Mum’s the Word 2: Teenagers, Aug 31, 2006

Mum’s the Word 2: Teenagers

Mum’s the Word Collective

 Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, from Aug 30 (no closing date)

Tues 6.30pm, Wed to at 8pm, Wed 1pm, Sat 2pm, Sun 4pm

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Identification theatre is the only way to describe Mum’s The Word 1 and 2 and to explain their success. 

The majority of the population either has, had, or will have teenage offspring and the rest knows someone who has them. The audience laughs and groans in unison at the familiarity of the horror stories about teens.

We sympathise with parents dealing with rudeness, drinking, drugs, sibling rivalry, lying and sneaking – you name it, teens do it and parents suffer it.

For this reason, all sorts of flaws in the structure, writing and direction of the show are ignored. There is limited physicalisation of the mainly monologue based stories. The show is like a washing line upon which loosely connected stories are threaded.

What makes this production is the exceptional cast. The five engaging and funny women (Marg Downey, Rebecca Gibney, Jane Hall, Colette Mann, Louise Siversen) hurl themselves bodily into the characters written by and based on the lives of the Canadian team.

Siversen’s is both sympathetic and hilarious, playing the mother who contemplates having an affair and a range of wacky character that highlight her versatility.

Mann, in her inimitable cheeky comic style, plays the naïve mum who hopes her daughter is celibate but gets about in sexy Madam Lash gear for dad.

Hall plays the mum who fears her daughter will turn into herself at age 12. Her scene buying her child her first bra is charming.

There are some more serious issues raised about parenting. Downey is convincing as the demure mum who faces the challenge of breast cancer and Gibney’s character battles to manage a drunken, out of control son.

As a group, the five manage to make goofy choreography and costumes look hilarious in Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend was Hot Like Me and Here Comes Menopause.

The stories are about the little successes and bigger failures of parenting, the pressure on relationships, the loss of identity of mothers and the constant abuse parents face at the hands of the monsters that have replaced their sweet little kids.

Much of the writing is predictable and sometimes pedestrian and the staging in unimaginative but this cast makes the show entertaining. If they cut half an hour out of the show, it could be a stronger piece.

By Kate Herbert

The Wages of Spin by Version 1.0, Aug 30, 2006

The Wages of Spin by Version 1.0

North Melbourne Town Hall

Aug 30 to September 9, 2006

Wed to Sat 8pm, sat 4pm, Sun 3pm,

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Aug 30

The Wages of Spin, a documentary-style political theatre production by Version 1.0, is a complex and acerbic analysis of Australia’s participation in the War in Iraq.

The production is a hybrid of theatre and visual media, using both live performance and video to replicate the mass of news information and its manipulation at the hands of both politicians and television journalism. Much of the dialogue is from verbatim transcripts from interviews with politicians and other commentators.

We hear re-voiced snatches of Howard and Bush’s election victory speeches, excerpts from public documents, senate committee proceedings and opinion pieces. The play revisits the futile search for weapons of mass destruction, the AWB wheat for weapons scandal, the failure of the occupation to bring peace and Private Jake Kovko’s death.

We experience information overload, just as the on-screen, vox-pop interviewees report. We are overwhelsmed by a seemingly endless scrolling list of casualties in Iraq, Iraqi civilians outnumbering military almost twenty to one.

In this mock television studio, we watch a reporter read a timeline of Australia’s involvement in the war. Interspersed with invasion details are those of Delta Goodrem’s love life and health, highlighting the awful irony of our obsession with celebrities that eclipses the death and destruction in a war zone.

Every image is layered. In the opening scene, we witness the confronting image of a hooded prisoner walking across a bed of nails. Slowly, we realise his dialogue is that of Senator Robert Hill evading questions about whether Australians were involved in “interrogations’ in Iraq.

The production crew (Ingrid Siversen, Katy Green, Dan Pardy) accompany

three performers (David Williams, Kim Vercoe, Stephen Kinder) on stage. All are dressed in army fatigues. The war permeates everything.

Williams’ direction has a swift energy. The three performers present the material and characters with a wry, often grim humour and capture the confusion of the electronic media without losing the clarity of their investigation.

The complexity of the issues is intensified by the manic action on the floor. Video artist, Sean Bacon, with a bank of monitors and mixers, edits video footage before our eyes. The set is scooted around the stage, cameras appear from nowhere, images appear on a giant screen or smaller monitors. Our every move is being documented.

The Wages of Spin is fine and challenging entertainment.

