber distant from the personal. He is one of the international wave of young men who have been too quickly promoted onto the mainstage.

His women.speak like men, almost as the mouthpiece for male fantasies. The two men engage in a funny, grotesque internet sex chat, Dan pretending to be a woman to tease his unwitting victim. The internet chat is sexual in a pornographic, adolescent way. These days, we are unshockable.

Men's attitude to pornography is still the main lapse in understanding between genders. Women speak a different language. Larry should have guessed it was a man on the other end of his cyber fantasy. We hope all men are not trapped in this phallo-centric stage.

By Kate Herbert

Speaking in Tongues, Playbox, July 21, 1998

Speaking in Tongues by Andrew Bovell

Playbox at Beckett Theatre until August 15, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Reviewed around July 20.

People's lives bleed into one another's, not necessarily by design, often by accident. They may actually meet, intersect, even run parallel or simply reverberate, resemble or echo each other. Six degrees of separation: we are all only six acquaintances away from each other.

In Andrew Bovell's play, Speaking in Tongues, nine characters played by four actors, share lives and even unwittingly share partners. They plunge headlong or dip blithely into each other's world's only to damage or abandon, perhaps to advise, reconcile or empathise. Whatever their relationships, they speak different emotional languages, hence the title.

Bovell's writing is always crisp, stylish and witty. His signature is the fracturing of time, space and dialogue. He splices several scenes and locations, creating intersecting voices, echoes in one scene of another, twanging ironic chords and reminding us that there are so few stories in this little human world. We all suffer the same pains and joys.

In creating this text, he has cleverly merged two earlier plays: Distant Lights from Dark Places and Like Whiskey on the Breath of a Drunk You Love. Additional narrative, for those familiar with these or the monologues from Confidentially Yours provides a further compelling back-story for familiar characters. It is not simple storytelling. There are diversions and detours at every turn.

Four consummate actors (Heather Bolton, Robert Meldrum, Merfyn Owen, Margaret Mills) double roles and are directed skilfully and unobtrusively by Ros Horin who directed the 1996 production at the Griffin Theatre, Sydney. Sleek design, (Liane Wilcher) adaptation (Nicola McIntosh), evocative lighting (Nigel Levings) and subtle music (Sarah de Jong) complete the piece.

Mills' Jane, a frightened fawn seeking change, is counter-pointed by Bolton's tough Sonia. Owen's forceful copper, Leon, balances not only his timid wife but his casual lover's sensitive, betrayed husband. Power and weakness, betrayal and loyalty, deception and reconciliation pull these characters together like magnets.

Bovell's dialogue plays with the fragmentation of everyday communication and the actors balance superbly the vocal dynamic, interplay of voices and roles, the canon effect of the dialogue and the cryptic emotional landscape.

Strangers' life stories can be catalysts for change or clarity. These characters are deeply affected by chance crossed paths. Leon cannot forget the man whose lover never returned from Europe. Neil obsesses about a stranger whose wife was stranded on a country road and disappeared.

There are some hiccups in this piece that may be due to the collision of styles but it is a resonant and challenging peep into nine lives.

KATE HERBERT

Faith Healer, July 13, 1998

Faith Healer by Brian Friel

Presented by The Old Van

 At The Shed VCA Dodds St. Sth Melbourne until August 2, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Reviewed around July 13, 1998

Who needs a design with everything that opens and shuts, elaborate lighting, digital sound and a ridiculous budget when you can see an impeccably written play performed by three remarkable local actors in a shed?

Fiona Blair's interpretation of Faith Healer by Brian Friel is such a production. The "shed" is a surprisingly warm and comfortable portable classroom in the grounds of the VCA. Even if it were not, this play would warrant enduring some discomfort.

Faith Healer uses the same narrative device as Friel's recent play, Molly Sweeney that had a stellar season for the MTC. Three characters speak in monologues. As their shared history unfolds, we become complicit in each one's version of the facts. Events and their relationships are coloured by their selective memories.

Irishman, Frank Hardy (Kurt Geyer), is a talented faith healer with a chequered record. He travels Scotland and Wales with his ex-lawyer wife, Grace (Jane Nolan) and his manager, the lovable ingenuous cockney, Teddy (Richard Bligh).

The trio bump about the drizzly countryside in a rattle-trap of a van fitted with a smelly primus stove, visiting remote villages and presenting healing as an almost vaudevillian revue to rival Teddy's previous client, Rob-Roy, the bag-piping whippet.

Several incidents are significant to all three. It takes two and a half riveting hours of intimate contact with Frank, Grace and Teddy for us to glean the truth about that village in the far north of Scotland where a baby is buried, that Fred Astaire number they used for openers and that fateful night in the pub in Ballybeg, Ireland

The marriage is fraught. Both Frank and Grace have abandoned their families only to attempt belated reconciliations. Frank lives in a fantasy world. Grace only wants devotion. Teddy stays twenty years on the road with them because he loves both too much. They are victims of themselves and each other. Artists should never marry. Says, Teddy. His whippet is proof positive.

