Henry V, Bell Shakepseare, 31 Aug 1999

by William Shakespeare

Bell Shakespeare Company Athenaeum 1 until September 18, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It is difficult to make slaughter appear heroic in these times. We cannot picture balmy fields filled with sword-wielding knights of the realm without imagining the bodies after the battle. Too much television war has spoiled our romanticising of death and patriotism.

In order to enjoy Shakespeare's history plays then, we needs must suspend our 20th century cynicism, pacifism and any related squeamishness about severed limbs and pools of blood.

John Bell's clever, albeit blokey production of Henry V once again provides a clear, consistent and colourful vision for Shakespeare. It is plumped firmly into the midst of World War One, with soldiers in both British and French infantry uniform singing "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" and "Mademoiselle from Armentiers".

The period is clearly embedded in the design (Michelle Fallon) which uses English Music Hall complete with piano, footlights and red velvet drapes, combined with an army recruiting office and its backdrop declaring, "For God, King and Country"

Bell's production manages to be both comic and tragic. He polishes Shakespeare's own jokes and digs up a few ripe new ones. These pepper the gruesome Agincourt scenes and the long speeches by various lords and the king.

The first half is less certain than the second that romps along. Bell captures the tension, the interminable waiting for battle, the trepidation and self-doubt of the young king as well as his jubilation and nationalism.

Bell also mocks the French mercilessly. They sip champagne as they go into battle, are too lazy even to answer a telephone and boast about their armour. It must be by St Laurent.

One highlight is the stylishly choreographed battle scene (Gavin Robins) in which soldiers fall only to rise and fall again, tumbling over bodies, leaping into each others arms and being rolled and piled and hauled like carcasses.

Another highlight is the final courting scene between Henry (Joel Edgerton) and the high-spirited French Princess, Katherine, played by a magnetic Paula Arundell

Edgerton who also played Henry IV, plays this "plain king" as a patriot, a soldier and a lad with a romantic vision. He is well supported by a fine ensemble including the resonant tones of Rhyss McConnochie, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Terry Bader, Richard Piper and Mark Brady who provide a host of delightful French and English characters.

by Kate Herbert

Boneyard, Aug 26, 1999

 by Mark O'Flynn and Anthony Lawrence

At La Mama until September 12, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

One of women's greatest fears is that men, when left to their own devices, resort to more primitive behaviour. Think about Lord of the Flies. Even little boys degenerated into raging, competitive beasts.

Both Golding's novel and The Boneyard (Mark O'Flynn & Anthony Lawrence) are fiction, but we pray neither are true examples of males in a group without females. If they are, it's time to leave this planet for a better place.

Lawrence and O'Flynn have written a play that vibrates with potential and actual male violence. Four men are incarcerated in the high security wing of a prison. Three are murderers, it seems.

Doyle (Neil Pigot) is a manic junkie with AIDS and some very bizarre behaviour. Cedric, (John Flaus) the model prisoner, is older and has found God since his imprisonment thirteen years earlier.

Sharpe (Hugh Sexton) is the most overtly frightening: a rat-like volatile animal who is "never to be released." Young Smith represents normality, echoing our own anxiety about being in a room with these caged creatures. He is in High Security for his own protection because he is an informer.

The play is compelling in parts, particularly the first half hour. It marries a gritty realism with some more poetic moments. This combination is, perhaps, the outcome of a collaboration between a theatre writer (O'Flynn) and a poet (Lawrence).

Characters are clearly drawn and dialogue is pithy, often hilarious and always surprising. Wendy Joseph's direction is brisk, shaping dynamic shifts with crisp scene changes.

The men are a strong ensemble that creates a diverse, peculiar group of misfit inmates. Pigot, winner of Best Fringe Actor 1998, is exceptional. He plays with relish, .the unpredictable, giggling and dissolute Doyle.

Sexton as Sharpe is terrifying and dangerous while Flaus is mild-mannered but slightly deranged as the born-again Cedric. Webster is suitably bemused and nervous as Smith. The only problem is that all three lapse into inaudibility on occasion. Their loutish foil is the 'screw', played with gleeful power by Matt Norman

The script falters mid-way, losing focus and direction, although it remains interesting in its detail. Perhaps this meandering is intended to reflect the endless prison days. But the play could be more effective with a more coherent narrative through-line.

by Kate Herbert

Big Midnight, Aug 25 1999

 by Lunchtime Theatre

 at The Old Ballroom, Trades Hall until September 10, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Lunch time is not the time for either heavy food or entertainment. For ten years, Lunchtime Theatre (formerly Soup Kitchen) has been providing light, short and breezy shows during the city lunch hour and accompanying them with a mug of pumpkin soup and Potts yummy bread; sounds better than the office canteen, eh?

Big Midnight is more of a consommé than a chunky soup show. A jaded Cinderella, still wearing her ball gown, arrives at the terminal for Pumpkin Airlines'. She awaits the Romantic Millennium Midnight flight that will take her away from her failed marriage.

Along comes a clumsy looking geek in a bad suit and glasses. He is Prince Charming in disguise, come to regain the love of his former bride. The two engage in "adolescent jokes and clumsy courting" in the boarding lounge, watched and criticised by the lonely embittered airhostess.