By Kate Herbert

Yanagai! Yanagai! MWT, Aug 22, 2006

Yanagai! Yanagai!
by Andrea James, Melbourne Workers Theatre

 North Melbourne Town Hall 

Aug 22-26. Portland Aug 29, Shepparton Aug 31, Echuca Sept 1, Upwey Sept 8, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Aug 22, 2006

Yanagai, in the Yorta Yorta language of the Murray River (Dhungula) region, means “Go away!” One can presume it was frequently used when the white squatter, Sir Edward Curr, arrived in the region in 1841.

Since 1860, the Yorta Yorta people have continued to fight in courts for land rights for their tribal lands in the Murray region. Consistently, their claims were denied, most recently in 2003 in the Hight Court. It took nineteen seconds, says the play, to deny thousands of years of history.

At present a claim is being prepared for the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

The play depicts 150 years of failed claims, degeneration of the land through farming and drought, maltreatment of the Yorta Yorta by the white justice and welfare systems, families separated and tribal sites ignored.

Despite these negative issues the play, written and directed by Andrea James, is entertaining with a definite edge of hope.

Such a play serves the educational purpose of reminding us of issues surrounding aboriginal land claims so we can choose to forgive some of its artistic limitations.

James’ script draws together the stories of Uncle Albert (Tony Briggs/bryan Andy OK), the spirit called Munarra (Lisa Maza), Edward Curr (David Adamson) and the High Court hearing in 2003.

The most affecting and effective thread is Uncle Albert’s story that reveals his passion for his country. Briggs plays old Albert sympathetically. We are moved by memories of his “stolen” childhood, of his little sister, Amy’s (Lou Bennett) drowning when she tried to escape the welfare and we are entertained by his enduring obsession with catching the giant Murray cod.

Witnessing Albert facing the High Court highlights the judicial rigidity and lack of understanding of the values of the Yorta Yorta.

Curr is depicted two-dimensionally as a cold, cruel white invader. Little is learned of him because he is merely a symbol for colonial abuse of power.

The spirit, Munarra and her canine protectors (Bennett and Andy) provide some insight into the creation story of the Dhungula River but the portrayal of the tale looks too much like a children’s play.

Philip Lethlean’s lighting, with Adrienne Chisholm’s design that was inspired by Lin Onus’s artwork, create a soothing world of river and trees.

The staging and direction lack physicality and imagination but the production is thought-provoking and urges action.

By Kate Herbert

The Boy From Oz, with Hugh Jackman, Aug 11, 2006

 The Boy From Oz
Music & Lyrics by Peter Allen, Book by Nick Enright  
Rod Laver Arena until Aug 11 to 13, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Hugh Jackman is so deliciously charming he is almost edible. Even playing Peter Allen, the King (and Queen) of Camp, he is the sexiest creature south of Mars.

He pranced and minced on stage and, when he peeled off his sequined shirt, he triggered squeals of delight from a phalanx of women. They dived over seats to touch him as he cavorted in the aisles.

Jackman has that indefinable quality that makes a star. In addition to his remarkable stage presence and vivid characterisation of Peter Allen, he has a strong and passionate singing voice and impeccable comic delivery.

He deserved his 2004 Tony for this role and, when he does his ironic screen test as James Bond, the audience clearly thought he should have the role. Talk about versatile: from Las Vegas camp to sex symbol spy.

The original production, with a clever book by Nick Enright, adhered to a narrative. This arena production incorporates segments with Jackman addressing the audience directly, dancing and flirting with a couple of men in the crowd, doing topical stand up about Mel Gibson, Leighton Hewitt and even giving us the footy scores.

Accompanying Jackman is a glittering chorus in wild costumes by Roger Kirk. Jackman sports a parade of outfits in sequins, lame and other shiny stuff. The finale, I Go to Rio, includes an array of giant martini glasses, pineapple headdresses, feathers and flesh to put Mardi Gras to shame.

Chrissy Amphlett, as Judy Garland, captures the tremulous, tottering star in her final days singing, All I Wanted Was The Dream. Wendy Toohey bears an uncanny resemblance to Liza Minnelli capturing the Minnelli’s spirit in the Bob Fosse inspired Cabaret scene.

Colleen Hewett’s powerful, husky voice was profoundly moving in Don’t Cry Out Loud and Murray Bartlett’s rendition of I Honestly Love You is heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

Director, Kenny’ Ortega’s eclectic choreography with Kelley Abbey fills the stage with colour and the onstage band is tight and versatile.

