A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dec5-22, 2007

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

The Preferred Play Company

When & Where: Theatreworks, Dec 5-8, Dec 16-22 until Dec 22, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a perennial favourite with its fairies and love potions, rough clowns and aristocratic lovers. 

The roles of the Fairy King and Queen are in the capable hands of experienced actors, Andrew Blackman and Danielle Carter, but all other roles feature recent graduates of the Victorian College of the Arts. Director Glenda Linscott remounts her 2006 VCA student production here.

The play is most often performed in an edited version with actors playing multiple roles but this version is near full length. Blackman is magnetic and imposing as Oberon, his commanding presence, statuesque physicality and= resonant voice testament to his experience performing Shakespeare. Every image in Oberon’s lyrical dialogue is clear and he inhabits the character fully relishing the Fairy King’s power and passion, his wit and playfulness.

Danielle Carter is stately and elegant as his airy consort Titania, shifting effortlessly from regal to lovelorn and from raging to seductive. The rivalry and lust between this fairy couple is palpable.

The younger performers, although they are energetic and committed, are less secure in the classical text. There is a little too much shouting and running about and too little connection to the meaning and imagery of Shakespeare’s poetry.

Nonetheless the cast hurls itself with vigour into the playful roles of the fairies. Two actors share the role of Puck (Stuart Bowden, Katherine Harris) thus allowing the sprite to appear in two places at once and to thrown his

voice magically.

Several performers double as the Mechanicals and their final amateur tragedy performed for the Duke (Benedict Hardie) and Hippolyta his bride (Meredith Penman) has some funny slapstick moments.

One issue is that there seems to be little distinction between some of the characters. The male lovers Demetrius (Carl Nilsson-Polias) and Lysander (Tim Ross) are indistinguishable from each other except by their dialogue and, apart from their physical characteristics, Hermia (Anne-Louise Sarks) and Helena (Celia Mitchell) could be interchangeable.

The fairies purposely mirror each other as a chorus but this does not allow for any distinctive characterisation and all of the tradesmen except the swaggering Bottom (Gerard Lane) are timid and terrified.

Perhaps the extremely short rehearsal period has not allowed the cast to explore greater subtlety and variety that could give more range and colour to the production.

Kate Herbert

Vagina Decliner, Jan 19, 2008

Vagina Decliner  by Anthony Menchetti

Midsumma Festival

Dantes Fitzroy, Jan 19 to Feb 3, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Anthony Menchetti jokes that he prefers to be called a “vagina decliner” rather than simply “gay”.

It certainly supplies a high visibility title for his new stand-up comedy show that incorporates some untried material with some good older jokes.

One of his funniest sight gags is his origami chickens fashioned from bar towels. Every time a new gag falls flat he conjures another uncannily real-looking towelling chook. There are four by the end of the show. A few jokes flop but he recovers with a self-deprecating remark - or a chicken.

Menchetti’s comic delivery and material lack polish and he is certainly not a belly laugh comic but he is cheerful and boyish which makes him engaging. He opens with a full-size cut-out of himself – a pirated copy – then proceeds to mourn the passing of a friend who took up pyramid Tupperware selling. It’s a funny routine presented on film with echoes of White Lady Funerals adverts.

As he achieves his comic goals, he ticks them off on a wall chart: “be original”, “relate to audience”, “flawlessly move from topic to topic”. His use of suspense involves smacking an egg with a golf club – right at me.

He is the only comic to use a fuzzy felt chart as a visual aid to explain dating and ways of escaping the next morning.  He has plenty of material about coming out, being sent by his parents to a Christian gay conversion camp, failed romances and crazy gay clubs. His description of Captain Cliché, his disastrous date who wore his white fishnets and cape, is a hoot.

His experiences working in a Call Centre selling unsellable goods to unwilling customers provide some laughs and the lunatics who work there with him also receive some jibes, including the socially inappropriate woman with her sexual innuendo.

Menchetti has a cute song to explain gay relationships to children. It begins with, “Dad’s like dads and mums like mums,” and includes some acerbic commentary on social prejudices.

All that said one of the funniest sight gags in the show is Menchetti’s new haircut. It’s like a confused cockatoo crest. Was his hairdresser having him on?

By Kate Herbert

Vaudeville X, Jan 17, 2008

Vaudeville X 

by Michael Dalley, High Performance Company

Black Box, Arts Centre, Jan 17until Feb 2, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Fluff  up your feather boa, don your fishnet stockings and a sultry pout and prepare to have a cracking good time at Vaudeville X.  The sixteen original songs are by Michael Dalley who is a wizard with wicked satirical lyrics.

Three haughty bourgeois characters (Dalley, Daniel Fletcher, Grant Cartwright) wearing dinner suits - and an occasional pink boa - perform the collection of songs incorporating intelligent and well-observed lyrics, barbed social commentary and acerbic wit.

