Ginger Mick at Gallipoli, by Petty Traffikers, April 30, 2007

 Ginger Mick at Gallipoli 

adapted from C. J. Dennis by Petty Traffikers

fortyfivedownstairs, until May 13, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It is no easy task to effectively transform verse from the page into theatrical form.

 

Petty Traffikers successfully adapt some of C. J. Dennis’s World War One verses, The Moods of Ginger Mick, into rambunctious physical theatre and people the stage with a parade of characters.

Ginger Mick at Gallipoli, with a cast of four under Stewart Morritt’s slick direction, vibrates with masculine energy, larrikin humour and Aussie slang. At the centre of a parade of iconic, early 20th century Australian men is Ginger Mick (Joe Clements), a cheerful, roguish petty crim and rabbitto from Footscray who writes home to his mate (Bruce Kerr) from the battle front in Turkey.

Dennis’s verse is translated into a swift-moving theatrical text with idiomatic dialogue and narration divided amongst cast members. Songs of the era - Tipperary, Kiss Me Goodnight Sergeant-Major and Siegfried Line - are interpolated between verses and accompanied by lively choreography.

The production captures the era in a contemporary style, amplifying the horrors and mateship of war through pathos and roughhouse humour.

The cast is inventive, compelling and enthusiastic, their performances vital and visceral. Their timing is impeccable and they take us on a rollicking ride. The mood shift effortlessly, with broad slapstick and hilarious characterisations as well as emotional and lyrical reflections upon the nature of war.

The design is simple. Found objects clutter the space, an upstage wire fence bears the titles of each poem, a broom becomes a rifle, a jacket implies a uniform.

Clements captures the gutsy, street-wise rascal, Ginger Mick, making him lovable and loyal with a glint of humour in his eye. Other cast members (Morritt, Kerr, Brendan O’Connor) play multiple roles with aplomb. Morritt’s slow and gentle giant, Craig from Queensland, is a delight as is his punch-drunk boxer from Sydney.

O’Connor is versatile and physically adroit playing Mick’s unlikely mate, Keith the Toff, and the weasel-like Smith from the streets of Collingwood. Kerr is dignified and composed as both the narrator and Trent, a silent and educated digger.

Ginger Mick, without sentimentality or jingoism, embodies the genuine meaning of Aussie mateship, courage and the raw quality of the Australian soldier at war.

By Kate Herbert

At Approx 2pm August 31 1997: by Nik Willmott, April 12, 2007

At Approx 2pm, August 31, 1997
by Nik Willmott

 La Mama, Wed & Fri 8.30pm, Thurs & Sat 6.30pm, Sun 4.30pm until April 22

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The death of Diana Spencer triggered in 1997 a torrent of grief as well as jokes.

Nik Willmott’s play, At Approx 2pm, August 31, 1997, is one of the latter. Unfortunately, Willmott’s short play lends very little to the lexicon of Diana humour.

The premise is that Marianne (Joanne Davis) and Norman (Phil Roberts), a suburban couple who seem to be a throwback to an ugly 1950’s Australia, hear the news of Diana’s accident in Paris and subsequent death. The news has a profound impact on Norman and is the catalyst for their stale relationship to change.

The play has little dramatic shape and relies on outdated caricatures of a suburban couple for its comedy. The obnoxious Marianne rules the roost, seated in her nightie at the laminex kitchen table, ordering the hen-pecked Norman to fetch and carry her beer, pills, chocolate bars, cigarettes, magazines and newspaper. The relationship is one-dimensional and provides more discomfort than humour.

Davis plays Marianne on one note, with a strident and shrill tone that is almost intolerable for even 45 minutes. The character’s dialogue is limited to abuse of her husband and idiotic pronouncements about Diana, crosswords and beer.

Roberts finds more emotional range in Norman by playing his inner need and his attempts at reconciliation. His persistent pandering to Marianne’s every whim, his desperate desire for love and his passion for Diana are poignant at times. However, Roberts is limited by the sketchy character, rigid relationship and unfunny dialogue.

There is some dynamic change in the relationship when Norman reveals his secret love of Diana and how she has replaced his marriage for the years during which Marianne demeaned and rejected him sexually.

When Norman reveals that he has been “diddling himself” in the shed over pictures of Diana in the New Idea, the whole narrative escalates and the power stakes shift. The twist, however unlikely, provides some dramatic development to a play that has limited comic value.

