Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas, Aug 30, 2005

Under Milkwood  by Dylan Thomas  

 by McPherson Ink

Atheneaum Theatre 1, Aug 30 to  Sept 3, 2005

Colac, Moonee Ponds, Geelong, Werribee, Horsham, Hamilton, Sale, Frankston until Sept 29, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Aug 30, 2005

The cobbled lanes and entire eccentric population of the fictional Welsh coastal village of Llareggub burst into life in this production of Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood.

Thomas called it a "play for voices" and it is impossible to do justice to his lush, vivid, lilting poetic language on this page.

Four actors (Daniel Craig, Beverley Dunn, Dion Mills, Charmaine Gorman), directed by Don Mackay, inhabit the countless bawdy, loving, yearning, petulant and gossiping characters in this ninety minute version of the play.

Thomas lived part of his beer-soaked life as a poet in the Welsh village of Laugharne and one can imagine him jotting down his observations of the townsfolk in the pub and on the streets over the years to form the final script of Under Milkwood.

It is a rich, inspired and irreverent view of the passions and yearnings, loves and losses, venomous hatred and long-held rivalries, all heard on one spring day in Llareggub.

The actors share the three narrator voices that paint the landscape and characters of Llareggub. (Spell it backward) Each actor also plays numerous characters with his or her own distinctive style and great conviction and relish.

The narrators allow us to see the village but it is blind old seafaring Captain Cat (Craig) who allows us to hear it through his hypersensitive ears.

The actors transform from one character to another with a swift shift in body and voice and the addition of a scarf, a hat or jacket.

Although Thomas' called it a play for voices and the creamy Welsh accents and lyrical language are definitely the focus, the script lends itself generously to the embodiment of its unique characters.

There is a delicate balance of loving and despising in Under Milkwood.

Mog Edwards, draper, (Mills) writes soulful love letters to his loved one, Myfanwy Price (Gorman), dressmaker and candy shop keeper. Mrs. Cherry Owen (Gorman), adores her loving husband Mr. Owen, (Mills) even when he reels drunkenly from the pub.

Innkeeper, Sinbad Sailors, (Mills) pines for his unrequited love, pretty Gossamer Beynon (Gorman) and promiscuous Polly Garter (Gorman) sings a wrenching song about her long dead lover, Wee Willy. Even Captain Cat weeps for his dead Rosie Probert.

The harsher underbelly of Llareggub is seen in schoolmaster, Mr. Pugh (Mills) who secretly plans the poisoning death of his nasty wife. (Dunn) while Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard (Dunn) still controls her two dead husbands from her dreamy sleep.

Under Milkwood is a unique and complex language play, passionate, raucous, raunchy and profoundly moving and funny.

By Kate Herbert

Stuff Happens by David Hare, Aug 25, 2005

Stuff Happens by David Hare  

 Company B, Belvoir

Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, from Aug 25, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Aug 25, 2005

David Hare's play, Stuff Happens, is like a documentary-drama about George W. Bush's regime and the decision by the US to invasion of Iraq.

The result is harsh criticism and biting political satire directed at every member of the current United States government and English Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

This production, directed by Neil Armfield for Company B Belvoir, Sydney, boasts an exceptional cast of sixteen actors not often seen on stage in Melbourne.

The stage is starkly designed with a wall of huge, distressed steel girders upstage.

The characters sit and stand around a huge conference table, at times looking like characters at the Last Supper.

As the political events unfold preceding the March 2003 strike on Iraq, scenes move swiftly.

Hare takes verbatim speeches or snatches of dialogue from Bush, (Greg Stone) Cheney, (Russsell Kiefel) Rumsfeld, (Russell Dykstra) Powell (Wayne Blair) and Blair (Rhyss Muldoon) and inter-cuts them with dramatisations of crucial conversations that were never made public.

Between scenes, characters swarm across the stage, swinging the huge table to a new position or forming tableaux of meetings we know occurred but of which we have little intelligence.

This alien world of power and violent decision making in the White House, Downing Street or the United Nations headquarters, is somehow represented as a cartoon. The characters are like satirical rubbery figures mouthing platitudes. Each actor almost impersonates these political characters.

The terrifying thing is that these cartoon men - and Condoleeza Rice (Leah Purcell)  - are real decision- makers for our world.