From their middle-class ivory tower, these characters pine for the glorious Keating-inspired years and mourn the death of elitism. Each tune is another biting comment on the comfortable middle-class urban set that despairs of the upward mobility of unsophisticated suburbanites in Things Aren’t Going Well When Girls Called Narelle Drink Café Latte – and boys called Troy and Kyle.

Every aspiration of the middle classes is a target. In Backpacking, smug young travellers blithely ignore poverty while trekking through the Third World. Middle Class Welfare celebrates tax avoidance, share portfolios and negative gearing and the choral Spirit Song praises supporting “art approved by bureaucrats”.

The modern phenomenon of educated, corporate, artsy women hooking up with rough trade is analysed in Upmarket Woman, Downmarket Man. Men who marry and hide their homosexuality are exposed in Double Life and those appalling pseudo-feminist seducers and charlatans of the New Age are damned in He’s A Masseur. I Love Reading Freud With My Mother is about – well ­­– a troubling relationship between mother and son.

If you’ve ever stumbled unwittingly upon the drivel on morning FM radio, Morons on Breakfast Radio will tickle you. If you love Kurt Weill The Sewers of Berlin is a scream. If you loath indulgent post-modernism you’ll love The Ghost of The Post-Modern Dancer and Your Queer Performance Art and music theatre lovies gets a slapping in I’ve Got Something To Say.

The trio is slick, funny and playful and is accompanied on piano by the unobtrusive but sterling pianist, John Thorn. Vaudeville X is a deliciously naughty and provocative cabaret.

By Kate Herbert

Shout! The Legend of the Wild One, Jan 10, 2008

 Shout! The Legend of the Wild One

by John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell & Melvyn Morrow

State Theatre, Jan 10 until Feb 10, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If you were a fan of Australian rocker Johnny O’Keefe, The Wild One, you’ll be rocking along in Shout, a biographical musical about his short life. His life was peaks and troughs, the peaks being in his earliest years before his shocking injuries in a car accident.

JO’K was an ambitious, self-absorbed show-off when he touted himself to American concert promoter Lee Gordon (Mark Holden) in1959. His behaviour rapidly deteriorated into substance addiction, manic-depression and schizophrenia.

In biographical shows the facts are massaged to create a dramatic structure. Three writers (John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell & Melvyn Morrow) take highlights of JO’K’s life and glue them together with songs from his repertoire.

The show, directed by Stuart Maunder,  opens with an awkward scene portraying O’Keefe in the 1970s reminiscing at the Stadium where he wowed the audience. What follows is a narrative constructed from selected episodes in his life.

We see his rebellious school days at a Catholic college, his obsessive bid for the Stadium gig, his hounding of Gordon, live gigs, the tragic car accident that interrupted his career, his television shows, reckless lifestyle and careless treatment of his wife Marianne (Alexis Fishman) and his disastrous quest for fame in America and England.

The songs are the heart of the show because the dialogue is often trite and the structure of the narrative clumsy. You’d have to be tone deaf to think Johnny O’Keefe was a great singer but, in his early days, he was a terrific showman who sold a rock song hard.

The return season of Shout! has a change of cast with Tim Campbell as O’Keefe. He is certainly not a look-alike for JO’K (lucky for him) but his voice is definitely better so the songs do not have that rough, slightly tuneless quality of O’Keefe. The crowd were delighted with his versions of Wild One, What’d I Say, Move Baby Move, Six O’Clock Rock, She’s My Baby and Shout!

Colleen Hewett is a feature as Johnny’s Mum and her duet of On A Slow Boat to China with Glenn Shorrock and the family singing Mockingbird were a treat. Fishman is moving as Marianne and Holden is brazen as Gordon. The Delltones (Steve Judkins, Nicholas McMahon, Paul Ross, Kurt Sneddon) Get a Job was a delicious vocal blend. The beatnik scene, Shimmy Shimmy Koko Pop, was a highlight with sultry choreography by Ross Coleman.

Shout! is a crowd pleaser because of its songs and O’Keefe’s place in our rock history but it lacks the dramatic coherence needed for great music theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Romeo and Juliet, Jan 9, 2008

Romeo and Juliet 

by William Shakespeare, Australian Shakespeare Company

Where and When: Botanical Gardens, Melbourne, Jan 9 until March 15, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The most significant element of Glenn Elston’s Shakespeare in the Gardens is that hundreds of people, many of whom never see Shakespeare inside a theatre, enjoy a night under the stars with Shakespeare, wine and crackers and a picnic blanket.

In such a vast, uncontrolled environment (birds, bats, passing traffic) it is impossible to stage a traditional production. The interaction with audience, amplified voices and casual seating make Shakespeare’s comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, the most effective choices. The lounging crowd is willing to accept the licence taken by the actors who add modern references, additional dialogue and roam amongst the picnickers.

Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies about two warring families, Capulets (Juliet) and Montagues (Romeo). In this environment the intimate romance and deep tragedy cannot be communicated so Elston concentrates mostly on engaging the audience with comedy, fight scenes and characters. The intense moments, such as the death scenes of the young lovers, are dealt with swiftly.