The show is a musical with the comic-romantic script devised by the three cast Amanda Armstrong, Carmen Mascia, Robert Stephens with director, Greg Dyson designer, Betty France and Charlie Laidlaw.

The music, composed by Stephens, is the highlight. Simple songs are played on accordion by Stephens and sung by the cast. Titles include "I'm in disguise", sung by Prince Charming, "Tonight I'll Dance with You" and a song by Cinderella, "They used to call me Cinderella, Now they call me Sin."

The style of the production is sweet and naive. It has no pretensions, which makes it a little thin in content but it remains charming and entertaining.

The gags are often laboured or obvious and the dialogue could do with a bit of pepping up. This is often a problem with devised text. There can be less substance and the lack of a single writer's vision can dilute the content.

Perhaps this particular problem will be addressed in the later season that has three writers. Beginning the second Lunchtime Theatre season on September 14, is Rooming, three very short plays about hotel rooms written by Tee O'Neill, Yossefa-Even-Shoshan and Michaela Ronzoni.

By Kate Herbert

Burnt Piano, Aug 25, 1999

 by Justin Fleming

 MTC at Fairfax Studio until September 25, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If works of art were star sign, which would you choose to be born under? Mona Lisa? Too elusive. Hamlet? Too depressive. If you were born under Waiting for Godot, would that make you an absurdist?

Justin Fleming was born on the day Samuel Beckett's Godot opened: January 3, 1953. Burnt Piano, is the outcome of his imaginative exploration of a woman so obsessed with this same coincidence of her own birth, that she stalks poor old Beckett for years.

Karen (Catherine Wilkin) has written innumerable unanswered letters. Finally, in Paris with her father, Pete (Bob Hornery), she sends her son, Jonah (Darcy Bonser) to deliver her missive into which she has poured her whole life.

He meets both Ma and Pa Beckett (Patricia Connolly, Dennis Olsen) who dismiss him. However, he reads mum's letter and discovers that she has betrayed his secrets too.

The play is a study of the dynamics of this family in grief over the death of another son in a fire. "It's not my fault," pleads Jonah, the survivor, echoing the words of the messenger boy in Godot to Vladimir and Estragon. References to Godot are thick on the ground.

Kate Cherry directs the production simply and stylishly on a sleek set by Hugh Colman. Ben Cobham's lighting is evocative and live piano-playing, (Olsen, Connolly) provides the emotion lacking in the text.

Fleming's script is inclined to be glib, almost clinical in style when not being witty. His characters elicit little sympathy. They present arguments, which reflects Fleming's other life as a barrister.

"Beckett is arguably the best writer of the 20th century," challenges Karen. Dad argues the point - and all others. Pete is recalcitrant, bluff and, a writer himself, more interested in plot than form, unlike Beckett.

 Karen is relentless, self-centred and not very motherly. Her dialogue lacks variation. In fact, the men seem to get all the great lines. Hornery milks his very funny dialogue and Olsen revels in Beckett's mild Irish cynicism. It is ironic that Beckett, the reclusive, publicity-shy writer, communicates most clearly in this play.

The second half of the play is more engaging and contains the best scene: a witty word play between the Becketts over a game of chess. It seems appropriate given that Beckett seems to play chess inside his own mind in his writing.

by Kate Herbert

Clive Potter: Poet, Aug 19, 1999

 by Anthony Breslin

at Theatreworks until September 5, 1999

It is nothing short of courageous to write, direct, design and perform one's first play. "Courageous" is here intended in the inverted Sir Humphrey Appleby sense.

Visual artist, Anthony Breslin, has written a script that deals with grief, death, creative failure, sexual 'coming out' and suicide: all very dense and emotive issues.

Clive Potter: Poet is about a young man, who is played, for some reason, by a young woman (Ruth Blakely). Clive's father has suicided, his publisher, (Don Bridges) ignores his poetry and he is bemused and confused by his emerging sexual preference.

At two and a half hours, the play is about an hour too long. It needs some ruthless editing and some dramaturgical advice. There are, however, some effective and affecting moments such as Clive's coming out phone call to his mother.

Much of the rest of the play comprises either overly long monologues from Clive, intermittently comic sketches with broad clown characters, or awkwardly emotional dialogues between mum (Roberta Connelly) and Clive or Clive and his elusive lover, Night (Anthony Breslin). There is also a mime artist on stage (Paul Roberts OK) consistently, evidently forcing Clive's fate.

The monologues are repetitive, dialogues with mum are written in poor rhyme and the scenes with Night are riddled with pedestrian philosophy.

These styles do not form a cohesive whole in this play that takes far too long to get to its point.  It lacks dramatic tension or dramatic action.

After 90 minutes, when Clive finally confronts his smarmy boss (Alan King) and the publisher, the narrative looks more promising but this is followed by a drawn out suicide attempt which dissipates the energy.

The actors work hard in a play which struggles to find its style. Blakely performs quite well with such weighty text and Bridges, King and Mark Wilson provide sound comic relief. Particularly good was Connelly as mother.

Breslin's dartboard/chessboard design is very clever and elaborate but does not serve the text. It is not aided by a clumsy lighting design (Susanne Kean).