The show depicts the light and shade of Allen’s life. We see the child’s budding showmanship, his rise to stardom, marriage, divorce, the death of his partner and his father’s suicide. But, throughout, Allen’s music plays a leading role. The crowd adored the patriotic I Still Call Australia Home and Jackman’s encore of Once Before I Go was a fitting farewell.

All hail Hugh!

By Kate Herbert

The Tempest, Bell Shakespeare, Aug 8, 06

The  Tempest by William Shakespeare

Bell Shakespeare

Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, Aug 8 to Aug 19, 2006

6.30pm Mon, 7.30pm Tues to Sat

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Aug 8, 2006

The Tempest, Shakespeare’s final play, can be problematic to stage. It mixes genres, incorporating elements of comedy, romances and his political plays.

It begins with Prospero’s (John Bell) plan for revenge, a history of royal usurpation, a shipwreck, a plot to assassinate the King, another to kill Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan who now reigns over a deserted island. It ends with reunion, reinstatement and a marriage. In between are slapstick, drunkenness, magic, romance, music, a banquet and a masque.

Peter Evans’ production is set on a confined stage resembling a room wallpapered with images of a densely wooded forest (Robert Kemp). It opens with an effective storm scene on Alonso (Paul Bertram), the King of Naples’ ship. As the ship sinks, the passengers shout in panic through high portholes.

The forest creates depth and the contracted stage space reflects the confines of the island. However, the actors still rattle about uncomfortably in the small space. Many scenes are performed in a deliberately static, stand and deliver style, particularly those between the royal party.

Alonso’s grief leaves him almost inanimate, Sebastian (Andrew McDonnell) and Antonio’s (David Whitney) murderous subterfuge is tepid and Gonzalo’s (Ron Haddrick) concern sounds like preaching.

The interpretation lacks the magic and illusion intrinsic to the play. The production lacks resonance and imagination and Shakespeare’s rich dialogue often has no dynamic energy.

The scenes between the drunken Stephano, (Tony Taylor), the jester, Trinculo, (James Wardlaw) and Caliban, Prospero‘s slave (Nathan Lovejoy) begin with energy but the comic business becomes repetitive. Lovejoy, playing Caliban as a scruffy, awkward adolescent with a Mohawk, has little of the grotesque or dangerous.

The strongest scenes are those with Prospero and his daughter, Miranda (Freya Stafford). Bell brings Shakespeare’s text to life, balancing gravitas and humour in Prospero, giving him a fragile humanity that counterpoints his power. Stafford gives Miranda life with a delicate childlikeness.

Less successful are the scenes between Miranda and Ferdinand (Stephen Phillips) perhaps because Phillips is often left gaping at magical illusions wrought for Ferdinand’s benefit.

Which brings us to the magic of the island. Saskia Smith, as Ariel, Prospero’s airy spirit slave who awaits his freedom, is certainly ethereal in appearance and much of Ariels’ magical quality relies on her singing. 

But the illusions are invisible, the music (Basil Hogios) a little too stereotypically spooky and the stage too domestic to transport us into the world of the magical isle.

By Kate Herbert

Not Like Beckett by Michael Watts, Aug 2, 2006

Malthouse Theatre 
Beckett Theatre, Malthouse

Tues & Wed 7pm, Thurs 1pm & 8.30pm, Fri 8.30pm, Sat 2pm & 7.30pm

Aug 2 to 20, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Not Like Beckett, written by Michael Watts, is a little like Beckett – Samuel Beckett, that is. It deals with the absurdities of the human condition, an individual’s existential crisis, with isolation and despair. It also steeps these darker issues in a soup of slapstick and vaudeville – just like Beckett.

Watts’ script begins quite tamely then, in the hands of the versatile and eccentric Russell Dykstra, escalates into a cacophonous, outrageous and often hilarious ride.

Dykstra, wearing white face like Roy Rene as Mo, plays Wally Walloon Beckett. Wally declares he is a rabbit – and a stand-up comedian. Here begins the absurdity. This well-bred rabbit sports a rabbit-hunter’s metal leg-trap and is now trapped on a mountaintop surveying the beauty of his family’s adopted land. He calls for his beloved wife, a native bilby called Boo Boo, but she is nowhere to be found.

In his pain and delirium, Wally relates his history and flashes back to his lonely childhood, his discovery that he was funny, his heady days as a comic telling rabbit jokes and his marriage out of the rabbit family to the lowly bilby.

Just as we start to feel the play has nothing more to say, the show takes a startling leap. Wally appears in an outsize bunny-suit, in black face with a very good aboriginal accent and shocks us with a stand-up routine built on violent and racist gags about bilbies.