By Kate Herbert

B-File, April 4, 2007

B-File  
based on the play by Deborah Levy

 Carlton Courthouse,  April 4 to 14, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

This multi-lingual interpretation of Deborah Levy’s play, B-File, is a fascinating blend of political satire, absurdity and movement. 

Levy’s text comes in spurts and is deconstructed in much the same way as the characters themselves are.

In a foreign airport -– we assume Germany only because the immigration police speak German  - passengers from diverse backgrounds, occupations and countries are interrogated and intimidated by two bullying officers who seem intent on terrifying the travellers. They employ scare tactics, intrusive questioning, ridiculous enquiries, rough searches, belittling attitudes and childish attempt to catch the passengers in a lie.

Their seemingly playful games escalate, becoming more and more threatening. We can easily see this evolving into full-scale violence and abuse of the innocent for the entertainment of the police officers.

The company (Jo Stone, Karen Lawrence, Paolo Dos Santos, Paulo Castro, Silvia Pinto Coelho, Madeleine Lawrence), directed by Castro, creates a startling and vibrant piece of political commentary in this collision of the playful and the menacing. Issues arise about the misuse of power, confusing immigration policy, escalating security precautions, collective paranoia and fear of cultural diversity.

There are moments of delightful absurdity. Just as the interrogations become dangerous, the officers fall into a ludicrous fistfight or contorted dance. They scamper around their victims, taunting them and snickering at their discomfort, buoyed by their own pathetic show of power.

One woman who has no passport hands the officers a recipe instead of travel papers. She pretends to be Japanese, hides in the toilet, falls to the floor and then attempts to seduce both officers. Another is a reticent Portuguese dancer who struggles to understand their antics and language. A third is a depressed Australian who is vigorously quizzed on her Greek language because she was once married to a Greek.

Each is intrusively asked about her lovers and her lovemaking. All have their possessions raided, their word doubted and their privacy violated.

All performances are strong but Paolo Dos Santos as the police officer is particularly compelling. The incongruous intersects with the satirical in B-File to create a unique and engaging production that challenges our view of the truth.

By Kate Herbert

The Shoehorn Sonata by John Misto, April 4, 2007

 The Shoehorn Sonata by John Misto

 Tours Nunawading, Shepparton, Warragul, Ballarat, Werribee, Warnambool, Geelong, Wangaratta, Kyneton, Sale until May , 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on April 4, 2007

John Misto’s play, The Shoehorn Sonata, directed by Jennifer Hagan, takes the long-ignored story of sixty-five Australian Army nurses who were Japanese prisoners-of-war, and replays it through the eyes of two survivors fifty years after they were released from a camp in the jungles of Malaya.

When they met in 1942, Bridie Cartwright (Maggie Kirkpatrick) was a working class, Sydney, Irish Catholic Army nurse with prudish morals and a larrikin humour. Sheila Richards (Belinda Giblin) was a snobbish English fifteen-year old who was living in Singapore with her mother until she was evacuated by ship.

The two young women, after the Japanese attacked their ship and others in February 1942, clung to each other in the South China Sea, surviving on luck and their will to live until the Japanese captured them.

Misto sets the play in 1995 when the two women are old and have not seen each other since leaving the Singapore hospital in 1945 after their rescue. They are in Sydney to participate in a television interview show. But they not only confront the questions of their unseen interviewer (Richard Morecroft) but their shattered friendship faces intense scrutiny when they retire to their shared hotel room.

Their retelling of their horrific experiences at the hands of the ruthless Japanese demonstrates that their memories are vivid and visceral even after fifty years. Their lives were permanently shattered by the abuse and starvation they suffered.

Bridie and Sheila recall the experiences that enabled them to survive especially the camp choir that sustained them until the last weeks of the war until their numbers were depleted and the survivors were too weak to sing.

As they battle to find common ground after so much time, each reveals a secret. Sheila’s is a shock to the pious Bridie who believed for fifty years that Sheila traded Bridie’s precious shoehorn for quinine to save Bridie’s life. The truth reveals a far greater sacrifice by Sheila to save her friend, and a far greater shame to bear.

Kirkpatrick and Giblin are a vibrant and skilful partnership. Kirkpatrick revels in the broad, cheeky, lovable playfulness of Bridie while Giblin gives the toffee-nosed Sheila dignity, warmth and depth.

Misto’s script is conventional and unchallenging in form and structure but the stories of the women give it an engaging and compelling narrative.

By Kate Herbert

Exit the King with Geoffrey Rush, Malthouse, March 28, 2007

Exit the King by Eugene Ionesco
translated by Isabelle Mangeot-Hewison, Geoffrey Rush and Neil Armfield.

Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse Theatre

March 28 to April 21, 2007

Tues 6.30pm, Wed to Sat 8pm, Sun 5pm

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on opening night, March 28, 2007

Featuring Geoffery Rush

Eugene Ionesco’s King Berenger (Geoffrey Rush) orders the sun to rise, trees to grow and clouds to disperse. Ridiculous as it seems, his behaviour is not unlike that of some despots who rule small nations.

Rush is hilarious and magnetic, invoking his comic genius to play the 400-year old sovereign, Berenger, in Ionesco’s existentialist tragicomedy, Exit the King. Dressed in pyjamas and an ermine robe, he staggers on rubbery legs, tumbles to the floor repeatedly and performs sights gags with his sceptre and crown.

In the faded grandeur of his throne room, designed by Dale Ferguson, Berenger is surrounded by the trappings of royalty, his wives and remaining servants. He has 90 minutes to live; he will die at the end of the play. What follows is a chaotic blend of farce and tragedy as Berenger faces mortality after centuries of tyranny and arrogance, complacency, warmongering and oppression.

His dogged grip on life saps the blood out of his kingdom, causing its deterioration; land falls into an abyss and his few remaining subjects are geriatrics. His know-all Doctor (Bille Brown) and calculating first wife, Queen Marguerite (Gillian Jones), blatantly welcome his forthcoming demise. Death stages a political coup for them.

Although written in 1962, the play resonates with contemporary issues. Power corrupts, war achieves nothing, leaders rule carelessly and we seek the fountain of youth, unwilling to face the inevitability of death. Berenger embodies the five stages of grieving. He denies, rages, bargains, weeps and, finally, grudgingly accepts his fate and takes poignant delight in the banalities of daily existence.

Directed with a deft hand by Neil Armfield, Rush balances comedy with pathos in the king’s struggle to accept death. His interpretation of Ionesco’s monologues and moments of stillness is moving. We all crave redemption, a reprieve from death’s call.

The rhythm of the play feels uneven and there is more comedy and pathos to be had from supporting characters.

Julie Forsyth is deliciously funny and eccentric as the downtrodden, exhausted but devoted maidservant, Juliette. Brown plays the Doctor with supercilious coldness. As the loyal Guard, David Woods is comically addled, lumbering in his unwieldy coat of arms, spouting proclamations about the King’s health.

Rebecca Massey, makes young wife, Marie’s whining and weeping very funny. Gillian Jones, as Queen Marguerite, captures her calculating pragmatism and relentlessness although, at the start of the play, she seems to be playing a more naturalistic style.

By Kate Herbert

Mojo by Jez Butterworth, March 23.2007

 Mojo by Jez Butterworth

 Chapel off Chapel, Thurs to Sat, March 23 to April 1, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The five men in Jez Butterworth’s black comedy, Mojo, are London villains, wide boys, dodgy blokes who skate on thin ice both with the law and other crims. The play has echoes of Shepard, Mamet and the English movie, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Butterworth captures the vernacular of 1950’s East End and kneads it into comic dialogue. Syd (Lee Mason) and Sweets (Justin Hosking) look and sound like a Vaudeville double act, their rapid-fire patter zipping along like a stand-up routine. The familiar rhythm and repetition of the cockney dialect translates into very funny, dysfunctional overstatement.

Their boss, Mickey, (Brett Swain) is a sturdy bulldog of a bloke who strikes the fear of God into Syd, Sweets and the rather dim Skinny Luke (David F. Passmore). The only one of the tribe that is not afraid of Mickey is Baby (Mark Diaco), the son of their unseen Big Boss, Ezra.

Everything falls apart when Ezra’s dismembered body is found in two bins behind his Soho nightclub where they all work. A rival gang boss seems the likely culprit and the motive concerns ownership of Silver Johnny (Felix Allsop), the wildly popular club singer who has all the girls swooning.

The gang scrambles to deal with the loss of its leader and to establish its new hierarchy. Swain plays the tough and dangerous Mickey with the humourless bravado of a man who knows he is in charge. Mason, as the pill-popping Syd, makes us believe, initially, that Syd might be capable of greater things but his panic at the new and bloody circumstances reveals his weaknesses.

Hosking plays Syd’s speed-freak sidekick, Sweets, as a smiling and deferential servant trying not to upset his master. Passmore makes the halitosis-plagued Skinny a whining, obsequious, resentful victim. As Baby, Skinny’s torturer and the most volatile and genuinely dangerous of these low level villains, Diaco is arrogant, supercilious and cool as a cucumber.