This hero's journey could do with a clearer map. It is very difficult to sit through, especially in a very under-heated Theatreworks.

By Kate Herbert

Bob Downe Million Sellers, Aug 18 1999

at The Continental Cafe until September 5, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It's time to recast The Boy from Oz. Bob Downe has the cheesy dance steps, an even cheesier grin, a collection shirts to weep for and several dozen 60's and 70's hit songs. He is also as camp as Rosebud in January and he even has a showbiz "girlfriend" to fool the world into believing he is straight.

Million Sellers is relentlessly funny. It is Bob Downe at his absolute tip-top. He leaves your face hurting and the groovy opening night audience at The Continental Cafe howling for more.

Downe, if you have been on another planet for a few years and do not know, is the alter ego of Mark Trevorrow, who is seen on Good News Week occasionally, singing love duets with Paul McDermott.

In Million Sellers, he sings duets and medleys with Pastel Vespa, a colourful and dizzy Brazilian-Italian club singer whom he met when she jumped ship from an Italian cruise liner cabaret act. Her op-art moo-moos rival even Bob's lime green seersucker suit. The two are accompanied by musical director, John Thorn, who plays up a storm.

Bob's guest, Pastel Vespa, is a vapid try-hard cabaret singer who could have been a loser of the Eurovision Song Contest. She is a good foil for Bob.  Despite Pastel's perky presence and songstress persona, she is no competition for Bob's rapid fire gags and ridiculous crooning style derived from every act ever seen on an RSL club stage.

The humour is both camp and parochial. Bob thinks he is world class but his stardom is local: he has toured the North Coast of NSW. He is the master of kitsch and the king of suburbia. His material is perversely Australian. He refers to Bernard King, Vesta Nasi Goreng, the CWA, Knox City and chops for dinner.

Bob has an ego the size of the universe and a personality as loud as his sunshine yellow crimplene suit. He encapsulates the vacuous vanity and petty jealousy of the B-grade celebrity and never recognises his "nobody" status. Every line, joke or song is accompanied by a flurry of Channel Nine Dancers' choreography, with twirls grapevines and skips.

The song list is a litany of hits: Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, Sunshine of My Life, Do it to Me One More Time, Windmills of My Mind, Summer Wine. It's a great singalong with the flavour of Peter Allen, Trini Lopez, Don Lane, Sonny and Cher and Denise and Ernie.

By Kate Herbert

Little Brother and A Party in Fitzroy, Aug 12 1999

Little Brother and A Party in Fitzroy

by Ross Mueller at Trades Hall until August 28, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Perhaps it was not coincidental that the opening night of Little Brother at the Trades Hall coincided with the industrial relations protest rally in Melbourne. The play addresses issues arising in a family with a communist father, a catholic mother, a radical daughter and a union-bashing son.

Ross Mueller, who is writer, musician and performer in this show, has written better plays than this. No Man's Island was an interesting script but Little Brother is disappointing because it lacks coherence, cohesion and sophistication. Even the direction by Peter Houghton could not save it.

He is teamed with Lucy Jones, composer, singer and performer with whom he produced Steel and Rust last year. Little Brother is an awkward mixture of original songs, scenes with the dysfunctional family and some very peculiar snapshots of a trio of young groovers in a cafe who read about the famous family's breakdown in the press over a macchiato and a gossip.

The show might be better served by focussing on the interactions between the siblings and parents. Mum is invisible, which is a pity. She could provide the emotional balance that the piece needs.

The monologues or narrations by dad are uncomfortable and ill-placed although there are some funny and pertinent gags about communists, the media and society.

Jones songs lack any variety. The melodies are repetitious and Mueller's lyrics, some of which are quite pithy, do not scan. It is a pity to do a musical show with two unremarkable voices which are not well balanced and with such mediocre songs.

Much more entertaining and with far better dramatic construction was A Party in Fitzroy, directed simply and effectively by Aidan Fennessy. Being a monologue, it is a less ambitious piece with no political content but has an engaging character performed with wit and sensitivity by Luke Elliot as the blokey, funny fan.

The character is an ardent fan of former Melbourne rock band, Weddings, Parties, Anything. The break up of the band echoes the deterioration of his personal life as he loses his love and his best friend.

Mueller's dialogue here is well observed and familiar to anyone who knows the band or even the pub band scene. This was a much better half hour in the theatre than Little Brother.

By Kate Herbert

Who's Afraid of the Working Class? Aug 11 1999

by Melbourne Workers' Theatre 

written by Patricia Cornelius, Andrew Bovell, Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Reeves 

 music by Irine Vela

at Trades Hall until August 14, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It should come as no surprise that Jeff Kennett cops a hefty serve of vitriol in the opening monologue of Who's Afraid of the Working Class?

It is the working class or, rather, the workless class, which has suffered most from the policies of this state government.

This is the return season of this production by Melbourne Workers' Theatre, a company that, thankfully, has not lost sight of its role as the mouthpiece of the disenfranchised worker. The show has lost non of its power, humour or despair. It is an emotional roller coaster ride.