Suddenly, we are in the world of power and abuse and it becomes clear that this play is taking a turn for the grotesque and the political. We have an allegory about the invasion of Australia by Europeans and the subjugation of the aborigines.

An artist will try anything for his art, a comic will demean anything for a laugh and a colonist will invade anything for power and territory.

Dystra’s great clown skill is the highlight of the latter half of the play. He gags, dances, sings, gambols about on the Yellow Peril look alike and entertains us with his antics.

Anna Cordingley’s design, based on a replica of Ron Robertson Swann’s sculpture, Vault, (Yellow Peril) is an angular rabbit warren that provides hiding holes and many levels from which Dystra performs his vaudevillian routines.

Director, Michael Kantor, allows Dykstra his head and the second half rocks along at a cracking pace.

Not Like Beckett leaves one appalled by the things at which we can laugh.

By Kate Herbert

Oedipus, Eagles Nest Theatre, ,July 25, 2006

 Oedipus, 

Adapted from Sophocles by Robert Reid

Eagles Nest Theatre

Trades Hall: July 25-29. Williamstown Mechanics Institute: Aug 1-5, 2006

Alternates with Hamlet until Aug 5, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Be prepared for an Oedipus that Sophocles did not write in this hybrid script adapted by Robert Reid. 

The production interpolates snatches of Sophocles’ monologues, dialogues and choruses with invented or borrowed text and a grab bag of styles including slapstick, surrealism, murder mystery and vaudeville.

The Oedipus Complex, as the modern world knows it, is introduced by the character of Sigmund Freud (Phil Roberts) who strolls on occasionally to shed psychoanalytical light on the King of Thebes who unwittingly killed his father then married his mother.

Then we have visits from Sherlock Holmes (Phil Zachariah), chewing a pipe and snorting cocaine, who comments on the complexities of the mystery. I don’t know why.

Some of these additions to the original text do work. Freud and Holmes are more successful than the stylistic changes to the Chorus mainly because the two older actors playing them bring some technical skill to their portrayal.

The idea of a chirping, female cabaret ensemble as the Chorus could work but this group of four young women sporting false beards and moustaches and wearing showgirl fishnets, lacks the requisite vocal and acting technique to carry the vaudeville style or to express the resonance of the text.

Sometimes the insertion of contemporary and popular culture references add a layer but generally they are more annoying that insightful.

The scenes that do resonate are those involving a sassy Felicity Steel as Jocasta and playful Trevor Vaughan as Oedipus. Vaughan, although his voice was often rasping (a cold? Too many shows?) finds an intelligent balance between the classical text and the contemporary style.

Director, Robert Reid, effectively layers Steel’s acrobatic skills over Jocasta’s dialogue to create sensual images and evocative poses.

The eclectic stylistic mix includes the use of a giant head puppet to represent Teiresias, the soothsayer, while the Chorus intoned his prophesies. This has some theatrical potential but the stage is so busy and the puppet head so precarious that it is difficult to listen to the text.

The simple design by Michael Roper provides an abstract red canopy for the action and Anita King’s costumes establish a cabaret atmosphere.

This production is more confusing than enlightening about Oedipus but it certainly breaks the boundaries of expectations of the play.

By Kate Herbert

Three Oaks by Monica Raszewski, July 26, 2006

Three Oaks by Monica Raszewski

La Mama, Carlton,  July 26 to Aug 13, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It is refreshing to see a production illuminate a story with inventive theatrical conventions rather than drown it in irrelevant imagery. Director, Kimberley Grigg, brings imagination and skill to Three Oaks, by Monica Raszewski.

The audience is seated on opposite sides of the space. The air is redolent with the scent of pine needles, bringing to life the Polish forest of the characters’ childhood.

Actors play accordions and violin on stage, evoking location, period, atmosphere and emotion. The rhythms of the play are subtle and the acting fluid and skilful. Grigg interprets the script seamlessly.

Raszewski weaves layers of a family story, memories of a father, letters and paintings, with Polish folk tales and history.

After the death of her father, Janek (Adam Pierzchalski OK), Margaret (Janine Watson), an artist, wants to retrieve some relics of his life in order to write a book. Janek, a Polish migrant, married to Krystyna (Natalia Novikova), left the family when Margaret and sister, Alex (Emily Taylor), were children. He made a new home with his Australian lover, Alice (Fiona Macys).

Marc Raszewski’s design is compelling. Pierced by a pole are three slabs of a tree standing on the bed of pine needles. Ladders rise out of the pine floor, titling at precarious angles, representing the oak forest, creating an obstacle course for the family and providing seats in scenes.