Terence O’Connell’s direction takes advantage of Butterworth’s swift dialogue and relentless pace. He captures the seedy 1950’s Soho nightclub environment that is enhanced by Cara Kushlin’s simple but effective design. The cockney rhythms are difficult to replicate but, most of the time, the cast manage to embody the frenetic babbling of the gang’s drug-affected speech. Mojo is a really entertaining roller coaster ride.

By Kate Herbert

elmo, La Mama, March 23, 2007

elmo  by Ben Cittadini 

La Mama, March 23 to April 1, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on March 23, 2007

Ben Cittadini’s play, elmo,  focuses on the burgeoning but dysfunctional relationship between Linda (Sarah Derum) and Serge (Craig Darryl Peade). They meet daily in a park, at first accidentally then by design or choice.

Linda is unhappily married to Enzo, who Serge insists on calling Elmo. She is a dissatisfied 32-year old who works in the city. Serge is evidently workless but engages in rather ineffectual exercise in the park and carried a huge blue sports bag.

Cittadini, directing his own play, attempts to break theatrical conventions of pace and rhythm by interpolating interminable pauses between lines of dialogue and scenes. The effect has distant echoes of Pinter but lacks any sense of menace. Initially, it works to provide a sense of real time passing, of the tedium of their lives and their rusty and awkward communication. Eventually, it is simply annoying. The play runs 70 minutes but should be 40.

Some intrigue unfolds in the relationship as Linda reveals snippets of her unhappy marriage to Enzo. Slowly we hear that he wants children but she does not want to bear them; he is tight with his money and she has a gambling problem; she likes Asian food and he does not.

Serge, in contrast, is a layabout who lives nearby in a messy, dirty house. He slowly reveals that not only has he been following Linda but he has also been stalking her husband, phoning their house posing as a market researcher.

These two marginalised people find some solace in the anonymity of their regular meetings.

At times, elmo has charm and interest; there are a few gentle laughs, some simple observations of character and interaction and a few tests of an audience’s tolerance. However, its relentlessly slow rhythm undermines much of its charm.

The actors are often inaudible and, in a small space, this is inexcusable. Cittadini purposefully avoids any theatricality of style but we do need, at least, to hear them. Derum has limited range as Linda playing one note throughout. Peade’s perpetual motion is annoyingly repetitive and makes Serge look like a silly child.

 Theatre that attempts to bore an audience appeals to a very small group.

By Kate Herbert

Ashes to Ashes by Harold Pinter, March 15, 2007

Ashes to Ashes by Harold Pinter

 fortyfivedownstairs,  Wed to Sun, March 15 to March 2, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Ashes to Ashes, a short play first staged in 1996, is not one of Harold Pinter’s most famous or popular plays although it reverberates with his idiosyncratic themes, characters and style of  “menace”.

Sam Strong’s production has no elaborate design (Melissa Page) or bells and whistles - not even the police siren that opened the original production. This version is sparse, performed in a vast, empty space with barred windows, distressed brick walls and stark lighting (Danny Pettingill) rather than in a set reflecting the middle-class, English home of Devlin (Simon Stone), the professor, and his wife, Rebecca (Sarah Gleeson).

Strong’s direction is as spare as the space. He focuses on Pinter’s language and the intensity of the pair’s relationship. The play, like many of Pinter’s, is a battle for domination constructed around the unpredictability of sex and relationships and the ambiguities and inadequacies of language.

The truth is a slippery fish and, in Pinter’s hands, it shifts and changes constantly. Although Devlin and Rebecca are long married, they talk like strangers, their dialogue falling like stones between the cracks of their relationship. She reminisces about a past lover, a mysterious and dangerous man who adored her, tried to strangle her and ripped babies from the arms of their mothers at a train station.

Devlin struggles to comprehend her revelations; but one cannot own another’s past, despite one’s intimacy in the present.

Pinter’s language is riddled with miscommunication and confusion. Rebecca is evasive, almost mesmerised by her memories; Devlin is confrontational and demanding. Their relationship cannot “start again” it can only “end again and again”.

Gleeson is pert and cool as the cryptic Rebecca and plays her as an unreachable young woman musing on a past just remembered. As Devlin, Stone is like a prowling animal pouncing on every crumb his wife throws him, trying to penetrate her opaque veneer.

Rebecca’s violent memories, whether real or fabricated, resonate with images of war, the Holocaust, Nazis and other ethnic cleansers. There are echoes of a universal consciousness or memories of shared human pain.