The script comprises four narrative threads written by Patricia Cornelius, (Money) Andrew Bovell, (Trash) Melissa Reeves (Dreamtown) and Christos Tsiolkas (Suit). The four are interwoven over the 150 minutes. It is very satisfying to find characters from apparently disconnected stories, being mentioned or even strolling through other parts of the play.

Daniela Farinacci and Maria Theodorakis are credible and hilarious in Reeves story about two 'wog" girls from Coburg who try shoplifting in disguise as private school girls.

Bovell's tale of two children damaged and alone, victims of their hapless mother's boyfriend's violence, is a poignant and finally tragic reminder of life on the other side of the tracks.

Tsiolkas' text is a series of scenes built around a middle-class aboriginal man. (Tony Briggs). It is horrifying to hear him abuse and demean a white whore (Eugenia Fragos) in a violent, colour-prejudiced language. Although the writing is strong, there is less cohesive development of the narrative in his individual components.

us?

David Adamson's radio manic, talkback radio "autodidact" is still a highlight of the play.

Secrets and resentments are the mortar in the family in Cornelius' Money. Father is out of work, son is a thief and mother secretly and devotedly nurses a dying man for extra cash.

The pain and tragedy, the sense of repression and failure is enervating but it is alleviated by the sunny and funny moments in the play. Julian Meyrick has done a clever balancing act with the four sections of the text, making mileage out of scene changes.

Lighting by Paul Jackson is evocative and dramatic with backlight outside the Trades Hall windows colouring trees in the street. the entire program is accompanied by Irene Vela's sonorous Requiem for the Working Class, played by Adam Merange, Dean Addison and Nick Tsiavos which vibrate in the belly with the anguish of the characters.

We need more of this political theatre. Surely we still have the fight inus.

By Kate Herbert

A Major Event: Rod Quantock, July 28 1999

The Final Report from the Comedian General on the state of the State Written and performed by Rod Quantock at Trades Hall until September 4, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The words "politics" and "absurd" should be incompatible but Rod Quantock provides plenty of evidence to the contrary. To our left-leaning Comedian General, the phrase "democratic Victoria" is an oxymoron. In fact, the state  he believes the state is filled with several brands of ordinary morons.

Can it be true that this is Rod's Final Report on the State of the State? After years of acerbic political satire, Quantock says he is hanging up his chalk and blackboard and handing in his anti-Kennett placard. I don't believe him. I don't want to believe that, just because everything has been sold off in Victoria, he has no more to say.

The title, A Major Event, should at least get him a government grant. No. Not possible evidently because he is a vigorous government critic. His popularity, then, should place the event on the state's calendar. No. He doesn't drive ridiculously fast cars or cut down trees or design huge pointy buildings nor knock over heritage terraces.

He doesn't own newspapers or casinos or banks. He is not part of the 60% who approve of Jeff. He doesn't have Alan Stockdale's eyebrows or John Laws voice or Packer's money.

Do you get my drift? Quantock is one in a million - 18 million actually. His is a finely honed mind and he has created another intelligent, informed, charming yet worrying show. It is also screamingly funny..

The old chalkboard makes its final appearance in the appallingly designed Council Chambers at the Trades Hall. Quantock scrawls his creative equations, eccentric diagrams and mad theories all over the board until everything is overwritten and interwoven. Power, money, privatisation, E-Tag and poker machines all blur into one great catastrophe that is Victorian politics: tragic and somehow hilarious.

He says there is nothing more to be done. Marches do not work. Victorians could not even muster the energy to publicly protest over the elimination of tram conductors much less that of trams, hospitals or schools. 

He finishes this, his "last" show, (think of Melba's farewell gigs) with a call for solutions to the problem from the audience.  Even if you voted for Jeff, you might have to laugh. If not, we are truly doomed to a laugh-free zone into the next millennium.

By Kate Herbert

Stolen by Jane Harrison, July 25 1999

Stolen by Jane Harrison

 at Beckett Theatre Malthouse, July 24 until August, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

This second season of Stolen, by Jane Harrison is, theatrically, a smoother ride but is still a emotional roller coaster. The stories of five aboriginal children who were stolen from their families are so achingly sad that they are difficult to watch.

This is not to suggest that the play is all trauma and darkness. It is a romp in parts, with some sweet and funny moments. We watch children at play, being naughty, missing mum, keeping secrets, hoping for home. We hear myths about the creation of the white man who stole babies and the evolution of the red desert sand.

The play went to stage initially during the Melbourne Festival last year, in a co-production by Ilbijjeri Theatre Co-operative and Playbox. The script has involved many artists in its development that may be the reason it does not have one consistent voice.

This revival replaces two actors. Lisa Maza demonstrates substantial acting skill as Ruby, the child who becomes the target of a white man's abuse. Elliot Maynard plays Jimmy who, as a child, awaits his mum's return to collect him until he is told, falsely, that she is dead.

Shirley (Pauline Whyman) is a sturdy girl who, as an adult, is determined to find her own children who were also stolen. Sandy (Stan Yarramunua) is a wanderer who ran from the welfare as a tot and continues to search for "home". Anne, (Tammy Anderso)  the palest-skinned child adopted by a white family, is torn between two families and two cultures.