We are agitated and moved by Margaret’s desperation to know her father after his death when she so diligently avoided him before he died. She hunts for a painting she believes her father did for her but finds only a few letters, some paintings, a battered notebook, a recipe and some photos.

Memories of her childhood collide with the present. We witness the alienation of mother and father, the confusion of the sisters, their resistance to father’s lover, the ordinariness of mother cooking and their Polish children’s songs.

Actors shift effortlessly in the space just as ghostly memories filter in and out of Margaret’s thoughts.

The play is about memory and a search for the truth. How do we reconstruct a person’s life and character from fragments and memory?

Scenes around the fractured tree trunk resonate with the Polish heritage of characters and writer. Images of an old woman trapped in a tree and of Russian Kommisars torturing people intersect the tale of the two children lost in the woods.

Three Oaks is an evocative and theatrically satisfying production.

By Kate Herbert

The Woman in Black, July 20, 2006

 The Woman in Black  
Adapted by Stephen Mallatratt
By Newtheatricals, Lunchbox Theatrical Productions & Singapore Repertory Theatre

Comedy Theatre,  July 20 to July 28, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on July 20, 2006

The Woman in Black, by Stephen Mallatratt, is a theatrical phenomenon. It has run for 19 years on the West End. Perhaps its longevity is because it is a ghost story. Audiences love to be scared with the lights out in a safe environment.

The play, directed imaginatively by Robin Herford, is a two-hander (John Waters, Brett Tucker) adapted from Susan Hill’s novel.  Mallatratt employed simple theatrical conventions to solve the telling of a wordy story. Two actors play all characters and lighting, props and sound cunningly evoke atmosphere, landscape and terror.

This production begins slowly but dramatic tension escalates when Arthur Kipps (Waters) reaches Eel Marsh House on the intemperate English coast.

Kipps, an aged lawyer, engages a young Actor (Tucker) to train him in the art of public speaking so that he, Kipps, might tell his account of a terrifying, ghostly encounter in his youth and purge himself of its horrors.

The Actor insists the story be theatricalised. He plays Kipps throughout and Kipps plays all other dramatis personae.

A versatile Waters is compelling, transforming physically and vocally with the change of a coat into the numerous eccentric characters in this cleverly wrought production. Each is a study in Englishness: Kipps’ doddering employer; Daly, a sympathetic local; Kedwick, the taciturn carriage driver; Jerome, the nervous land agent; and the publican.

Tucker, as the Actor and the young Kipps, provides a strong balance for Waters. His Actor is an exuberant, arrogance young artist and he depicts Kipps’ journey into darkness and terror credibly.

Kipps must attend the funeral of Mrs. Alice Dablow, an aged client, and then spend days at her isolated manor, sorting her papers. Kipps realises the locals are reticent to speak of her and only Kedwick will drive him. When he arrives, he confronts terrifying phantoms in the graveyard, house and marshes.

The production uses reliable old conventions to scare the pants off us: the sudden reveal, a scream, doors slamming, suspenseful walks into darkened rooms, sputtering out, unreadable tombstones, impenetrable fogs and animated objects.

Michael Holt‘s dusty, old theatre design is a character in its own right. A rear scrim reveals rooms, tombs and staircase when backlit. Damien Cooper’s lighting and smoky atmosphere portray the dense fogs of the marshlands.

But it is the suspense and sudden reveals of the dark lady that elicit shrieks and starts from the audience.

By Kate Herbert

The Pajama Game, Production Company, July 19, 2006

The Pajama Game 

Book by George Abbott & Richard Bissell, Music and Lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross

By The Production Company

State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, July 19 to 23, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on July 19, 2006

It is a novelty these days, to see a trade union win a pay battle but, in The Pajama Game, the seven and a half cents pay rise is a spectacular victory for the union reps and factory workers of Sleeptite Pajamas, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Terence O’Connell’s concert production is a lively romp with a cast and creative team of exceptional local talent.

Abbott and Bissell’s book is a cheeky, sexy tale, particularly for 1956. Based on Bissell’s novel, 7 1/2 Cents, it depicts not only the union battle but also an pyjama erotic factory landscape of burgeoning sexual affairs.

Ian Stenlake is magnetic and virile as the ambitious factory Superintendent, Sid Sorokin. His rich, powerful baritone pairs well with Pippa Grandison’s gutsy voice, ebullient personality and feisty character, Babe Williams, the Grievance Committee of the union.

Sid and Babe’s passionate love affair comes unstitched when Sid fires Babe during a stop work. Management and Union cannot be friends – or lovers.