This production, although it has some of the script’s hypnotic quality and confusion, lacks its full intensity, its aching sense of loss and the violence of its imagery. Perhaps this is exacerbated by the youth of the two actors. The weighty history and emotional baggage of the characters seem more appropriate for much older actors.

By Kate Herbert

Love Child by Joanna Murray-Smith, March 13, 2007

Love Child by Joanna Murray-Smith

HIT Productions

Athenaeum Theatre March 13, then touring Victoria: Sale Mar 20, Warragul Mar 22, South Morang March 24, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on March 13, 2007

How does one get to know an intimate stranger? That is, how does one handle the first meeting with the child – or the mother - one has never known? Joanna Murray-Smith’s play, Love Child, directed deftly by Bruce Myles, depicts one such meeting of mother and daughter.

In 1968, at the age of 17, Anna (Amanda Muggleton) gave up her baby for adoption and moved on with her life at university as a political activist and then with her work as a documentary film editor. After 25 years, she receives a letter from young soap opera star, Billie (Melinda Dransfield), and the pair meet at Anna’s home for their mother-daughter reunion.

The meeting is awkward – well - perhaps excruciating is a more fitting description. The two are completely mismatched. Anna is reserved, polite and neat. Billie is voluble, intrusive, messy, egotistical, insecure and – let’s be honest – thoroughly dislikeable. It is astonishing that Anna allows her to stay longer than 10 minutes.

Billie expected someone more motherly while Anna simply tries to cope with having a guest in her private, sterile, designer home (Judith Cobb). Anna grew out of the feminist revolution that broke the patterns of gender politics while Billie has no appreciation of the political change wrought by the previous

generation of women.

Love Child is an uncomfortable ride. Like both characters, we are hoping for harmony and love but the Age of Aquarius is long gone. Director, Bruce Myles, accentuates the discomfort and dissonance throughout the play.

Muggleton is brittle and edgy as Anna who only thinly disguises her emotional fragility with her crisp designer outfits. Dransfield plays Billie as smug, judgmental and demanding, her ulterior motives being hidden until the final moments.

Murray-Smith propels the relationship from discomfort through conflict into complete breakdown. There is an unhealthy blend of guilt and revenge, concern and punishment.

The dialogue is like a Socratic argument between generations. Billie sometimes becomes more of a voice of her generation rather than a character. The pair are polar opposites and, to some degree, stereotypes.

It is the final revelation by Billie that shocks us. How callous is this girl and how selfish?

By Kate Herbert

Grace by GoD BE IN MY MouTH, March 8, 2007

Grace by GoD BE IN MY MouTH
By James Brennan 

Theatreworks, March 8 to March 2, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on March 8, 2007

There are certainly some compelling performances and eccentric images and concepts in Grace, written and directed by James Brennan. However, the whole of this abstract piece is not as well conceived as its individual parts.

Although the play has a simple linear story, the style relies more on absurdism than on narrative. Wade (Luke Mullins) and Serbia (Katrina Milosevic) are 14-year old twins who were separated at age four and raised in foster homes.

The play is set on the crumbling roof of a building (Adam Gardnir OK) where they believe their rich uncle, whose wealth they will inherit, is in residence. After attending their father’s funeral, they climb ten flights of stairs to a rooftop inhabited only by pigeons and wait for uncle to show himself.

The twins are an unlikely pair. Serbia is large, loud, vulgar and belligerent while Wade is small, timid, dull and child-like. Both wear school uniforms but Serbia’s is tattered and makes a fashion statement with the addition of torn black tights and heavy make-up.

Here the play leaves the real world. The most attention-grabbing images occur inside a huge, upstage birdcage with three life-size pigeons. The Uncle, played with alacrity by Brian Lipson, spends most of the play inside the cage dancing a slow, sensual, bird-like dance, climbing his wire walls like a caged parrot resigned to his prison.

Milosevic captures the volatility of Serbia and Mullins makes the peculiar Wade a little dangerous. Despite their strong performances, Lipson is the feature of this play. He manages to make the Uncle intense yet relaxed, engaging yet alienated, beautiful and repellent, dangerous but caring.

This birdman is dressed in a dilapidated black suit and huge sunglasses. When he does emerge to meet the children, his behaviour is eccentric. He swills water from a bucket, speaks in cryptic phrases, sings snatches of a hymn, offers them something bottled in 1997 and instructs the pigeons to perform a “masque” for the three humans. The birds are his servants.