The casting of indigenous actors brings a new dimension to the play but perhaps the entire Capulet clan needs to be indigenous to make this interpretation of warring tribes work.

This production is not as successful as previous shows partly because it is a tragedy but mostly because young or inexperienced actors perform the lead roles. Performing Shakespeare requires a significant amount of skill and outdoor theatre is always a challenge.

Glenn van Oosterom is a boyish Romeo. He is most effective in the playful scenes when Romeo rollicks with his mates or in the lighter scenes with Juliet but he is less successful with the more complex and poetic dialogues. Farmer could be delightful in a contemporary work but struggles with Shakespeare’s language, never penetrating text or character.

The more experienced actors inhabit their characters and bring the text to life. Adrian Dart is a mischievous Mercutio and Anthony Rive is a dignified Prince. Shakespeare veteran, Ross Williams, is commanding as Lord Montague but appears too briefly while Greg Ulfan is sympathetic as the obliging Friar.

Brendan O’Connor and Syd Brisbane are experienced, engaging performers who play small roles in the story but entertain the audience as Masters of Ceremonies and it is this component of the outdoor shows that makes them such a successful annual event.

By Kate Herbert

Don Juan in Soho , Jan 9/ 2008

Don Juan in Soho 

by Patrick Marber, Melbourne Theatre Company

Where and When: Fairfax Studio, Jan 9 until Feb 10, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Updating the legendary libertine Don Juan is difficult because of the prevalence of promiscuity in our modern world. 

Historically Don Juan is represented as a totally heartless, immoral, lying womaniser or, alternatively, as a man who genuinely sees beauty in and loves every woman. Patrick Marber’s Don Juan (Dan Wyllie) is the former nasty type.

Marber’s Don Juan is based on Moliere’s version, Dom Juan or The Feast With the Statue. Don Juan is a dissolute son of an English earl (Bob Hornery). We meet him just after his abandonment of his wife of two weeks, Elvira (Katie-Jane Harding), a virginal aid worker with two hot-blooded brothers (Angus Cerini, Craig Annis) who want vengeance on Don Juan for his abuse of their sister.

Central to the story is the Don’s relationship with his servant Stan, the moral compass that is ignored by the ruthless Don. Daniel Frederiksen almost steals the show playing Stan with gentle, understated wit. Stan is the only character that touches us and his confusion and distress at his boss’s cruelty are palpable.

Wyllie is a quirky actor who explores some hilarious elements in the character of the Don but seems miscast as the captivating rogue. He is genuinely funny in such outrageous scenes as seducing two women simultaneously in a hospital waiting room. But he is uncomfortable playing the stylish elegance and grace that must sit effortlessly on Don Juan and he pushes vocally to find the toff’s speech patterns.

Harding brings to Elvira a delicate beauty, a classical style and a great sense of comic melodrama. Hornery is dignified and impassioned as Don Juan’s outraged father and Christen O’Leary is compelling and funny as the brassy girl in the hospital and as a bunny-suited, Slavic hooker. The remaining cast (Cerini, Annis, Bert Labonte, Kate Jenkinson, James Saunders) provide strong supporting roles.

Marber’s comic and melodramatic script, directed by Peter Evans, is wildly funny in parts but patchy in others. The supernatural scenes dealing with the statue of Charles II that pursues Don Juan to Hell are not as successful as the comic business because the statue bears no relationship to the characters. In other versions, the statue is of a father murdered by Don Juan in pursuit of his seductions. However, Don Juan in Soho is outrageous and funny despite its flaws.

By Kate Herbert

Theatre Wrap Up, 2007

 Theatre Wrap up 2007

By Theatre reviewer, Kate Herbert

Published in Herald Sun, Dec 2007

Well I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit tired after a big year of theatre. Although some highlights were expensive musicals and esoteric international productions, a swag of miniatures produced on the smell of an oily rag grabbed my eye.

Strangely, the play that keeps resonating with me was intimate and small budget as well as internationally acclaimed. Sizwe Banzi Is Dead featured two exceptional African actors in Athol Fugard’s 1972 play about apartheid in South African. It was poignant, funny and pertinent in today’s political climate – and directed by the god of theatre, Peter Brook.

Some other incomers thrilled me. Seeing Ian McKellan as a tyrannical but vulnerable old King Lear was a gift and his Sorin in The Seagull was equally distinguished and deliciously cheeky while in the mesmerising Butoh production Kagemi even the curtain call was captivating. The hilarious and versatile Darren Gilshenan and William Zappa inhabited a parade of grotesque characters in The Government Inspector.

Large-scale musicals are back to stay. Spamalot is so funny it hurts while Priscilla is as camp as Rosebud in January. We finally saw Miss Saigon to be impressed by the performers but disappointed by the show. On a smaller scale, the locally grown Keating The Musical was vivacious and the tiny cabaret Intimate Apparel satirised contemporary theatre with acerbic songs.