Adler and Ross’s music and lyrics explain the enormous early success of the show. the songs are memorable and diverse.  

Steam Heat is delicious and features the inimitable Rachel Beck as Gladys, executing Bob Fosse inspired jazzy choreography. (Alana Scanlan) You With the Stars In Our Eyes is a lyrical love song, Once a Year Day a rousing chorus and the tangoesque Hernando’s Hideaway is sung in a downbeat beatnik club.

What made this musical different from others of the period was its setting in an obscure town, in an unromantic factory, peopled by factory workers and secretaries. It was known as the first left-wing musical. However, Sid and Prez (David Harris), the union president, would be sued for sexual harassment these days for their romantic antics.

There is a delightfully quirky support cast including the delectably funny Julie O’Reilly as the cheeky Mabel and Adam Murphy as time and motion foreman, Hines. Beck is one of our hottest musical properties and Harris plays the geeky, skirt-chasing unionist, Prez, with relish. Peter Hosking gives some gravitas to the union-bashing boss, Hasler.

Although this concert production does not have all the bells and whistles of a full production, Peter Casey’s very tight orchestra rouses cheers from the crowd, Phillip Lethlean’s lighting adds atmosphere, Richard Jeziorny’s design creates location and period.

The Pajama Game is an energetic, spunky and sexy night out.

By Kate Herbert

I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright, MTC, July 12, 2006

 I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright
Melbourne Theatre Company with Delphi Productions

Where and When: Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse, July 12 to  Aug 1, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on July 12, 2006

I Am My Own Wife, by Doug Wright, bears the inimitable stamp of an ideal theatrical collaboration between writer, actor, director and designer.

This production boasts the 2004 Pulitzer for Drama and Tony Awards for Best Actor and Best Play. Jefferson Mays is captivating; a consummate actor so in command of his technique that it becomes invisible.

Wright believes in storytelling, an element often ignored in contemporary deconstruction. His play is based on personal research into an eccentric, ageing, East German transvestite and collector of late 19^th century furniture. He/she was known as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (Lottchen).

As Wright investigated Charlotte’s seemingly impossible survival under both Nazis and Communists, he uncovered bravery and layers of secrets and deceptions in her murky past.

Mays conjures Charlotte and delivers her fully formed as if through some magical projection from the past. He captures her tottering gait, slight stoop, light voice, careful, broken English and her caginess about her life.

Dressed in a simple black peasant’s frock, headscarf and boots, Charlotte is an anachronism, a freak, a man living as a woman; not a drag queen but an unglamorous old woman.

Charlotte was irrepressible, outliving regimes and becoming a legend in Berlin. She displayed her collection of Grunderzeit antiques (1890-1900) in her own museum and ran an illegal gay club in her cellar for thirty years. As a teenager, she murdered her father, saving her mother from his violence.

But when her Stasi (Secret Police) file was revealed, her innocence was questioned although she denied betraying friends.

Wright is a character in his own play. Such self-referential writing can fail but, in this case, we need to see Charlotte through Wright’s initially naïve eyes to understand that her stories are so well rehearsed and impenetrable that the truth is clouded.

Mays’ performance is just short of miraculous. He not only delivers Lotte with his impeccable characterisation, timing, delivery and a wry humour, but he peoples the stage with a parade of other eccentric characters: a US journalist, Charlotte’s aunt, father and friends, Nazis, Stasi, Siggy, the television host and myriad international reporters.

The sheer theatricality of this production is outstanding. Direction by Moises Kaufman is sleek and seamless. Wright’s dialogue is witty, well observed, respectful and enquiring. The superlative design (Derek McLane) represents Charlotte’s life and museum in a wall of clocks, credenzas and her precious gramophones.

This show will renew your faith in theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Rebel Tour by Stephen Vagg, July 5, 2006

  Rebel Tour by Stephen Vagg

 La Mama at the Courthouse, July 5 to 15, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on July 5, 2006

Now that the Australians are out of the soccer, there might be some cricket tragics who would like to reminisce about the political debate that surrounded the Australian rebel cricket tour to South Africa from 1985 to 1987.

Stephen Vagg’s play takes place during the secretive negotiation period before the tour. It is a snapshot of the machinations that occurred inside the Australian Cricket Board (ACB), the Australian government and the personal lives of the players concerned although the characters are fictitious.

In this period, the face of Australian cricket changed forever. Players became professional, negotiated contracts, and higher salaries, Kerry Packer introduced “pyjama cricket” - the one-day games, and the ACB introduced trainers, physiotherapists and dieticians to the game.