Uncle’s weirdness does not bode well for Wade, who has hopes for a family life, or for Serbia who wants to take his money and run. By the end, Uncle has revealed his past and theirs and made sure they will be twins forever.

By Kate Herbert

The Ghost Writer, Ross Mueller, MTC, March 7, 2007

 The Ghost Writer by Ross Mueller

Melbourne Theatre Company

 Fairfax Studio, Victorian Arts Centre, March 7 to April 21, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

In Ross Mueller’s The Ghost Writer, we are confronted by near death experiences, nightmares, the palpable presence of a ghost, a vision of Jesus and the mysterious death of a child. 

The atmosphere reeks of impending doom and past tragedy while the persistent, haunting sound scape (Darrin Verhagen) and dramatic lighting (Paul Jackson) maintain our sense of anticipation.

Brihanna’s (Margaret Harvey) story and that of Megan, her lost four-year old, is shrouded in mystery. Publisher, Robert (John Wood), engages his daughter, Claudia (Belinda McClory), to ghost write Brihanna’s tale of despair. Meanwhile Claudia, whose own life is clouded by secrets and lies, must confront her own demons. Her secretive affair with an attractive, anonymous man (Raj Sidhu) becomes startlingly interwoven with the child’s murder case.

Claudia is obsessed with finding the truth about Megan, her father is preoccupied with profit, the illiterate, volatile Brihanna is determined to “write” a bestseller and West (Sidhu), a Crown Prosecutor, is haunted by the victims he failed.

Mueller’s script is more conservative and less abstract than his previous work but it retains his capable crafting of a story and slow revelation of the underlying truth of the characters. His dialogue is intelligent, well observed and often very funny. Although the truth of both Brihanna and Claudia’s stories is evident very early, we are happy to go along for the ghost train ride.

McClory, playing the ailing, “emaciated” Claudia looks positively skeletal under stark lighting in Stephen Curtis’s cold grey set. She gives Claudia a vibrating intensity and fragility that allows us to sympathise with such a cool character.

Wood is hearty and entertaining as the acquisitive Robert. Harvey relishes Brihanna’s vocabulary of expletives and gives a tough and comical edge to this uneducated mum from a small country town. Sidhu is charming and languid as West, revealing his depth later in the play. Alaeyah Blaufuhs is magnetic as the ghostly child.

Director, Julian Meyrick, allows the comedy of Mueller’s script full rein without losing its eerie atmosphere and supernatural elements. Mueller’s play resonates with his themes of justice, human tragedy and intimacy. It has the texture of both a ghost story and a murder mystery – incorporating a few good laughs.

By Kate Herbert

Harp on the Willow by John Misto, March 1, 2007

Harp on the Willow by John Misto

Comedy Theatre, March 1 to 25, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on March 1, 2007

An interesting biography does not always translate into a good play. 

In Harp on the Willow, John Misto overcomes the problem by using only two short watershed periods in the life of Irish folk singer, Mary O’Hara (Marina Prior and Lucy Maunder).

The first, in the 1950s, comprises Mary’s few early years of fame as a singer on record, radio and television during which she married American poet, Richard Selig (Tom Wren), who died tragically of cancer when Mary was only 21. The second is from 1972 to ‘73 at the end of Mary’s 12 years in the contemplative Benedictine order as Sister Miriam.

The entire story makes sense when the real Mary O’Hara steps on stage after the curtain call: tall, elegant and restrained. Her composure, and film of a young Mary singing with her Celtic harp explain her enduring charm.

Although not a musical, the play, directed by Andrew Doyle, includes original recordings of Mary and provides numerous opportunities for live song. Prior captures all of the humorous, acerbic and nostalgic aspects of Sister Miriam and sings a pretty version of Danny Boy, the haunting Flower Duet from Lakme, a playful Gaelic ditty called Haigh Didil Dum (OK) and the rousing Lord of the Dance.

As the young Mary, Maunder is feisty and sensual and prettily sings Blow The Wind Southerly.  Several choral numbers, including Pie Jesu and The Hallelujah Chorus, beautifully combine the voices of Prior, Maunder and Julie Hudspeth.

Hudspeth (replacing Joan Carden) is often hilarious as the indomitable Mother Raphael who compels Mary to play her harp again. Christopher Stollery is exceptional as Tyrone Kane, the grieving, alcoholic American who, while seeking Mary’s help on his road to recovery, unwittingly inspires her to take back her life. Wren makes the premature death of the youthful, energetic Selig compelling.