The vengeful, self-centred and ill-informed actions of the Bush government seem to be made by a boys club of ignorant but single-minded people.

Tony Blair is represented as trying to maintain international law and a philanthropic view of the rest of the world. He sees himself saving people from tyranny. Bush and his cronies want to blow Iraq into the Stone Age as retaliation for September 11.

The rapidity and idiocy of the decisions made leave one gasping when seen compressed into three hours.

The play is didactic, arguing a particular political point and representing the  decisions by the US and England as hasty , ill-considered and dangerous.

Greg Stone plays Bush with a cunning, boyish stubbornness. As his cohort of bully-boys is superb. Wayne Blair shows the invidious position of Colin Powell  and Muldoon, as Tony Blair, displays the hope and eventual panic of the British PM.

Stuff happens not an easy night in the theatre but it is a challenging and educational one.

By Kate Herbert

Sunset Boulevard, The Production Company, Aug 17, 2005

 Sunset Boulevard 

Music by Andrew Lloyd  Webber  Lyrics and Book  Don Black and Christopher Hampton 

The Production Company

State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, August 17 to 20, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Aug 17, 2005

The spectacle of the luxurious mansion and glittering lights of Hollywood may be missing from this concert production of Sunset Boulevard, but the harsh view of the self-centred wannabees is present.

Director, Wayne Harrison, focuses successfully on Lloyd Webber's music, the voices and the relationships between these profoundly self-centred characters.

Judi Connelli's big cabaret voice fills the State Theatre with the overwhelming and controlling personality of the faded silent movie star, Norma Desmond.

When she sings Surrender, we believe Norma will never surrender her claim to fame and adulation. During With One Look we see vividly Norma's obsession with her own silent movie image.

Joe Gillis, the dashing, down-at-heel screenwriter and gigolo played by David Campbell, is acquisitive and almost as manipulative as Norma herself. His voice is true and resonant and he makes Joe's cynicism palpable in a stirring rendition of the title song, Sunset Boulevard.

"Now I have suits and she has hope, " he sings. The story and lyrics are relentlessly critical of the Hollywood culture of the 1940s.

Roger Howell's magnificent, rich baritone and still presence bring great dignity to the role of Max Von Mayerling, Norma's devoted butler, minder and ex-husband. He sings with warmth and passion, The Greatest Star of All and New Ways To  Dream.

Chelsea Plumley brings a cheeky quality and bright voice to the ingenue, Betty Schaefer, Joe's love interest and an aspiring writer.

The chorus provides a fine supporting cast of wannabee writers, actors, singers and producers. Their rousing opening number, Let's Have Lunch, and The Perfect Year, both capture the quality of Billy Wilder's unpleasant Hollywood.

Harrison keeps the action moving swiftly and a simple design of three movable screen by Richard Jeziorny provide a sense of location. The car chase with miniature cars was a very entertaining addition.

The orchestra, conducted by Peter Casey, provides the foundation for the production with a strong and rich quality of sound.

Sunset Boulevard is an expansive and cynical story that is well-served by Lloyd Webber's powerful music and by the intelligent and witty lyrics by Christopher Hampton and Don Black.

It makes one crave a full production of the show again.

By Kate Herbert

Cheech by Francois Letourneau, MT, Aug 10, 2005

Cheech by Francois Letourneau
Translated  by Rick Des Rochers  
Melbourne Theatre Company

 Fairfax Studio, Victorian Arts Centre, Aug 8 to September 24, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Cheech, a play by contemporary Canadian writer, Francois Letourneau, is often funny, generally outrageous, riddled with inner urban angst and fast dialogue.  Be prepared for male and female nudity, coarse language and some violence.

The performances and direction (Gordon McCall) are broad and colourful but the play and its young, desperate, out of control characters, leave one feeling unsatisfied.

The story centres on the thriving and overt sex industry in Montreal.

Ron (Aaron Blabey) runs an escort service. On this day, the Chrysler convention is in town and Ron must win this lucrative group booking by impressing the boss with a photo portfolio of sex kittens. Cheech is his unseen arch rival.

Letourneau uses a non-linear but narrative based structure. The play is set during a single day but does not run chronologically. Scenes are short, like ad breaks, and are revisited out of order.  A digital time clock alerts us to the actual time of day.