My year would be incomplete without a scathing and comical political diatribe by Rod Quantock - and this year we had two. John Howard’s Farewell Party was prophetic and Court in the Act was an inventive mock court case that put avid audience members in major roles.

I swooned over Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai, laughed out loud at La Soiree and at Ying Tong, the play that revived Spike Milligan and the Goons. The two major companies, MTC and Malthouse, did not have much to light my fire but neither were they too disappointing except perhaps for The Glass Soldier.

There were plenty of teensy gems in small venues. Red Stitch had a strong program all year and Theatre@Risk gave us the cunningly written and performed Check List for an Armed Robber. Fully Committed demonstrated the formidable talents of Spencer McLaren and Holiday by Ranters Theatre showed us how doing nothing makes novel entertainment.

The Rap Canterbury Tales was a clever pleasure and Sarah Juli’s Money Conversation challenged our view not only of money of but of performance. I save a special accolade for the simply outrageous Mommie and the Minister by Sisters Grimm and for bold and sexy Jane Nolan in Othello Retold.

There were a few nights I would rather have spent in front of the TV. The Perfume Garden might have been better if the writer/lead actor had focussed more on Bollywood and Eagles Nest’s Hamlet was an arduous three hours.

I asked Santa for a riveting 2008 in theatre and am hoping he and Rudolph will deliver.

By Kate Herbert

Influenced, by Rowan Ellis, Dec 16, 2007

Influenced 
by Rowan Ellis

La Mama, until Dec 16, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

There is a good idea behind Rowan Ellis’s dark comic play, Influenced, but it has not fulfilled its potential. The balance of verbal gags and exploration of the grim underbelly of sexual deviance is uncomfortable.

Ellis plays Nick, a nervous punter who visits Sasha, a funky, young prostitute played by Megan Alston. Nick, the son of a stand-up comic from the north of England, has an annoying habit of making lame jokes out of every confronting situation and visiting a hooker for the first time seems to be top of his list of uncomfortable moments.

The problem is that every time the dramatic tension in the play begins to rise, Nick’s gags undermine the drama and the relationship temperature plummets to zero. Alston drapes herself seductively across the bed pouting and wriggling like a Persian cat wanting strokes but there is really no sexual tension in the room.

The ups and downs of their communication become repetitive and Nick’s gags become irritating – particularly because they are not funny. Of course Nick is supposed to be a socially incompetent ninny but, as an audience, we still need to have some sympathy for his predicament and to have a laugh.

The two actors, directed by Clayton Buffoni, never really connect with the characters and the frequently trite dialogue feels forced and lacks truth. They both look awkward, not with the material with which they are dealing, but rather with the acting process. Ellis’s comic timing needs work and his dialogue is often incomprehensible.

There is some attempt to cross the boundaries of taste and make the audience feel uncomfortable which is always a good way to make an impact. Nick and Sasha’s first interaction is when he discovers she has a condom lodged where the sun don’t shine and they eventually use kitchen tongs to solve the problem.

It is interesting that both the characters have secret sexual obsessions although the details of these are never clarified.  Nick reveals a preoccupation with his parents’ relationship and we assume he wants Sasha to role-play his mother. He also lets slip a history of violence so perhaps he might hurt Sasha. Rather disappointingly, neither of these scenarios comes to fruition.

Sasha has a sexual history with her stepfather and has fantasies of him siting in her “magic chair” watching her with clients.

In the end Influenced is an unsatisfying play that plants a few dramatic options but does not give us the pay off.

By Kate Herbert

The Pitch, by Peter Houghton, Dec 11, 2007

The Pitch
by Peter Houghton, Malthouse Theatre

Where and When: Beckett Theatre, Malthouse until Dec 16, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If you have seen a Hollywood blockbuster you will recognise the movie cliches satirised by Peter Houghton in The Pitch. 

If you have ever pitched a screenplay to a producer you might feel faint, so carry smelling salts or just close your eyes and think of England – or Hong Kong, Afghanistan or Paris. Houghton’s fictional movie travels to all these exotic locations.

Houghton, directed by Anne Browning, creates a parade of characters beginning with as the wannabe screenwriter, Walter Weinermann. Walter is desperate to complete his script and prepare for his story pitch to three movie producers with absurdly diverse tastes, politics and backgrounds. Simon is a wealthy English dilettante, Syd is a corporate US film distributor and the third is a feminist critical theorist. He can’t please ‘em all.

The Pitch is a frenetic gallop through place and time in Walter’s movie and Houghton switches between characters at will.  As Walter, he paints a vivid screen picture of the English army in the Hindu Kush in 1936 or of a smoky Parisian nightclub. He vocalises an entire soundtrack including an evocative Afghani chant, an Asian musical theme for Hong Kong and sexy blues for Paris.

He hilariously reproduces sound effects: bombs, gunfire, aeroplane, street fights. Watching Walter’s mind in a panic as he struggles to find the perfect story presentation is like witnessing a man fighting an internal war. He looks as if his head will explode any minute.