The company is strong ensemble that is enhanced by Wesley Enoch's vision as a director. The script is a non-linear narrative that merges past with present. Enoch uses stylised physicalisation to heighten dialogue and adds simple visual imagery with projections against Richard Roberts evocative demolition site. Stark lighting (Matt Scott) creates deep shadows through metal beds that double as gaol. The soundscape by David Chesworth is atmospheric.

The performances capture the charm and warmth of this community who have suffered so much at the hands of the white brothers and sisters. But it is the actors' personal statements at the very end that set the tears rolling. The audience could have applauded for hours if the cast had not left the stage.

By Kate Herbert

The Prima Facie Kid, July 22 1999

 written and performed by Angus Cerini

at La Mama until August 2, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Angus Cerini has an enormous power generator secreted somewhere in La Mama. He burn so much energy during his 70 minute solo show, The Prima Facie Kid, that on can almost see sparks fly from him.

This is the fourth in a series of short works Cerini has written and performed since 1997. The others are Recidivist, Dennis is Dead and F...wit. They all focus on issues of male violence, which Cerini believes must be addressed or rather confronted by his generation.

The Prima Facie Kid, directed by Karen Corbett, falls into two distinct parts. In the first, Cerini is an agitated clown who, we discover, entertains sick and dying children in hospital. He is driven by his quest to help the children forget their grief and pain. This character and his story make very moving theatre and could have successfully sustained the entire play.

However, he is so overwhelmed by his ongoing contact with such tragedy that he becomes the proverbial sad clown,  drunk clown, to be precise. Cerini's writing is a grab bag of hilarious dialogue, non-sequiturs, TV references, social commentary and naughtiness.

The clown remains pivotal in the second half and there are some fascinating ideas, allusions and characters but there is far less cohesion or clarity in the narrative. It is extremely confusing for this weary brain.

A powerful character is introduced as a story told by the clown. He is tattooed dad who murdered a child abuser. After this interlude, the clown is more wretched, drinker and the dialogue is interrupted by quick television news style grabs from a court case.

Cerini is a fine talent with exceptional energy and director Karen Corbett has kept the pace pumping and filled the space with emotional action. The play could benefit from the odd silence or stillness to accent the rest of this relentless toboggan ride but it is a potent piece with something to say.

Kate Herbert

Shadows and Light , John Bolton, 21 July 1999

Written and performed by John Bolton 

at Trades Hall until August 6, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It is refreshing to be spoken to in the theatre. 

Usually we sit in darkness and listen and, if we are naughty, whisper the odd comment to our neighbour. John Bolton seems to look each one of us in the eye and have a personal chat about his life in art and love and Zen Buddhism.

Of course, he doesn't only talk. Bolton, who only recently closed his acting school in Williamstown, is a consummate mime and clown who trained in Paris in the 70's at L'Ecole Jacques Le Coq. Paris features prominently in Shadows and Light.

The art of storytelling is a subtle one and Bolton has a very individual and effective style that could be called "self narration": That is, he tells the story while he plays it physically. He even adds songs and costumes and some audience participation. the style is warm, charming and ever so engaging. You'll wish you had a cup of tea and bun by the fire.

The show is a series of anecdotes. It begin with his childhood in England which is told through shadow puppets. The drama school tales are hilarious because of the myriad British characters he plays, shifting from one to t'other without missing an accent.

Bolton peoples the stage with characters, all of who are believable an complete. Extraordinarily, they bleed into his own narration as he tells his own story.

He performed in a children's theatre troupe in Edinburgh, (hence the audience participation) busked through France, met, a mad drunken American, his wife-to-be and, finally, arrived at mime school in Paris. All these acting school types are more hilarious if you've worked in this environment with such pompous egomaniacs, but they are funny even without the personal experience.

The piece moves swiftly until the more poignant and intimate moments about his parents and death. There are moments toward the end, when there is a touch too much sentimentalism as he lights lamps to commemorate particular people. However, such honesty is lacking on the mainstage and we could do with more real sentiment rather than less.

The amazing thing is that Bolton manages to make Buddhism as funny as clowns. It is a very sweet show. I laughed out loud - very loud.

By Kate Herbert  

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, MT, 21 July 1999

By Bertolt Brecht 

translated by Ranjit Bolt 

Melbourne Theatre Company at Playhouse until August 21, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The final line is the most chilling moment in Bertolt Brecht's, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. "The bitch that bore him is on heat again."

It is a comment to halt thunderous applause mid-clap and force an audience to gasp and reflect on the rise of Hitler and to be vigilant. A tyrant can arise when we are looking away.

Arturo Ui is written on two levels. Its surface narrative is about the juggernaut rise to notoriety of Arturo Ui, a Chicago gangster. The other layer refers to Hitler's Germany in the 30's, from which Brecht, an ardent Marxist, escaped to Scandinavia then to the US where he wrote Ui in 1942 which was not performed until 1958 in Stuttgart.

Simon Phillips' production captures Brecht's cabaret-style theatre and is riddled with dualities. It combines slapstick and high-tech and the gangsters are both ridiculous and frightening, Ian McDonald's original music (requiring special permission from Brecht Family) is lively yet ominous and Dale Ferguson's miniature Chicago design is cute but powerful.