Canadian director, McCall, keeps the pace rapid and stages the play on two levels of a vivid, metropolitan environment. (Shaun Gurton)

Aaron Blabey makes the volatile and despairing Ron credible and funny. His depiction of Ron's secret anger management exercises is hilarious.

Ron's sidekick, Maxime, (Kenneth Spiteri) takes photos of the perky but secretive escort, Jenny. (Miria Kostiuk) Max gets himself into unexpected hot water when he takes the girlie pics to the pharmacy to be printed.

Max is preoccupied with Stephanie, (Kate Kendall) a suicidal prostitute who slits her wrist while on a professional call to the apartment of the socially awkward Olivier (Daniel Frederiksen).

Meanwhile, upstairs, Alexis (Jason Raftopoulos) obsessively awaits a call from a girl

The absurdities and tragedies of all five characters converge in one final anti-climactic scene.

Characters are bound to modern technology: mobile phones, voicemail, voice recorders, ghetto blasters and cameras.

They are all psychologically dysfunctional: Sophie uses anti-depressants, Ron a self help pop psychology, Stephanie attempts suicide, Alexis wills his phone to ring and Sophie masks her identity.

The play is entertaining, rapid-fire, contemporary in characters and content but strangely emotionally alienating.

By Kate Herbert

Measure for Measure, Bell Shakespeare, Aug 9, 2005

 Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare   

Bell Shakespeare

 Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, August 9 to 2, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

John Bell's production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure is a theatrical delight that is successful on every level.

It boasts an accomplished cast, intelligent and compelling direction, imaginative design and makes the Elizabethan dialogue and concepts crystal clear to the modern ear.

It is known as a "problem play" but is also called a tragicomedy because, although it is a comedy with broad, bawdy content and a happy and romantic outcome, it deals with serious issues.

Written in 1604 during the reign of James 1, it debates the issues of morality, justice, hypocrisy and self-sacrifice

The Duke of Vienna, (Sean O'Shea) departs his decadent city, leaving it under the iron-fisted rule of his conservative deputy, Angelo. (Christopher Stollery).

The Duke avoids his responsibilities by departing Vienna but secretly observes the outcome of his experiment by disguising himself as a Friar.

What transpires is that the rigid and puritanical Angelo adheres to the letter of the law against fornication by condemning to death young Claudio (Timothy Walter) for making pregnant his fiancee, Juliet. (Michelle Doake).

Claudio's devout sister, Isabella, (Tamsin Carroll) a nun, is asked by Claudio's raffish friend, Lucio, (Matthew Moore) to petition Angelo for Claudio's pardon.

Instead, the frozen heart of Angelo heats with lusts for Isabella and he promises to spare Claudio if Isabella sleeps with him.

The play requires intense concentration to comprehend the complex arguments presented by all parties to support their respective positions.

Isabella's suit to Angelo is long and imaginatively argued. Angelo's subsequent argument is equally compelling.

The Duke, still in disguise, convinces his loyal Councillor, Escalus, (Robert Alexander) to stay Claudio's execution. The Duke then manipulates everyone in the final scene in which he reveals his identity and exposes Angelo's dirty deeds.

The lusty, degenerate Vienna is vividly depicted in the bawdy scenes opening the play and the second half. Robert Kemp's design, blending classical architecture and modern clutter, is evocative.

O'Shea is compelling as the reticent Duke who grows into his authority. Stollery is commanding as Angelo and Alexander a sensitive Escalus.

Moore makes charming the rogue, Lucio, and  Darren Gilshenan is hilariously credible as the cheeky pimp, Pompey. Carroll's composure and grace as Isabella make her rivetting.

This is an exciting and delightful production of a play that deserves more attention in the modern repertoire.

By Kate Herbert

Construction of the Human Heart by Ross Mueller, Aug 2, 2005

 Construction of the Human Heart by Ross Mueller

 Store Room,  August  2 to 21, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Aug 2, 2005

Construction of the Human Heart, by Ross Mueller, employs an inventive form to tell the story of a marriage in tatters.