The panoramic journey is a spy story about Jones, an assassin portrayed by a cool Clint Eastwood (or it might be a bolshie Russell Crowe). Jones is sent by his spy boss, the oily Anthony Hopkins, to meet the seductive Catherine Zeta Jones and must kill Michael Douglas.

Walter attempts to incorporate every formulaic Hollywood element into his character’s journey: be more than you are; overcome a disadvantage (Clint is illiterate); find love; and seek revenge.

Between plot points we see Walter contending with his own demons about his cool as a cucumber ex-girlfriend, also called Catherine, and her Jesus-freak, recovering alcoholic boyfriend who Walter murders in the guise of Michael Douglas. Revenge is sweet – even if it is fictional.

After three seasons, The Pitch is still a very funny ride – even if it does look a little exhausted.

By Kate Herbert

Apples and Ladders, Dec 5, 2007

Apples and Ladders 
created by Sarah Kriegler and Jacob Williams, by Lemony S 
Carlton Courthouse, Dec 5 to Dec 22, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert, on Dec 5 2007

Apples and Ladders, created and performed by Sarah Kriegler and Jacob Williams, is a charming and emotive story that depicts a world in miniature. 

Three diminutive puppets the height of your forearm inhabit a world of tiny houses constructed atop four packing cases. Both puppeteers manipulate them in the style of the Japanese Bun Raku puppets.

Ludvik is a cheerful, round-faced old fella who, each day, collects his mail from the letterbox at his front gate. He strolls creakily down his street to sit playing his accordion. On his return walk, he nods a silent greeting to George, the jaded, lonely old drag queen who swigs booze from the bottle as he waits for the postcard that never arrives.

Each day Ludvik picks an apple from the lush apple tree and delivers it with love to his ailing wife Gertruda who languishes on the sofa.

These frail, old characters are haunted and taunted by a skeletal death figure (called the Knave of Hearts in the program). The menacing skeleton threatens them repeatedly, rattling its nasty, pointing fingers through their windows or leaping upon them without warning from behind the apple tree. He wants to steal not only their lives but also their human warmth, their love, represented in tiny red hearts.

The pint-sized characters come vividly to life with the smallest gestures: a wave of the hand, a tilt of a head, a shiver through the body as Death passes. There is palpable warmth and love in the home of Ludvik and Gertruda that contrasts with the melancholy chill that seeps through the windows of George’s home.

We witness their creeping decrepitude: Ludvik’s stiff and aching back, Gertruda’s lethargy and George’s bitter nostalgia for his days as a chanteuse wrapped in a red boa.

Another whole world appears in shadow puppets inside the boxes on which they stand. When Gertruda dies, taken by the cold hard hands of the Knave, she disappears into this shadowy nether world.

But it is a random act of kindness that chases away the Knave. From his window, George watches Ludvik’s sadness, picks a basket of apples, chases off the Knave’s dangerous advances and delivers the apples to Ludvik.

The evocative music of The Tiger Lilies and atmospheric lighting by Richard Vabre complete this memorable and moving production.

By Kate Herbert

Monty Python's Spamalot, Dec 2, 2007

 Monty Python’s Spamalot
Book and lyrics by Eric Idle, music by Eric Idle & John Du Prez

Her Majesty’s Theatre, Dec 2, 2007 until Feb 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Spamalot is achingly funny. The first half is so gut-wrenchingly hilarious it makes your face hurt.

Of course, if you were a Monty Python tragic in your youth (me too) you will be daggily delighted to revisit the mad gags from Monty Python and the Holy Grail from which Spamalot was “lovingly ripped off” by Eric Idle.

We even forgive the second half for rambling around like a lunatic, trying to find its narrative. The show reprises The Knights of Ni (“Bring us a shrubbery”), the taunting Frenchmen (“I fart in your general direction”) and Not Dead Fred (“I’m feeling much better”). But it also blows a raspberry at big music theatre - particularly Phantom – and mocks its earnest predictability.

Bille Brown may not be much of a singer but his demented and grinning King Arthur, the epitome of upper-class twit, is delirious with his divine right to rule and oblivious to the hilarity around him. As in the movie, Arthur gallops horseless across 10^th century Britain to the clop of coconut shells played by his mud-spattered servant, Patsy (Derek Metzger).

Idle and John Du Prez’s songs are inspired, Mike Nichols direction is inventive, the orchestra is tight, Tim Hatley’s design is vivid and Casey Nicholaw’s choreography is just plain silly. The show is narrated by a smug Historian (Mark Conaghan) and, after a false start in Finland with the Fisch Schlapping Song, Arthur embarks on his hero’s journey seeking Holy Grail. But first he recruits Knights for his Round Table.