Ranjit Bolt's exceptional translation maintains the Shakespearian rhyme and five-beat metre of Brecht's original text as well as including pertinent quotes from Shakespeare.

Brecht's intention was to educate the public about political issues. He hammers us once or twice too often with the parallels between Ui and Hitler. Nonetheless, his criticisms of fascists and power are clear.

Arturo (Frank Gallacher) owns almost everybody in Chicago except the moral old Dogsborough, (Terry Norris) He offers "protection" they offer "support".

Gallacher is compelling as the emotional psychopath, Arturo who has no qualms about ordering killing of even his best friend, Ernesto Roma (Linal Haft). His transformation from the Chaplinesque opening image to the Hitler-look alike, is frightening.

He is supported on stage by a fine cast of fourteen men and only one woman, Rachael Tidd who plays a bevy of female roles. Most play a musical instrument. Haft, as the consummate loyal lieutenant, has enormous range and should be seen more often.  Paul Capsis is bitter-sweet as the Marlene-style singing narrator, Gerry Connolly and Jim Daly provide some fine comic turns.

Although the text needs half an hour edited out, the show is entertaining and "didactic" in the best possible Brechtian manner. It is a pity Brecht's Berliner Ensemble is closing down in a fortnight.

By Kate Herbert

Possession by Glen Shea , 9 July 1999

 by Glen Shea

at National Theatre July 9, 10, 11, 17, 18, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

New plays by indigenous Australian artists are no longer a rare occurrence. Over the past two years we have seen a series of plays including Up The Road, Seven Stages of Grieving, Stolen and Box the Pony to name a few. All of these were moving and theatrically skilful indigenous plays produced by major festivals, theatre companies and independent artists.

These productions deal with issues of dual culture, reconciliation and grief amongst other things, and all have been the product of experienced indigenous performers, directors or writers who have created potent theatrical experiences for our audiences.

Koori actor, Glen Shea, a graduate of NIDA in Sydney, has written Possession as part of Wi Iri We Homeborn, the Indigenous Arts Festival that coincides with the 61st NADOC Week.

Despite its good intentions, this play does not meet the standard of the aforementioned productions in terms of script, direction, production values or performance.

Two men and a woman, evidently siblings, inhabit what appears to be a strange kind of nether world where their past is muddle with their present, and where their regrets and conflicts are paramount.

A white "host" interjects occasionally, making poetic statements and coaxing them to remember the horrors of their shared childhood and the violence of their father who abused them. They are riddled with guilt and shame that has shattered their family, but they seek reconciliation and absolution.

The problems lie not in the basic concept of the play but in its execution. The script initially seems to follow Jean Genet's "No Exit", in which three people are trapped together in a hell of their own making. However, Possession is obtuse rather than abstract that leaves narrative unclear. The song that followed the play could be integrated as an effective chorus.

Dialogue shifts between the obvious and the melodramatic forcing characters to remain two-dimensional. The actors (David Ngoombujarra, Kathryn Hartman, Peter Docker, Glen Shea) compensate by over-acting.

Direction by Shea, who also performs, is unimaginative and staging is static with five chairs and tables set on a semi-circle on a stage much too big for this play. The play would benefit from further development and dramaturgical advice.

By Kate Herbert

Quintet , 15 July 1999

By Graham Henderson at La Mama until August 1, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The collision of the poetic and the theatrical can be a fine accident. Some of Graham Henderson's prolific writing (he has written 42 plays since 1976) makes lyrical theatre. Others are less successful.

Quintet is a collection of five short poetic monologues and duologues. All wallow in reverie about love and passion, aloneness and pain, each viewing them from a different angle. The language is dense and reflective, apart from the Beckettian clowns of The Desert and the Sea.

Characters remain internalised without any physical presence, which is the nature of the poetic theatre. All are set against a design incorporating falling water, (Stuart Vaskess) the sound of which is accented by live guitar and violin (Cousin Frank, David Branson).

Ithica is a monologue performed by Louise Morris. She stands in blue light, speaking of her inexplicable illness and her lover on whom she relies for her recovery.

The Desert and the Sea, performed by Phil Roberts and Danny Diesendorf, is the only piece in which characters communicate directly, albeit absurdly. They wait in the desert for a train to stop. They are travelling salesmen with a case full of tinned sardines which provides them with sustenance and a reminder of the Ocean from which sprang one of the men some twenty years   gills prove his briny origins.

Face is the most theatrically effective and emotionally affecting piece. It is also the most proficiently performed. David Branson), director of three of the pieces, looks almost bruised standing in a harsh overhead spotlight. He speaks of despair and loneliness and his chance meeting with an exotic woman who came to love him. It is an impassioned and restrained performance of a text that is less obtuse than much of the other writing.

White  (Diesendorf, Rebecca Rutter) goes further into obscurity than is comfortable in the theatre. Two people stand in the doorway obsessing over dust, death and all things white. The main flaw here is the weakness of the performers.

Room again focuses on lovers but, this time, we view them in short filmic grabs lying on white bedclothes in white clothing as they dream away days in each other's arms locked in a room.

Henderson's themes of the discovery of love and companionship, work in part for the stage but demand strong performers to make them theatrical .