The Man (Todd MacDonald) and Woman (Fiona MacLeod), seated in an empty space, read their lines from what appears to be a rehearsal script, complete with bulldog clip, dog-eared pages and highlighted dialogue.

Initially, we wonder whether this is a play reading rather than a production. Slowly we realise that the actors and characters, the script and reality are blending and splitting, bleeding into each other to create a complex dual reality.

A voice over provides scene settings and stage directions, forcing us out of the story and back into the construction of a play.

The characters' story is that both husband and wife are writers. She is the more successful. His career is at a standstill as he awaits a big break into television writing.

He compares her to a combination of Elle McPherson and Stephen Hawking: brains and beauty. She, unflatteringly, says he is the lovechild of Elvis Costello and Elvis Presley: a backhanded compliment.

But what lies at the heart of their dysfunction is the haunting presence of their dead child. Each recounts memories of the child. The woman remembers driving past a cemetery where her mother was buried. The man remembers reading the child's favourite book, Where the Wild Things Are.

Mueller uses the reading of the dialogue as a metaphor of a couple caught in the replay of the "script' of their relationship to highlight their alienation from each other. It emphasises the mechanical, unemotional layer that is superimposed upon their grief and loss.

As the play advances, the scripts are tossed - literally - and the pair struggles to communicate as their marriage disintegrates.

MacDonald is passionate and moving as the distraught husband. As his wife, MacLeod effectively portrays a woman with a cool surface masking her profound underlying pain.

Director, Brett Adam, keeps the staging simple and focuses on the relationship and the form of Mueller's play. We are constantly confronted with the fact that we are watching actors but we are simultaneously drawn into the trauma of the characters.

Construction of the Human Heart is a fascinating study in form and style that works on most levels.

By Kate Herbert

My Fair Lady, July 30, 2005

My Fair Lady 

Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Music by Frederick Loewe

Produced by ACT Inc & Arts Events Management

Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, July 30 to August 13, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on July 30, 2005

The wit of Alan Lerner's lyrics and dialogue combined with the singability of Frederick Loewe's tunes make My Fair Lady an eternal favourite in the musical theatre repertoire.

The show boasts a list of major hits and memorable songs: With a Little Bit of Luck, Wouldn't it Be Loverly, On the Street Where You Live, I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face.

The audience relishes Higgins sing-speaking Why Can't the English? and his musings on why women can't be more like men in Hymn to Him.

This small-scale production, directed by Darien Sticklen, (OK) is by no means the consummate version of the musical, but it has its successes.

Alan Fletcher is a powerful presence as the redoubtable linguistics expert, Henry Higgins. He delivers both songs and dialogue with great conviction and excellent comic timing.

Laura Fitzpatrick, playing Eliza Doolittle, has charm and a sweet singing voice but does not fully embody the transformation of Eliza from urchin to sophisticate.

She sounds too middle class for the rough cockney in the opening scenes and does not achieve the glamour, sophistication or accent required for her to be mistaken for a princess in the later scenes.

Roger Oakley is a fine foil to Fletcher as Higgins' bluff offsider, Colonel Pickering and Babs McMillan is delightfully wry as Higgins matronly mother.

Apart from these performances, the production feels a little amateurish and unfinished.

Marty Fields is a funny performer but he completely misses the robust cheekiness of Alfie Doolittle, Eliza's carousing, ne'er do-well, Cockney father.

Chris Durling looks right for the part of Freddy Eynsford-Hall, the young man besotted with Eliza. However his acting lacks credibility and, although he has a clear tenor voice, he hit a few bad notes on opening night.

The ensemble sang competently and the dance routines, choreographed by Joanne Adderley, performed a few lively routines especially the Cockney dance to Get Me To The Church On Time.

The audience loved Higgins teaching Eliza to speak "proper". Her linguistic success prompted applause after The Rain in Spain.

Another high point is the Ascot Gavotte. The formality and posing of the wealthy race goers and their rigid restraint at the races is a comical contrast to Eliza's excitable cries to the horse, "Come on Dover, move your bloomin' arse."

You will enjoy this show if you love My Fair Lady but do not expect the definitive production.

By Kate Herbert

Footfalls by Samuel Beckett, la Mama, June 23, 2005

Footfalls  by Samuel Beckett

La Mama at Courthouse Theatre, June 23 until July 2, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The haunting words of Samuel Beckett's Footfalls are heightened by the shuffling walk and  inner torment of his haunted character, May (Lisa Angove).