The ensemble is impressive. Jason Langley is impish as the cowardly Brave Sir Robin who soils his pants at any hint of danger. Ben Lewis is a riot as Dennis, the revolutionary Communist villager who scrubs up to become the dashing Sir Galahad, golden-haired Brad Pitt of the Britons. David Whitney, after a Pythonesque drag act as Dennis’s Mother, is the portly Sir Bevedere and Stephen Hall is absurdly butch as Homicidally Brave - and latently homosexual - Sir Lancelot.

Conaghan revels in the girlish damsel in distress, Prince Herbert, while Metzger’s exceptional musical comedy technique makes Patsy a highlight. The vivacious and talented Lucinda Shaw, as the Lady in the Lake, grabs the role with both hands. With Lewis, she sings The Song That Goes Like This and returns with The Diva’s Lament, a comical pot shot at big-voiced musical stars. Oh - and John Cleese is God.

Spamalot is a really bonkers, laugh-out-loud romp.

By Kate Herbert

Not What I Am- Othello Retold, 11th Hour, Nov 27, 2007

 Not What I Am- Othello Retold 
 adapted from William Shakespeare, by The Eleventh Hour

11th Hour, 170 Leicester St, Fitzroy, Nov 27 to  Dec 6, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

This interpretation of Othello by The Eleventh Hour is a radical reworking and editing of Shakespeare’s play. Although Iago  (David Tredinnick) remains the primary source of Othello’s (Rodney Afif) escalating doubt and jealousy about his young bride Desdemona (Shelly Lauman), other voices share Iago’s dialogue.

A chorus of cloaked and faceless characters based on the mediaeval charavari (a noisy public humiliation of newly weds), chant and echo, represent a disapproving Venetian community that wants to destabilise the powerful outsider, Othello the Moor. This chorus effectively shares Iago’s destructive and insidious dialogue about lust, revenge, pride and hate.

This retelling is in the most part effective and resonant. The production is atmospheric, intimate and soaked in danger and intrigue. The chorus assists Iago to engineer Othello’s downfall. They creep like a Venetian fog, insinuating their way into Othello’s addled mind and his bedchamber.

This is a sexually charged interpretation of the play. Iago and Amelia (Jane Nolan) writhe and moan in lurid sexual poses, Cassio (Stuart Orr) and Roderigo (Greg Ulfan) wrestle and claw each other while Othello and Desdemona are entwined in lovemaking.

Afif gives his Middle Eastern Moor strength and arrogance. However the dynamic development of his Othello’s fraught emotional journey seems unbalanced, reaching a pitch too early with nowhere to go. Tredinnick simpering, fawning and leering Iago will make your flesh crawl and Nolan’s Amelia is a powerhouse of menacing lust. Her delivery of Shakespeare’s dialogue is particularly potent.

Orr’s Cassio is a raffish fop an Ulfan plays the lovelorn Roderigo with whining histrionics. Lauman’s Desdemona feels like a modern teenager, which clashes at times with the ominous and mediaeval tone of the production.

A dim, golden light (Nik Pajanti) penetrates the delicate, Moorish patterns of the wooden-framed set design (Julie Renton) and bathes the marriage bed, the site of love and murder in filtered morning light. Chanting and an evocative soundscape (Wally Gunn) accentuate the haunting atmosphere.

Anne Thompson’s production isolates Othello, highlighting his “otherness” in a mono-cultural Venice and making him as much a victim of circumstances and politics as Desdemona. The physicality of the performances gives the play a visceral quality not usually present in productions that focus on the words alone.

By Kate Herbert

John Howard’s Farewell Party, Rod Quantock, Nov 6, 2007

John Howard’s Farewell Party 

by Rod Quantock

Trades Hall, until Nov 10, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Nov 6, 2007

Rod Quantock is getting in early before the federal election results with his new political comedy show, John Howard’s Farewell Party. 

The show is a roast, perhaps even a vivisection, of our possibly outgoing Prime Minister. Quantock might be hoping for a change of government but he regrets the loss of the ceaseless comic potential of the man who power walks like a wombat on two legs.

Quantock greets us individually at the door and invites us to sign a giant farewell card for John Howard. Everybody writes cheerful, cynical messages.

With supreme irony, the party takes place in the Trades Hall, the bastion of the Victoria union movement. The genuinely ugly Old Council Chambers has a shabby, embarrassed retirement party look to it with tinselly farewell banners, strings of cheap party lights and a wall of sensationalist front page headlines arrayed behind Quantock on the stage.

Quantock rambles around hilariously inside his own mind, quipping that perhaps he should have a plan, (all too predictable for him), jotting down reminders for later, scribbling lists of Howard’s sins on a white board and venting his rage at Howard’s government.

Even if you are a Howard supporter, his material is very funny. Political satire plays no favourites. Kevin Rudd gets a serve (“No world leader has ever been called Kevin”), Kim Beasley is dismissed (“Only North Koreans would vote for a man called Kim”) and Mark Latham – well, we all remember his special breed of political madness. But Quantock vents most of his spleen on the little man himself. He conjures all sorts of fates for him including beating him with Alexander Downer.