Blair has focused on the text and the actor, which is the key to Friel's work. All three actors bring a detailed and intelligent eye to the script, bringing alive the sub-text. Geyer is charming as the charismatic, whiskey-soused Frank. Bligh is sweet and endearing as the poor doormat, Teddy. Jane Nolan is heart-rending as the shattered Grace measuring her progress by the hours she sleeps and the cigarettes she smokes.

British director, Peter Brook praises "Poor Theatre" This is.a prime example.

KATE HERBERT

Cakes Men Like July 7, 1998

Cakes Men Like, by Sat on the Hat

Athenaeum II, July 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Reviewed around July 6 1998

If you are looking for a cheap and novel lunch activity to interrupt your working or shopping day in the city centre, look no further than the Athenaeum Theatre II on Collins Street. While you watch a half-hour show, you can sup on soup provided by Heinz and yummy bread donated by Pott's Bakery. All this for only $5.

Soup Kitchen Theatre began this terrific little earner eight years ago and it has now been commandeered by another small company, Sat on the Hat. The first show of this winter season is Cakes Men Like that will be followed by Trudy Hellier's Trapped opening on August 4.

Cakes is a simple cautionary tale about housewifery in the 50's. This, of course, lends itself to satirical observations, songs from the period and some slightly patronising commentary from our high-horse 90's.

Director Greg Dyson works with three women, Charlie Laidlaw, Rosina Gannon and Amanda Armstrong, who portray three diverse characters who are trapped in the never-ending cycle of pleasing the men in their lives with their kitchen creativity.

The men invent appliances to make the lives of the women easier but, in fact, they end up literally incarcerated in their fridges singing Doris Day tunes, posing by the Frigidaire and telling their favourite cake recipes. It is like a fractured 50's Women's Weekly advertisement.

The catch is that, occasionally, the women go completely bonkers - inside their own heads. The pressure of being nice, providing for hubbie and kids, and keeping up appearances, is all too much.

The three are performers and devisers of this light, entertaining, if sometimes didactic piece. Laidlaw and Gannon are members of the very clever clown ensemble, Four on the Floor who are known for very physical comedy with sweet, wacky characters.

There is some of this style in Cakes but the pace is slower and the comedy less punchy. It could benefit from a bit more action and a lot less static talk. It is a dated style reminiscent of 70's feminist street theatre that damned the housefraus and their over-bearing husbands.

The comparisons of men to the kind of cakes they like were very funny. One tubby chap likes dumplings. Another eats meringue, " Crusty on the outside, sweet and sticky inside." But their dream man is a fruitcake. Rich, fruity and you can put him a way for a long time and he's even better when he comes out.

By Kate Herbert

Tell Her that I Love Her, June 25, 1998

Tell Her that I Love Her by Somebody's Daughter Theatre
Beckett Theatre until July 11, 1998
Sacred Promise opens July 8, 1998
Reviewer: Kate Herbert 
Reviewed round June 25

A child's voice in the audience whispered, "What's dope?" You can bet that the characters and some of the actors in Tell Her That I Love Her wish they had never found out the answer to that question themselves.

Somebody's Daughter Theatre has remounted its 1991 production which was developed, under the direction of Maud Clark, in workshops with women in Fairlea prison. The play incorporates the painfully real stories of those women, some of whom are still in the cast.

Within a loose narrative built around Jessie's (Tracey Forward) release from prison, we hear disturbing stories of childhood sexual abuse, abandonment, adoption, foster homes and drug-fazed mothers.

Live music by Greg Sneddon on upright piano underlines dramatic moments but is essentially used for songs which pepper the scenes. John Beckett's beautiful design is evocative of St.Kilda pier with crisp white sails and rough wooden decking embedded in sand.

The structure may be predictable, the gestural language awkward, the writing sometimes melodramatic and the acting limited, but the intention of this community theatre company is not to compete with a Melbourne Theatre Company production.

Rather, it is to give these women a voice, a channel of communication by which they can shout the stories of their lives from the ramparts. The truth of what they tell us and their commitment to their stories carries the play and gives it a resonance not found in fictional piece.

We see a series of scenes begining with Jessie's first day out and her meeting with her old friends, (Maud Clark, Helen Barnacle, Nicol Morrow) some of whom have have kicked their habits and are struggling to survive, another has overdosed and a third, Tuesday, (Kharen Harper) Jessie's lover, is unable to stop using.

The tragedy is in the relentlessness of Tuesday's decline, the insidiousness of the lure of the drug for Jessie and the ease with which the addict can acquire it on the streets in an underworld which few of us encounter.

The play reaches a poignant and tear-wrenching ending which is heightened by the women tossing roses onto the sand-covered ground as they call the names of their dead friends. The list is distressingly long.

KATE HERBERT