The short play is written in three section, each divided by a fading light and a resonant gong, like that used in a Buddhist temple or a high mass.

Angove, as May, is alone on stage. Her performance is compelling as this inwardly tortured character.

May's wretched existence is elaborated in the three parts of the play as she drags her bent and crippled body back and forth cross the tiny, lit space.

She is dressed in rags, her face haggard, mouth gaping and chewing at her toothless gums despite being only in her forties.

The late Ralph Wilson originally directed the play but Phil Roberts has remounted it.

In part one, May paces painfully as she speaks to her ninety-year old mother (Joyce Glynn) whose voice drifts out of the darkness.

May is solicitous to her mother, asking if she needs hr position changed, her sores dressed. Her mother is equally concerned about May's wellbeing.

In the second movement, the disembodied voice is no longer the mother. It tells the mysterious illness and malaise of the child, May. Meanwhile May paces and gapes.

The third movement that May calls "Sequel". Images of church and the symbolic crucifix or cruciform of the church are evoked and May's agony is replicated in the agonies of Christ.

Angove is exceptional in this role, finding a depth and resonance to the role. Her physical and vocal control make the play eerie and place the character somewhere between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Beckett's existential nightmare is evoked with frightening clarity in this production.

Lighting by Silvana Ianello provides an almost claustrophobic space for the tormented may to trudge her weary and interminable path.

The rhythmic and languorous pace of the movement and voice highlight the anguish of May, child and woman.

By Kate Herbert

Acts of Loneliness by Bridgette Burton and Christina Costigan, June 17, 2005

 Acts of Loneliness  

by Bridgette Burton and Christina Costigan 

Store Room, June 17 until July 3, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

These two short plays are both two-handers about two women who are invading each other's space and engaging in psychological games.

Not Forgotten, by Bridgette Burton, is a faintly menacing play in which Rebecca ( Tiffany Davis), having a quiet Friday night at  home awaiting take away Thai food, .is interrupted by Louise (Christina Costigan).

Louise purports to be a market researcher on unusual home visits. It transpires that the pair went to high school together but Rebecca has absolutely no recollection of Louise nor of much else of their common past.

What is peculiar and somehow dangerous, is that Louise recalls every detail of Rebecca, her achievements, her failings, school record, ambitions and even her talented and popular dead brother, Josh.

There is clearly a hidden history between the pair and we watch it unfold as Louise forces herself upon Rebecca, prodding and pressuring her to remember or admit that she bullied Louise at age 14 and 15.

Director, Kelly Somes, sets the play in a tiny, claustrophobic square of space with the women stepping inside each other's boundaries constantly.

Burton peels layers of their lives and secrets away to reveal that Louise is far more manipulative and controlling than we thought. She reveals she loved josh, followed him around and finally she declares that she knows the details of his apparent suicide.

 Shifts the pair's status and allows the role of intimidator to swap between the women as she unravels the plot.

In the second play, One on One written by Costigan,.Jane (Costigan) sits in a café reading, only to be interrupted by a stranger, Georgia, ( Davis) who sits at her table and proceeds to question her about her book, her drink, her family - everything.

This turns into a game with each of them women moving chairs and positions as in a board game. Roles swap, the interrogator changes, the status shifts as the game changes rules.

This play is the less successful of the two. The absurdist form works at times but the dialogue is often contrived and awkward with too much emphasis on word play and associative ideas.

Costigan and Davis are competent performers and Somes directs them tightly in the two plays.

The themes of solitude and invasion are common to both plays and each writer explores them in slightly differing styles.

By Kate Herbert

Dirty Dancing by Eleanor Bergstein, June 16, 2005

 Dirty Dancing by Eleanor Bergstein 

By Jacobsen Entertainment/Lion's Gate Films/Magic Hour Productions

Princess Theatre, Melbourne, from June 16 until November, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on June 16, 2005

The phenomenon of Dirty Dancing fandom escaped most of us until it recently hit the stage. Fans of the movie attended it repeatedly and are doing so with the stage show.

They speak the characters' dialogue, cheer particular lines such as, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner," and, if there were room, they'd be dancing in the aisles.