By Kate Herbert

The Lover and The Collection, MTC, 14 July 1999

by Harold Pinter 

MTC Fairfax Studio until August 14, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

In a recently screened interview with Harold Pinter, he exuded an atmosphere akin to that of his plays. He was cryptic, slow to respond, considered, laconic and often hilarious without cracking a smile. He has a stately presence, a bulky sensuality, resonant voice and a wicked irreverence for just about everything.

Melbourne Theatre Company have twinned two of his short plays: The Lover and The Collection. They are a happy marriage.

The Collection is directed by Jenny Kemp) with a delicate restraint and balance which matches Pinter's sharply honed dialogue. It is enhanced by a spare, cool design (Richard Roberts) with its flat grey surfaces and sleek furniture.

Bill (David Tredinnick), a clothing designer and Ex-"Slum Slug", lives with the older Harry (Bruce Myles) in an ambiguous relationship and a flash apartment. James (Robert Menzies) blunders in to interrogate Bill about James' own wife (Melita Jurisic).

The play moves in a near circle, with the end echoing the beginning. Similarly, The Lover appears to return to its start but, in both, nothing is the same and nothing is resolved.

The Lover, with lively direction by Bruce Myles, has a far greater sense of the menace which is characteristic of Pinter's theatre. An innocuous suburban husband and wife seem to tolerate each other's lovers but it becomes clear that their world is twisted by their bizarre secret life. Both plays revolve around a sexual fantasy in some way.

All four performances are delightfully eccentric and combine an emotional intensity with heightened physicality. The outcome is interesting: melodrama viewed through a broken glass.

Tredinnick as Bill has a boyish seductiveness and his background dancing in the second play is hilarious. Myles is edgy and dry as Harry while Menzies presses alarm bells with his dangerous characters in both plays.

The 180 -degree turn in the characters in The Lover, is disturbing and comic and the seduction scene is both erotic and lunatic. Jurisic hits a peak of her hallmark eccentricity in this scene. Pinter is not a writer to be described. See these plays. They are gems.

By Kate Herbert

Two by Jim Cartwright, 2 July 1999

Dolman Theatre Company

Beckett Theatre until July 17, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

English playwright, Jim Cartwright, was responsible for the extraordinary stage version of the film, Little Voice and there are echoes of its style in his earlier play, Two. It has the tenor of Northern England's working class people, their drinking holes and habits and even their fraught relationships.

Dolmen Theatre Company, the company that staged another two-hander, Brian Friel's Winners, in 1998, produced Two. The script, which is the greatest strength of this production, is a series of two-shot scenes in a Lancashire pub run by a bickering couple. They are the only pair we see more than once.

Cartwright creates a parade of bizarre, tragic, comic and poignant characters who inhabit the entire spectrum of dysfunctional relationships.

We see the mousy, abused woman who cannot look up without being accused of  flirting by her manipulative, jealous, emotionally abusive husband.

Then there is the converse of this pair in the demanding sex-pot wife who fantasises about wrapping her thighs around enormous, hulking men only to be reminded that she is married to Superwimp who cannot even beat a path to the bar for two lemonades without cringing.

One lovingly written couple is the sweetly eccentric pair who arrive wearing puffy, sensible parkas and proceed to watch an old movie on the pub television. They describe themselves as "fat and old". She weeps over Elvis and fears another breakdown. He dreams of being a fat, old, movie star.

The problem with this production is that the performances of all these delightful characters are less than three-dimensional. Dominica Ryan and Paul Dawber, with director David Myles, make a valiant effort but there is something important missing from the recipe.

There is too little differentiation between the playing of the diverse personalities and physicalities, particularly from Ryan who has too limited a vocal range for so many roles.

The comic delivery and timing is uneven and scene changes are too slow. The production lacks dynamic range and the emotional layering is superficial even in the final scene of despair and pathos between the publicans. It is a good effort but the production does not meet the quality of the script.

By Kate Herbert

Cloudstreet, 30 June 1999

adapted by Nick Enright & Justin Monjo from Tim Winton's book

Company B, Black Swan, Playbox , MTC,

Victorian Arts Centre until August 1, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Cloudstreet is the perfect title for this play: it has its feet on the earth and its head in some other misty world.

This adaptation (Nick Enright, Justin Monjo) has the "magic Australianism" of Tim Winton's novel pared down to four hours. Favourite characters leap off the page onto a bare stage speaking Winton's witty 1940's Aussie lingo. Only occasional lines of dialogue slip into obscure philosophising.

The production is a momentous collaboration between six organisations, the originators being Company B (Sydney) and Black Swan (Perth). It sold out at both Sydney and Perth Festivals in1998.

Neil Armfield's direction is exceptional, miraculously conjuring the huge, rambling house at No. One Cloud Street, Perth and its two families. We see the hard-drinking, smoking, gambling Pickles who own it and their tenants, the Lambs, driven by the Christian work ethic.

Fish Lamb (Daniel Wyllie) is the spine, or rather, the soul of the story. At age nine, he was saved from drowning - but "not all of Fish Lamb came back."  He is no longer the smart, cheeky Fish everybody loved. He yearns for the peace of the water which spat him back, has uncanny foresight and sees the dead.