Quantock creates ridiculous and funny arguments from unrelated topics. He convinces us that Big Brother really is watching and that the information age will eventually control our lives right down to our fridges and toilets. He questions the notions of free market and democracy and reminds us about the government’s absurd cardboard fridge magnet about terrorism.

The topics of satirical observation are far ranging but some of the greatest jokes come from actual letter to the editor from the Adelaide Advertiser. There’s nothing like a genuinely confused argument from a bigot for a laugh.

So if you are hoping for an election defeat but presume the polls are just wrong again, celebrate early with Rod – and commiserate later.

By Kate Herbert

The Chosen Vessel, Oct 31, 2007

The Chosen Vessel 

adapted from Barbara Baynton by Petty Traffickers

 Theatreworks, Oct 31 to Nov 18, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Oct 31, 2007

Australian writer, Barbara Baynton, published her short stories around the turn of the 20^th century. Director of Petty Traffickers, Stewart Morritt, adapts three of her bush stories for this production: A Dreamer, Squeaker’s Mate and The Chosen Vessel.

There is some unevenness in the interpretations of the various tales. The more successfully rendered stories – A Dreamer and The Chosen Vessel – combine narration with enactment of the stories­­ while Squeaker’s Mate extracts dialogue and action from Baynton’s narrative. The cast of three gives passionate and committed performances of a range of iconic bush characters.

The Chosen Vessel is a chilling tale of the rape and murder of a young woman (Chloe Armstrong) left alone with her baby in her isolated home. Morritt evokes a potent sense of menace when a dangerous traveller (Joe Clements) approaches her house.

The resonant voice of the narrator (Margot Knight) from behind the audience accentuates the darkness of the narrative. Deep shadows and unsettling, suspenseful pauses heighten its horror. The hostile bush environment is almost as threatening as the violent home invader and the vulnerability of the woman is distressing and she fights to protect her baby if not herself.

The forbidding landscape is also featured in A Dreamer when a young pregnant woman (Armstrong) contends with the elements as she battles her way through the inhospitable bush to visit her mother. Baynton’s themes of motherhood and maternal instinct recur here as the young woman’s physical and metaphorical journey takes her through a storm towards her mother who lies on her deathbed.

Baynton’s recurrent theme of male abuse of women occurs again in Squeaker’s Mate. Squeaker (Clements) is a lazy, dim-witted farmer who relies on his sturdy, masculine wife (Knight), known as his “mate”, to manage all the heavy farm work. When a felled tree cripples her, his shameful neglect of her leads to outright abuse and abandonment. The loyal dog, another of Baynton’s recurrent themes, defends her and pays her faithless husband back in spades. Knight’s rendition of the broken woman as she drags her lifeless limbs around her hut is alarming and disturbing.

These stories have dramatic potential and some of that is realised in these staged versions. The cavernous space distorts the voices at times and the production still needs some editing and tightening.

By Kate Herbert

A Dollhouse, VCA, Oct 31, 2007

A Dollhouse

by Henrik Ibsen, by VCA Drama Graduates 2007

VCA Drama School, Oct 31 to Nov 6, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The loudest door slam in the history of theatre was not to be heard at the conclusion of this contemporary interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Dollhouse (commonly translated as A Doll’s House) directed by Daniel Schlusser for a talented group of VCA graduates.

If you know the play, you understand that tinkering with the ending is theatrical sacrilege. It interferes with the controversial social politics that caused such vehement reactions from Ibsen’s conservative late 19^th century Norway.

Schlusser’s adaptation is playful and energetic and locates Nora (Katherine Harris) and her husband Torvald (Nick Jamieson) in a modern context. It deconstructs the play, adding contemporary references and music, an industrial metallic design (Jeminah Reidy) and plenty of 21^st century techno toys. 

Ibsen’s dialogue is interrupted with youthful banter and game playing while the stage is littered with toys, stressing the childish behaviour of these characters who struggle with their dysfunctional adult relationships.

A pert Harris plays Nora as a coquettish tease, giving the child-woman a modern naivete that parallels that of 19^th century Nora. Jamieson’s Torvald is a control freak with a dangerous edge despite his playfulness, a successful banker who rules his wife with an iron fist but expects her to be pretty, stupid and sexy. It is frightening that a tyrant such as Torvald and a ditz like Nora do not look out of place in the modern era.

Michael Wahr plays the manipulative Krogstad as a relapsing drug addict who tumbles on stage through cupboard doors. His emotional reunion with Edwina Wren as Kristine was moving. Ben Pfeiffer gives a comical but sympathetic portrayal of Dr. Rank who confronts his mortality.

Nora’s disintegrating psychological landscape and loss of faith in the security of the doll’s house in which she has been living are represented clearly in the chaotic noise, confused action and clutter of children’s toys at the end. 

This is feisty reinterpretation of Ibsen. However, when Nora stays with Torvald because he compels her to see her children, the final scene becomes merely a bad marital argument rather than Nora’s shattering realisation of a life wasted and misunderstood, a woman escaping from a socially sanctioned oppression and walking into the unknown with her very survival at risk.