Frances "Baby" Houseman, played engagingly by Kym Valentine, is a naïve American teenager who is going through a Coming of Age experience.

 Baby is an honest, cheerful child  interested in Civil Rights and joining the Peace Corps. She supports Martin Luther King's civil rights movement.

While spending the summer of 1963 at Kellerman's resort hotel, Baby deceives and defies her father, (Tony Cogin) and mother (Helen Buday) by helping a hapless dancer (Nadia Coote) obtain a backyard abortion.

Baby becomes the secret dance partner of the Kellerman's most popular dance instructor, Johnny Castle, (Josef Brown) then falls in love with him. Johnny is a talented but poor young man with magnetic powers of attracting wealthy women.

The show is called a play with music but it is the sensual dancing that is its feature. However, it lacks the erotic quality of the original dancing between Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.

Valentine is a charming presence and Brown a magnificent, sensual dancer. What is missing is chemistry between them so the show lacks passion and palpable sensuality.

In unison with the flexible, contemporary design (Richard Roberts) and lighting (Nigel Levings), director, Mark Wing-Davey, uses transformational projected imagery to create an elaborate sense of location.

The music of the early 60s provides a vivid background but it is the songs, Hungry Eyes and I've Had the Time of My Life that send the audience wild.

The cast is strong. Leonie Page is compelling as the rapacious Vivian Pressman and Jeremiah Tickell is delightful as the geeky, relentlessly cheerful rich boy, Neil Kellerman.

The story meanders in the second half but is rescued by the grand finale with the talented singing duet, Christina Tan and Ben Mingay. And massed dancing.

By Kate Herbert

Lucky by Toby Schmitz, June 9, 2005

Lucky by Toby Schmitz

La Mama  June 9 to 26, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Toby Schmitz's play, Lucky, is an anti-hero's journey. We travel through a day and a night with the luckless protagonist as he wrestles with his grand dilemma.

Lucky (Simon Kearney) stole $12,000 from his petty crim boss, Pauly (Pier Carthew) who runs a casino called Scalia.

We do no know why Lucky stole the money nor where it has gone but he has 24 hours to provide the cash or another of his limbs will be broken by Muzzo, (Glen Hancox) Pauly's muscle.

As Lucky scrambles to beg, borrow or steal the cash, he stumbles through the filthy underbelly of Sydney, through streets, parks, taxi ranks and trains, bars and clubs.

 He encounters drunks, addicts, madmen, criminals, whores, rock stars, joggers and even that annoying guy who does your windscreen at intersections.

Director, Emma Valente, uses a grotesque style to illuminate the down beat urban landscape and scruffy characters.

This is a difficult play to stage as it has multiple entrances and exits and costume changes. Valente attempts to solve this problem by placing the costume rack on stage so actors can grab outfits as they rush by it.

Schmitz's script feels like a play written by an observer of the criminal scene it portrays rather than a participant.

It seems over-written and, at times, indulgent.  The dialogue often rambles and characters' eccentricities are used for laughs rather than to reveal their psyches.

The nine performers work hard for two hours but the outcome has mixed success.

 One inspired element is Kate Davis's magical design comprising countless clock faces and mathematical symbols scrawled on tiny blackboards.

Another is the upstage glass door that creates a room outside the walls of La Mama.

As Lucky. Kearney is a low-key foil to the other loonies he encounters. He appropriately underplays Lucky's demented obsession with numbers and The Twist and his search for cash and his girlfriend (May Helen Pirola).

Syd Brisbane is a strong presence as the old man who introduces the play with a poetic prologue and each scene with a chalk board title.

The show is about 30 minutes too long. Chunks of dialogue need cutting and the scene changes and the pacing of some scenes need tightening. There is too much shouting in place of passion, by many of the actors.

By Kate Herbert

The Wall Project By Theatre@risk, June 2, 2005

The Wall Project 

written by  Ben Ellis, Tee O'Neill, Tom Wright  

By Theatre@risk

At fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, to Sun June 5, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on June 2, 2005

The process of creating The Wall Project, by theatre@risk, attempts to utilise rather than resist the brief rehearsal and rapid development time usually available in theatre.