Armfield has assembled a versatile and skilful ensemble. John Gaden as Lester Lamb is sweet and lovable. As his tartar wife, Judi Farr is tormented and driven by grief. Max Cullen captures the cheerful incompetence of Sam Pickles who chases the "Shifty Shadder", Lady Luck. Kris McQuade, as his gorgeous, slatternly wife, Dolly, is a tragic shell of a lusty woman.

Wyllie is poignant and sustained as the idiot savant, Fish. Christopher Pitman is moving as his guilt-ridden brother, Quick, who seeks to eliminate evil, and Claire Jones as the quick-witted Rose, is magnetic.

Robert Cousins sparse set design is a gift. The original production was staged in a warehouse but the rambling openness is replicated in the canvas walls, shadow screens, sand and wood flooring. Composer, Iain Grandage plays evocative piano and cello live and the lighting by Mark Howett is magical.

Armfield has created a visionary, deceptively simple show that has complexity, detail, intelligence and joy. Don't be put off by the length. You get to eat and you might even get a very dramatic fire evacuation, as we did on opening night.

By Kate Herbert

Carboni, 29 June 1999

Carboni (or The Consequences of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter Deck a Rebellion)

by John Romeril La Mama at the Courthouse until July 10, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It is chastening that Carboni, which is the only truly political Australian play in town, was written in 1979. Playwright, John Romeril, is almost the last of our political playwrights. He is committed to rabble rousing, lefty shows with funny, musical content.

Romeril took the text for his monodrama directly from Raffaello Carboni's original work, The Eureka Stockade, written in 1855. Carboni was an Italian immigrant with a clever, poetic turn of phrase, an observant eye and a revolutionary's heart. His time on the Ballarat goldfields was one of the most eventful and bloody in our history since British settlement.

Adam Cass, directed by Graeme Dale, plays Carboni as an articulate, worldy Italian who is appalled by the events in Ballarat in the 1850's.

The style of the script is " didactic" theatre in the best sense of the word. It is informational and  "alienates" in the manner of German playwright Bertolt Brecht, by forcing us to observe and form opinions.

The music is composed by pianist, Anthony Pateras, and played with Robin Fox on drums and Adele Conlin on violin. It has the clang of Eastern European folk traditions and echoes Brecht's Mahagonny. George Dreyfuss wrote some of the original score for the 1979 production.

The direction does not do justice to Romeril's script nor to Carboni's story. It relies too heavily on broad posturing, which is a poor replica of Brecht's "Gest": gestural theatre. The shadow images, inside clunky screens plumped centre-stage, are only partially visible to side seats.

The music is interesting but so loud, particularly the drums, that Cass is incomprehensible for large sections of the text in spite of his big voice.

It requires great skill to carry a solo show and Cass gives a committed although limited performance. He is mannered, lacks depth and his character and scene transitions are clumsy. He is more effective in the latter half when the focus is on Bakery Hill, the massacre and the ensuing court cases for High Treason. Carboni's graphic detail and emotional language are compelling here.

After hearign his account of Bakery Hill, it is no wonder Carboni returned to Italy to soldier for Garibaldi.

By Kate Herbert

Body: Celebration of the Machine, 26 June 1999

By Amanda Owen

at La Mama until July 11, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Watching an acrobat in action makes one marvel at the human body. But even a skilled acrobat such as Amanda Owen is still astonished at the complex workings of this delicate mechanism of flesh and bone.

Amanda Owen, with director, Donna Jackson, has created Body: Celebration of the Machine for this very reason. Owen employs the external workings of the body to demonstrate and celebrate the inner operations.

The body she explores through physical theatre is a living, feeling, pleasure-seeking machine. It is the vulnerable and the generative machine.- which breathes, hurts, yawns, digests and sleeps. It even gives birth and dies when it runs out of fuel - or time.

Owen's own body is a fine specimen of highly trained muscle. She wheels, twists, somersaults and catapults her way through the tiny La Mama space. In spite of the confined space, they have even managed to rig some circus suspension gear from the roof.

The design is almost entirely composed of slides projected by three projectors onto the rear wall. They comprise beautifully photographed (Ponch Hawkes) images of faces and bodies as well as stylish graphics (Lin Tobias) of skeletons and machines accompanied by text.

The show is not entirely phsyical theatre. Owen tells stories about family, pregnancy, injury. One is about her mum's hip replacement told graphically through shadow puppets. She ocasionally plays characters, some of which are actually drawn onto intimate parts of her body with texta pen.

These body characters are part of a witty song, with music by Kim Baston, which is performed as a miniature puppet show behind little curtained stages.

The most hilarious section of the show is the story of body excreta told through "interpretive dance". Being English, Owen was never allowed to discuss 'emissions' so euphemisms were her only option.

Owen is warm, charming and a highly skilled physical performer. She spent 15 years working in circuses and physical theatre companies in Europe until she came to Australia in 1993 in Trestle Theatre's State of Bewilderment that was a staged version of Leunig cartoons.

There are some moments of visual poetry such as the final rebirth scene an there is some quirky use of magician's illusion one of which depicts gruesome self-mutilation.

This is an unusual and clever show that is worth a look.

By Kate Herbert