The production will appeal to those who know recent cricket history. The script is educational and integrates enormous amounts of factual information into the dialogue. At times, the details are overwhelming and the dialogue becomes uncomfortably didactic and expository.

Although there are some monologues directly to audience, most of the play is naturalistic. We watch players, Ken, the Chairman (Ian Rooney) and Ray, the team lawyer (Adam Ford) haggle over contracts in offices, bars and locker rooms.

Taylor is instrumental in the changes taking place in the ACB. He introduces salaries, professionalism and two-year contracts. Ken pines for the amateur days before money ruled the game and Packer had no power.

When Conrad Van Eyck (Andrew S. Gilbert), a South African, secretly signs up several Aussie cricket legends for $200,000 each, the seams begin to split at the ACB.

The politics of the period are effectively embedded in the story. South Africa faced international economic and sporting sanctions until it dismantled Apartheid. The Australian government banned all sporting contact with South Africa. Many Australians believed politics should not interfere with sport.

The acting is uneven and the production, directed by John Brousek, is very static, relying on the torrent of dialogue. It could benefit from some script editing and more physicalisation. Some actors are tripping over their densely written lines.

The characters are recognisable types in the sporting world. Josh Cameron as Chicka is a loutish bowler who blames batsmen for everything. Leo Faust plays Jack, the nice-guy batsman and Matthew Boesenberg is Butch, the unpredictable batsman.

A highlight is Phil Roberts as the cricket-hungry senator who gives an impassioned speech in parliament about sport and Apartheid.

If you are missing the cricket season, Rebel Tour could fill the gap for you.

By Kate Herbert

La Douleur by Marguerite Duras, July 4, 2006

La Douleur by Marguerite Duras 

adapted by Laurence Strangio & Caroline Lee 

by Malthouse Theatre

Beckett theatre, Malthouse, July 4 to July 23,  2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on July 4, 2006

Marguerite Duras has a potent capacity to startle an audience with her simple detail. In this play based on her novella, La Douleur, her language shifts from personal to reportage, from the “I” to the “she” and the observational to the emotional.

The diary notes that comprise La Douleur were written at the end of World War One, forty years before the novella was published.  These writings were adapted for the stage by director, Laurence Strangio, and actor, Caroline Lee.

Lee, as Marguerite, restlessly paces on Anna Tregloan‘s evocative, cage-like set design. As she self-narrates the story, Lee reclines melancholically on the divan, snatches the old telephone from its cradle or paces aimlessly.

But mostly she waits. She waits for news of her husband, Robert L’s return from the German concentration camp or news of his death. Lee and Strangio capture the interminable and unbearable quality of her waiting. Time is elastic. Days stretch into weeks. 

Waiting may not be intrinsically dramatic but Duras’ intense observation of every detail of mind and body is rivetting.

Lee balances Duras’ combative attitude with her girlishness. Her light voice vibrates with fragility and suffering. She vividly creates the spectre of Robert’s emaciated body lying prone on the divan after his shocking return and evokes the shadowy presence of Marguerite’s lover, known only as D.

The emotional gulf she experiences between herself and her wretched, estranged husband and the literal ditch in which she saw a dying German soldier, are represented cunningly by a real breach in the stage.

Strangio’s direction is spare, never interfering with the text and always offering a gently abstracted physicalisation of the action.

David Franzke’s atmospheric soundscape is almost subliminal in its subtlety and Richard Vabre’s dim, smoky lighting reminds us of the half-life of pain and loss in which Marguerite and Robert are living.

The audience peers, like voyeurs, into the space from the two opposite sides of the traverse seating arrangement.

There is no melodrama in the performance, the style or in Duras’ writing. She demands out attention. The dialogue has what Duras’ described as “a tremendous chaos of feeling” that is counterpointed by the simple, plain speaking style of Lee.

In this delicately rendered solo production Duras, through Lee, reveals the atrocities of war, its horrific and unseen aftermath and the people who suffer.

By Kate Herbert

Pitch by Peter Houghton, La Mama, June 16, 2006

Pitch by Peter Houghton

Where and When: La Mama, June 14 to June 25, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on June 16, 2006

Peter Houghton is funny. He is a funny performer and his script, Pitch, is really funny.

Houghton is alone on the tiny La Mama space but he peoples the stage with characters. Not only does he inhabit an enormous number of personages, he plays them as specific English, American and Australian movie actors.