Three playwrights, Ben Ellis, Tee O'Neill and Tom Wright, were invited by director, Chris Bendall to each write a short piece stimulated by the theme of "The Wall". The diverse pieces were then spliced together.

Each writer approached the concept from a different angle.

Wright's story is a poetic view of three female convicts (Anastasia Malinoff, Jesse Spence, Odette Joannidis) travelling to Australia in the hold of an English ship of the Second Fleet. They are preached at by a pious captain (Ernie Gray) and abused by a crazed sailor (Simon Kingsley Hall).

The Foundling (Spence) is raped and gives birth to a deformed child she believes to be Christ.

Wright creates a "prison with no walls", a world in which these women are trapped by virtue of their class, gender, status and poverty.

In O' Neill's play, a woman (Joannidis) awaiting her fiance in a park encounters a terrified, escaped sex slave (Spence). Meanwhile the woman speaks by phone to a corporate executive (Anastasia Malinoff) obsessed with market forces and profit.

A story built around the restrictive bureaucracy and suspicion in a mythical Democratic Republic is the focus of Ellis's play. We see a refugee, (Joannidis) a guest of the Republic (Spence) and a famous actor (Gray) all being treated with varying degrees of respect by the Interpreter. (Malinoff)

Meanwhile a disabled boy (Kingsley Hall) unwittingly wears a bomb for a radical group.

The production is more interesting in concept than execution with varying degrees of success in the writing. Tom Wright's scenes are the most effective and affecting blending the lyrical, mythical and epic and stretching the boundaries of reality.

The other two stories become confused by intentional collisions of styles and sometimes banal social commentary.

Bendall cuts the pieces together so that the whole show moves swiftly. A brown paper sign torn from the wall titles each scene.

Isla Shaw's set design finds a marvellous solution to the awkward fortyfivedownstairs, space. Two fragments of wall frame the performance space and strips of brown paper mask the off stage areas.

Kelly Ryall's original sound is evocative and threatening while Adam J. Howe's lighting defines space and tone.

By Kate Herbert

Boulevard Delirium, Paul Capsis, June 1, 2005

Boulevard Delirium  
Concept by Barrie Kosky  Malthouse Theatre

Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse  June 1 to 26, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on June 1, 2005

Paul Capsis certainly wowed the opening night audience of Boulevard Delirium. They stomped and stood and called for two encores.

The show, first staged in 2001 at the Vienna Schauspeilhaus, bears the unmistakable stamp of director, Barrie Kosky.

Boulevard is a musical cabaret with Capsis, Australia's most unusual drag act, performing chanteuses of the 20^th century in front of a band of five versatile musicians.

Capsis's impersonations are not pure imitation, although his vocal skills replicate Judy Garland, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday and Marlene Dietrich impeccably. It is more the spirit of these damaged women that he captures.

Kosky has Capsis interrupt his characterisations with grotesqueries, local references and mad antics that make the show a marvellous soup of eccentric styles.

Costume changes are minimal. Capsis begins in top hat and tails. With each character he shifts his hair up or down, adds a headband for Marlene, hairpins for Garland. He puts a flower behind the ear rolls up sleeves for Holiday or tosses his white shirt rakishly off his shoulders to play Joplin.

The changes between characters are swift and inventive.

He begins with a few numbers as his own character, Queenie. Get Away, an 60s disco tune looks like the Hot Gossip pole dancers. Fat Daddy is probably the raunchiest tune of the night.

As Garland, he roves the stage in her later life signature drugged and drunken state and sings warped and despairing versions of Putting on the Ritz and Forget Your Troubles.

He drags his face into a grotesque parody of a bad face-lift as Marlene while he sings Boys in the Back Room.

There is a Soul Sister in the middle of the show who was not clear - perhaps Aretha. Then we saw the apex of the evening; Capsis as the doped and mesmerising Billie Holiday singing Don't Explain with poignant beauty.

As Joplin he tore up the stage and hit his rock and roll peak singing Don't Turn Your back on Love.

The band of five was exceptional, setting the tone for the songs and characters, squeezing sounds from not only the usual guitars, keyboard, bass and drums but from piano strings, singing saw, accordion and violin.

Musical Director, Roman Gottwald, leads Chris Bekker, Geri Shuller, Tom Fryer and Niko Schauble in a romp through contemporary styles with exceptional skill.