No matter that Ibsen considered changing his ending to appease his critics. The play is nothing without the door slam. Run Nora. Run.

By Kate Herbert

(The Pilot Version of…) Something To Die For, Oct 25, 2007

(The Pilot Version of…) Something To Die For
by Ross Mueller

Store Room, Oct 25 to Nov 4, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Oct 25, 2007

(The Pilot Version of…) Something To Die For is a monologue still in development according to the programme.  

Playwright Ross Mueller creates a single role of the Author (David Tredinnick), AKA Mueller himself, who speaks about his experiences in a playwrights’ programme in London amongst other more disturbing things at home.

Tredinnick’s impassioned performance, directed by Aidan Fennessy,  makes this underdeveloped and peculiar script more interesting. He is both funny and poignant as he plays the distracted and awkward Author. He depicts the unravelling of the man as he contends with a blooming breakdown: he is sleepless, jetlagged, drinks too much, eats too little and is experiencing a crisis of confidence in his play writing.

The Author stands at a lectern attempting to describe to us his mental state, his love of his sone Sam and his struggles with the creative process while attending a six-week playwrights’ Workshop at the Royal Court Theatre. At the centre of his addled investigation of this visit to London is his meeting with David Hare, the renowned and admired English playwright.

Mueller repeatedly recounts versions of his encounter with Hare. The story begins again and again as the Author struggles to frame his recollections of the moment and to create a sense of the monumental ordinariness of meeting a hero in the flesh. The Author’s own torment has some parallel in Hare’s play, Via Dolorosa, the monodrama Hare was performing at that time and that investigates his personal journey in the Middle East.

The Author, like Hare, confronts his own Via Dolorosa, the tortuous path travelled by Christ to his crucifixion. “What would you die for?” asks Hare of his playwriting acolytes. The Author/Mueller has a burgeoning awareness that he would die his son Sam.

The monodrama falls into two distinct parts. The first comprises repeated attempts to relate the Author’s shattering experiences at the Workshop. The second, the passionate core of his dilemma, narrates the Author’s nightmare about a plane crash in which he is unable to rescue his little son from drowning.

The two parts of the drama could be integrated and the through line about one’s burning attachment to one’s child could serve the narrative more effectively. As yet, Something to Die For is in an embryonic form and awaits its evolution into a play.

By Kate Herbert

European House– (Hamlet’s prologue without words), Melbirne Festival

European House– (Hamlet’s prologue without words) 

by Teatre Lliure

Melbourne Festival of Arts

Playhouse, Arts Centre, Oct 23 to 27, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Walking to European House I peered into a well-lit apartment. Was the man leaning over the table melancholy or merely pensive?

Watching this production we are voyeurs into the home of a modern Hamlet (Joan Carreras) after his father’s (Victor Pi) death and before the events of Shakespeare’s play.

We witness private and shared moments in various rooms. The familiarity of people’s actions and the invasiveness of this experience resonate after the performance is finished. Although, unlike James Stewart in Rear Window, we do not witness a murder, we know that Claudius (Alex Rigola) poisoned his brother and that Hamlet’s torment is just beginning.

The set design is a modern, three-storey home with its front wall removed to allow peering eyes to view the intimate details of these lives. The action is often simple, always recognisable and on a human scale. Clever lighting (Maria Domenech) shifts our eye but our attention is often split between rooms.

Two servants (Chantal Aimée, Angela Jové) prepare in the kitchen before Hamlet and Gertrude (Alicia Peréz), return home from the funeral, silent and grieving. The conniving Claudius commands the space in the living room, seduces his brother’s grieving widow in her bedroom then falsifies documents – perhaps the will – in collusion with Polonius (Joan Raja) in the study.

We see Hamlet naked in the shower, in his bedroom frenetically doing push-ups, being comforted by his loyal friend Horatio (Ferran Carvajal), stroking the face of Ophelia (Alba Pujol), screaming into a pillow with Guildenstern (Nathalie Labiano) or dancing and laughing with all his young pals.

Claudius and Gertrude tear each other’s clothes off and engage in some graphic and raunchy sexual activity on her marital bed. King Hamlet’s Ghost roves unseen through every room until he leaves a cryptic post-it note with a message for Hamlet.

Laertes (Julio Manrique) disapproves of his sister’s petting with Hamlet and Rosencrantz (Norbert Martìnez) makes a giggling idiot of himself.

European House is a stylish and slick production directed with attention to detail by Rigola who also plays Claudius. The cool and sleek design (Sebastià Brosa, Bibiana Puigdefràbregas OK) is a cool environment housing both passionate and restrained emotions in all characters. The house seems to be near breaking point and there are portents of impending doom when the caged bird dies and Hamlet is given his father’s message.

European House is a compelling and inventive show that tells an intensely human story with no words but with impeccable acting.

By Kate Herbert