We assume that Misto takes some licence with Mary’s story and certainly with the language used in the convent. There are blasphemies, jokes at the expense of Saint Wallburga who cut off her nose to spite the Vikings, jokes about chicken manure, the Irish and potatoes, the Archbishop and The Catholic Weekly. Misto gets plenty of comic mileage out of the nuns’ ignorance of popular culture and politics.

The set (Mark Thompson) is cramped and busy, the style of the play outmoded and the story a little predictable but the production is entertaining and often enchantingly old-fashioned.

By Kate Herbert

They Shoot Poets Don’t They? La Mama, Feb 22, 2007

They Shoot Poets Don’t They? by James Pratt

La Mama, Feb 22 to March 4, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Feb 22, 2007

Hoorah! They Shoot Poets Don’t They? is a really funny solo show with language and character.

It features a supercilious performance poet, Sebastian Flange, the invention of performer, James Pratt.

Flange (best pronounced “Flaaaaange” with a smirk) is alone on stage, dressed in a blue shirt and black jacket, with a startling overbite and a spittle-soaked lisp. He prances and postures, reciting or reading classics from the poetic lexicon in an affected accent.

He opens with a sexy interpretation of Walt Whitman, moves on to an indulgent analysis of Wordsworth on the beauty of Nature, then to Shakespeare and a personal view of Hamlet’s speech, “To be or not to be”. His reading of Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress uses the classical poem as a personal and contemporary seduction.

Flange is smug and conceited. He moves languidly around the space, posing for our benefit and imitating the gestures and dance that Shakespeare supposedly employed while seeking inspiration. He perches on a stool, gazing seductively at members of the audience, challenging us with his poetic vision.

Flange’s own writings include a comically banal poem about a cup of tea that we read while he sips a cuppa from a thermos flask. Pratt, as Flange, accurately and hilariously portrays a familiar type of overblown, arrogant pseudo-artist.

Nestled between his poetic ramblings and capering is a story about Flange’s mother’s weird life and death. A rampaging cow mauled her, grabbing her by the throat, crushing her larynx and rendering her mute. Nuns nursed her back to health while the teenage Sebastian read Shakespeare to her.

Flange’s father left his roofing iron sales job and became a pirate. Years later, Flange himself became a seaman and befriended the ironically named Tom Sawyerson.

This grinning, patronising character is a delight to behold. Pratt, as Flange, is confrontational, intimate, engaging and very, very funny. He creates a contemporary clown that challenges us with language and comedy.

By Kate Herbert

Autobahn by Neil Labute, Feb 21, 2007

Autobahn by Neil Labute

By Act-O-Matic 3000

Cromwell Rd Theatre,  Wed to Sat, Feb 21 to March 3, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Neil Labute’s short play cycle is a disturbing and revealing vision of ordinary people in ordinary relationships. 

Each of the seven mini-plays is set in the front seat of a car with two characters. Some are virtually a monologue, with a silent character acting as a sounding board for the other’s obsessive chatter.

The direction, by David Ryding, is slick and focuses on the characters’ emotional drive. The cast is accomplished and Labute’s writing compelling.

In Autobahn, a woman (Brenda McKinty), the passenger, prattles anxiously to her silent husband while he drives. Their predicament unfolds slowly as she reveals that their teenage foster son has stolen their car and accused his father of abuse. Her husband’s frozen silence is powerful.

All Apologies is, like Autobahn, a monologue to a silent character. An enraged and humiliated man (Dan Walls) attempts to apologise to his coolly listening wife for his verbal abuse. Her silence makes him angrier and his rant becomes an excuse for his bad behaviour rather than an apology.

Shanrah Wakefield, in Funny, plays a young woman just out of drug rehabilitation. She talks in a stream of consciousness, gazing out the car window while her long-suffering, silent mother drives. But her languid ramblings soon become manipulative and distressing.

Merge is the first dialogue. A man (David Gardette), having collected his wife (Catherine Kohlen) from the airport after a conference, painfully unravels the truth about her sordid experience with two men in her hotel room.

In the second half, an Hispanic homeboy (Juan Modinger) drives his buddy to collect his Nintendo from an ex-girlfriend. There is an edge of danger in both the incessant ravings of the driver and the silence of the passenger.

Bench Seat is an edgy and unpredictable situation in a car when a college boy (Brett Whittingham) tries not to upset his volatile, uneducated girlfriend (Olivia Hogan) while trying to break up with her.

Perhaps the most disturbing play is Road Trip. A teenager girl (Natasha Jacobs) curls up in the passenger seat next to a man we assume to be her dad (Ron Kofler) taking her on holiday. What is revealed is far more insidious.