Boulevard Delirium is an exciting and energetic evening that showcases the talent of Capsis perfectly.

By Kate Herbert for 2 pages:

Decoupage Skin by Michelle Griffiths, May 25, 2005

Decoupage Skin  by Michael Griffith

La Mama, from May 25, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 25, 2005

Both writing and performing a solo play are enormous challenges. Decoupage Skin, written by Michael Griffith, is only partially successful on both counts.

Jennifer Andersen plays Helen, a woman married with two children. We see her anxiously awaiting the return of her husband and sons after a soccer game.

As she waits Helen addresses the audience directly, almost conversationally, as if she is peeling back the layers of her skin, revealing for us the underlying flaws or truth.

Helen's decoupage or cut out collage skin cover is not complete. It has cracks and peeling edges.

Griffith writes Helen as a woman living a veiled, even disguised existence, an uneventful life that she wishes to be more dramatic, even tragic.

She secretly hopes that her entire family is killed in a car crash on the way home from soccer. She reveals that, in spite of her inability to grieve over her youthful abortion, she faked grief, tears and even her subsequent mental breakdown.

As a seemingly harmless and trustworthy teenager, she was secretly a thief and a compulsive liar. As an adult she fantasises about leaving polaroids of her genitals secreted amongst the frozen foods in the supermarket.

Helen is clearly troubled but manages to live a superficially normal life shielded by her capacity for lying.

Barbara Ciszewska, directs Andersen's performance in and around a contraption shaped like the inner framework of a huge crinoline.

 Those sections placed inside the frame are the most effective. When she runs or stands outside it the space is cramped and Andersen's movement awkward and constrained.

Griffith's writing has some witty observations and interesting moments but the dialogue is often uncomfortable and the through line of the narrative incoherent. The character becomes muddled and the intention unclear.

Andersen engages the audience often but there is a disconcerting shrillness to the performance that keeps reminding us that is an actor, not a character we are witnessing. There is little emotional connection with Helen. In fact, Griffith paints her as a rather dislikeable person.

 Decoupage Skin is not without merit but the various components of the piece does not quite make an effective whole.

By Kate Herbert

The Room by Raimondo Cortese, May 24, 2005

The Room by Raimondo Cortese

The Store Room, May 24 to  June 12, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 24, 2005

In The Room by Raimondo Cortese, Greg Ulfan plays a man alone in a claustrophobic room. He struggles to understand the world outside his room and the increasingly confusing world inside his own head.

The script and Ulfan's performance are both disturbing and comical. The man's erratic behaviour and rapid shifts between unrelated topics are clearly the signatures of a fractured mental state.

However, they are often so absurd and sudden that we laugh as we might catch ourselves laughing inappropriately at the antics of a drunk on the street.

The man's predicament and obsessions are both grim and absurd. He awaits the postman, surrounded by scattered sheets of paper he has, perhaps, previously filled with his own scribblings.

He expects a letter or a visit from a mythical "General" whose invitation he will refuse.

He reminisces about times when he did leave his jail-like room and walk the litter strewn streets, drinking in bars, entering shops, compulsively collecting useless objects.

He pines for "The Angel," the woman he lived with and battled with for years.

The play references, to some degree, Samuel Beckett's play, Krapp's Last Tapes: an isolated man contends with his past and himself.

Cortese's writing is poetic and dense and the Man's speech is formalised and colourful rather than conversational.

Ulfan is compelling in the role. His dark, brooding intensity suits this quirky and volatile figure. He plays with the dialogue, using the voice to heighten the fractious and fractured thought patterns of the man.

Ulfan with director, Ben Harkin, developed this version of The Room. In the tiny enclosed space of The Store Room one feels the claustrophobic state of the Man's mind.

The design (Luke Pithar) is sparse and effective, creating with a few boxes, papers and frames a sense of a hollow oppressive space. Almost inaudible and distant sound (Kelly Ryall) adds an eerie quality.

Efterpi Soropos' lighting is dramatic and isolates areas of the stage that, in turn, isolate the man.

Although this is not one of Cortese's major works, it is definitely an interesting exploration of the machinations of mental illness.

By Kate Herbert