In a tight show directed by Anne Browning, Houghton plays Walter Weinermann, a screenwriter who is rehearsing the pitch for his movie script. Based on Houghton’s own nightmarish experience of pitching a script to an il-matched trio of film financiers, it is a roller-coaster ride through India circa 1935, and Iraq, Afghanistan, Paris and Hong Kong in the present.

Houghton has a perfect, silent movie-style clown face. He evokes locations with cunning vocal interpretations of Indian, Arabic and Chinese musical themes. Through the vehicle of his vivid language, we enter a smoky Parisian bar, the deserts of the Middle East, the garish streets of Hong Kong and a crashing UN plane.

As the fat, cigar-puffing Hollywood producer, he states that there are only four story themes for a movie: mystery, the loser, love and revenge. No one wants the truth.

So the hero’s journey begins. Jones, played by Clint Eastwood – or, rather, Houghton playing Jones as Clint Eastwood – is a CIA or MI6 agent. Jones might be played by Russell Crowe. Who knows?

 He is sent by Miles (Anthony Hopkins) to assassinate Clive (Michael Douglas) with the help of Violetta (Catherine Zeta-Jones). But it all goes horribly wrong when Jones discovers Miles is using him, and not for government work.

Pitch is a romp. Walter, as he prepares his pitch, continually reverts to his own love story with his own Catherine and his revenge story about Clive, the born-again Christian for whom Catherine dumped Walter.

Houghton captures the desperation, elation and panic that accompanies the final stages of any artistic endeavour, particularly when it involves asking for money.

He shows us the movie with meaningful close-ups, jump-cuts, wide pans of the desert, musical interludes and quirky cameos. His impersonations of Eastwood, Crowe and Rupert Everett, Sean Connery and Elijah Wood (Frodo) are clever and his rendition of Robert de Niro is hilarious.

The bottom line, as the media release says, is that Pitch is a riot, particularly if you know blockbuster movies well.

By Kate Herbert

Fiddler on the Roof, June 13, 2006

Fiddler on the Roof

Music by Jerry Bock, Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, Book by Joseph Stein

Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne

June 13 until July 9, 2006

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on June 13, 2006

Chaim Topol is the uncontested star of Fiddler on the Roof. 

Nearly 40 years since the then unknown Israeli actor burst onto the London stage as Tevye, the lovable Russian-Jewish milkman, Topol’s professionalism and relish for the role are undiminished.

Topol is that rare creature: an actor with palpable charisma. His eyes glitter, his gaze touches all, his timing and delivery are impeccable and he delicately balances pathos with humour.

Fiddler is also a rare thing. It won nine Tony Awards and was one of the 1960s musicals that dealt with serious issues. Joseph Stein based his superbly constructed narrative on stories by the Yiddish writer, Sholom Aleichem.

Although its depicts oppression and ethnic cleansing of Jews in Tsarist Russia, the story of Tevye, his family and the peasants of Anatevka is one of love, pride, dignity and their Jewish tradition.

The men wear prayer shawls and hats, the Matchmaker (Maggie Kirkpatrick) provides suitors, the father provides a dowry, daughters do not marry for love or without father’s permission and they certainly do not marry outside the Jewish faith.

In the changing world of revolution, poor Tevye’s precious traditions are as precarious as a fiddler playing on a roof. Tevye suffers the humiliation of three daughters marrying inappropriately. His village bears the degradation of a pogrom and its people are spread to all corners of the world in the Jewish Diaspora.

Tevye seeks solace, counsel and conversation from his God as he confronts his despair, decisions and familial conflict.

The marvellous music (Jerry Bock) and lyrics (Sheldon Harnick) are etched into our unconscious. Tradition is a rousing chorus from Topol and the entire cast. Tevye’s, If I Were a Rich Man, is a cheeringly hopeful tune and Sunrise Sunset is a poignant ballad.

Topol is the jewel in this revival of Fiddler but, with a few exceptions, there is little sparkle in the supporting cast. The chorus scenes, (Wedding Dance, Tradition, Anatevka) are rousing but some actors are disappointingly disconnected from the accent, character or feeling of the Russian Jews they portray.

Judith Roberts as Tevye’s wife, Golde, is energetic but needs that rampant bossiness Tevye fears. Maggie Kirkpatrick as Yente lacks authenticity as Yente, the matchmaker. Barry Crocker captures the comic in Lazar, the butcher and Bart John is powerful as the Russian Constable.

Laura Fitzpatrick, as Tevye’s daughter, Hodel, and David Harris as Perchik, her rebellious student fiancé give the most authentic and credible performances.

This is a worthy production and the songs just keep on delighting.

By Kate Herbert