The performances are all skilful and the plays rivetting. Labute captures the intensity and secrets in ordinary lives.

By Kate Herbert

Angels With Dirty Faces, Feb 21, 2007

 Angels With Dirty Faces
Written by Iresha Herath with Rachel Fitzpatrick
Production by 9minds

Fairfax Studio, Victorian Arts Centre,  Wed to Sun,  to Feb 25, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The first hour of Angels With Dirty Faces, by Iresha Herath, is a swiftly moving, funny and well-observed portrayal of teenage boys in an upmarket private school in Melbourne. 

The dialogue has the authentic tone of 16 year-old boys’ blend of arrogance, under-confidence, profanity and innuendo.

The cast of young men, directed by Morgan Dowsett, is totally at ease and credible in the first half. Toby (Andre De Vanny), the ambitious young editor of The Telegraph, the school paper, struggles to balance his assessable work with his budding journalism. He supports the reserved new boy, Jake (Hagan Matthews), who arrives mysteriously from a Sydney school.

Toby’s clan are resistant to any new blood in their group, but Toby welcomes Jake’s help to write for The Telegraph. The boys go to a Portsea holiday home to celebrate Johnno’s (Adam Lee) birthday. Aran (Deniz Akdeniz) reveals Jake’s secret to the jealous and troubled Alex (Ben Schmideg). From that point, their relationships all goes horribly wrong.

The performances of the young actors are competent despite occasional problems with audibility and articulation. Matt Boesenberg (OK) is believable as Mr. Collyer, the committed teacher and De Vanny captures the inner struggle of Toby. Matthews is more comfortable before Jake’s secret is uncovered and Schmideg makes the rather unpleasant Alex interesting.

 Nicholas O’Brien and Adam Lee are an entertaining duo of boyish rogues and find a range of emotion when their secure lives come crashing down.

Herath’s script is more successful in the first half when dealing with schoolboy pranks, smart gags and mutual ribbing. The emotional and tragic second half is far too long and has two or three false endings. Toby’s personal issues come to a head rather hurriedly and he seems to undergo a complete change of personality in his vindictive attack on Jake.

The play shifts focus from Jake to Toby finally but Jake’s issues are left a little undercooked. The play owes a debt to the movie, Dead Poets’ Society but Angels needs some editing to sort out its ending.

By Kate Herbert

Europe by Michael Gow, Feb 14, 2007

Europe by Michael Gow

 La Mama, 6.30pm Wed to Sun, Feb 14 until March 4, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Feb 14

Michael Gow’s 1987 play, Europe, tells two fraught love stories; one is between an Australian man and an English actress, the other is about the continuing love affair that many Australians have with all things European.

The relentlessly cheerful Douglas, played with vibrating anxiety by Travis Cotton, arrives unannounced backstage at a European theatre where the brittle Barbara, played with grace and dignity by Caroline Brazier, is removing makeup and changing out of period costume. It seems she is playing Ibsen’s tragic heroine, Hedda Gabler, complete with a gunshot wound to the head.

They met a year ago during an Arts Festival in Australia and spent a week in each other’s arms - and beds.

We witness their awkward reunion. Douglas gabbles nervously about Barbara’s marvellous performance, helplessly attempting to hide his obsession with her, while Barbara politely smile like a maniac and tries to keep his hands off her.

Director, Eddy Segal, keeps Gow’s dialogue moving at the speed of a Formula One car, emphasising the anxiety underlying this uncomfortable relationship. The two babble over each other, avoiding their past and trying to mask their unease with inanities about travel, work, Europe and Australia.

The polite discomfort peaks later at Barbara’s flat. By the time Douglas leaves at midnight, Barbara is near hysterical and he is bereft.  In a café the following day, their panic turns into anger and a fierce argument ensues. Barbara urges him to leave and reveals she has a partner. He tries to rekindle their love, she resists, he insists and they continue to meet.

The foolish passion of Australian travellers for old Europe, its relics, its art and history, is satirised in Douglas. The scales fall away from his eyes as he confronts his mistakes in judgment and his relationship to Europe is also like a spurned lover. He defends Australia’s lack of history and attacks Europe’s years of bloodshed and colonial occupation.

Brazier is vivid and blazes with an inner energy as Barbara. Cotton is ebullient and childlike, switching into a rage like a child who loses his toy. They look an inapt pair of lovers but this is the point of the story. Love knows no logic so totally mismatched pair may continue to torment each other across continents or even live happily ever after.

By Kate Herbert