Mommie and the Minister, June 30 to July 3, 2008 ****

Mommie and the Minister

By Ash Flanders and Declan Greene, Sisters Grimm

M.U.S.T. Theatre, Monash University, June 30 to July 3, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: 4 

Mommie and the Minister is outrageous, hilarious and absurd. 

Mommie is a vindictive harridan who imprisons her children in the basement, keeping them frightened and obedient. The script is clever, cynical, dripping with irony and deftly directed. 

Ash Flanders and Gillian Perry are delectable as the naïve children and casting drag queen, Missfit as Mommie is inspired. The show goes to the Edinburgh Festival in five weeks.

 By Kate Herbert

Alien Tourist, June 30, 2008 ****

Alien Tourist

By Phillip Miller

Federation Square Atrium, daily, June 30 to July 6, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:  4

Phillip Miller’s Alien Tourist is a 2.5 metre walking space pod with a little green alien riving it and talking to kids in alien-speak. 

Not only is it a stunning piece of craftsmanship, it has every child of 3 to 10 years (and me) totally spellbound. 

The little extra-terrestrial peers out his Perspex window and tries to communicate with the crowd of kids. It happens three times a day and it’s FREE!

 By Kate Herbert

The Centre of Light, June 26, 2008 **1/2

The Centre of Light

By Rosemary Johns, La Mama

Carlton Courthouse, June 26 to July 12, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: 2 & 1/2

Rosemary Johns’ play depicts the life of Australian saint-in-waiting, Mary MacKillop. 

The play has an old-fashioned feel, using formal language and biblical references. Director, Carolyn Bock, incorporates both abstraction and naturalism. 

Fabienne Parr is engaging but lacks Mary’s obstinacy and commanding presence, Chris Bunworth is versatile in multiple roles and Peter Stratford is imposing as Pope Pius IX.

 by Kate Herbert

Circus Oz 30th Birthday Bash, June 22, 2008 ***1/2

Circus Oz 30^th Birthday Bash

Where and When: Big Top, Birrarung Marr, June 22 until July 13, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on June 22, 2008
Stars: 4

The Circus Oz 30^th Birthday Bash show is fast, furious and really goofy. Director, Mike Finch, with 11 circus performers and three musicians, maintains a relentless pace. 

The acts are diverse and so, unlike other circuses in which artists specialise in one act, the ensemble needs to be versatile, performing across several circus skills.

Circus can be hilarious, risky, technically brilliant or breathtakingly beautiful. This show does the first two well but does not aim for beauty or brilliance. It is a larrikin, Aussie show with rough edges and a warm, comfortable engagement with the audience rather than the artistic, ethereal beauty of that fancy, expensive Canadian company.

This is not to say that there is not significant, often exceptional skill evident in the acts. Ben Lewis’s Zombie Straps routine is technically superb with a novel and funny scenario. The chair balancing and duo trapeze act, set in a Spanish bar, is sexy, dangerous and atmospheric. Having a strong concept and through-line in a circus act makes an enormous difference to its entertainment value.

The trio of silver-costumed hoop divers creates a simple but exciting routine with strong technique while the tight wire act is constructed on a funny and clever Aussie outback theme: an old bloke totters along the wire to a shabby, old dunny. 

The Chinese pole act and juggling are entertaining and we cannot ignore Tim Coldwell’s cunning upside-down roof walk that was a Circus Oz favourite for so many years.

I was hoping for the reappearance of Special Robert, one of the funniest acts from early Oz days. He was catapulted at the tent wall, only to stick like a bug on flypaper. Hilarious.

There are some weak acts in the show. Although the teeterboard act kangaroo costumes are quirky, the act lacks shape and focus. The bounce juggling was too long and the contortionist locked in a water-filled tank is just plain freaky. The clowns are often funny but they shout too much, their energy is uncontrolled and they lack some essential clown technique.

The Birthday Bash is two hours of good fun for the entire family – and you won’t be subjected to all the preliminary long speeches after opening night.

By Kate Herbert

Some Girl/s, June 18, 2008 ****

Some Girl/s by Neil LaBute, Curve 8 Productions

Chapel off Chapel, 18 June to July 6, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: ****

Neil LaBute’s whip-smart, acerbic dialogue is superbly served by director, Sean Collins, and his cast of five. 

A smug, self-serving 30-something writer revisits four of his past romantic conquests, seemingly to apologise for his past sins. 

His insidious motives for contacting his old flames become glaringly obvious, causing our hackles to rise at his dishonesty, self-justification and verbal acrobatics.

By Kate Herbert

Hold The Pickle, June 17, 2008 ***1/2

Hold The Pickle by Rachel Berger

La Mama, June 17 to 29, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: 3 ½ 

 By cleverly balancing her comic skill with poignant story telling and delightful characterisations, Rachel Berger relives her Polish-Jewish parents’ journey from war torn Europe to their deli in Acland Street, St. Kilda. 

She depicts their grim life hiding in a cupboard for 13 months, the hilarious European Jews clustered outside the deli and peppers the lot with gags about pickles and salami.

By Kate Herbert

Discrit Zimbabwe, June 12, 2008 **

Discrit Zimbabwe

By Simon Tengende

La Mama until June 12 to 29, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: 2

Discrit Zimbabwe translates as “dispassionately critical of Zimbabwe” and Simon Tengende’s compelling story is very critical of Mugabe’s policy to reclaim land from white families. 

The production lack polish, but is written and performed with passion and commitment by Australian immigrants from Zimbabwe. 

Ratidzo Mambo is a young actress with has talent and Tengende’s script captures some of the violence and pain of the infamous land invasions in both English and Shona, the language of Zimbabwe.

By Kate Herbert

Boeing-Boeing, June 12, 2008 ***

Boeing-Boeing  

By Marc Camoletti

Comedy Theatre, June 12 to July 6, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: 3

Boeing-Boeing could be called “Bonk-Bonk” these days because it involves one man juggling three (gorgeous) lovers.

In Marc Camoletti’s enormously successful 1960 French comedy, Bernard (Shaun Micallef), a sophisticated Parisian architect, keeps three “fiancees” – all blindingly beautiful air hostesses - on the fly simultaneously.

 None knows of the others until their flight schedules - that he so scrupulously records - collide and all three arrive in his Paris apartment on the same, fateful night.

The play has all the elements of French farce: improbable situations, stereotypical characters, exaggeration and confusion, opening and closing doors and innumerable surprise entrances and exits. It is designed to be impeccably timed, fast and furious with Bernard and his hapless, old school mate, Robert (Mitchell Butel), living on a knife-edge to avoid the women meeting each other.

The play is cute but very dated and needs to be viewed as a period piece. This production has some successes, some big laughs and a few significant flaws. The first half has some flat spots and there is too much shouting in place of genuine, chaotic, comic energy. English directors, Hannah Chissick and Matthew Warchus, have not managed the rhythm, pace and dynamic of the play so, at times, the actors, rather than the characters, seem out of control.

The three air-hostesses are highlights, with their broad cultural stereotypes and parodic accents. Sibylla (OK) Budd’s entrance as Gretchen, the bolshie, German Brunhilde, is gob smacking. She plays her as a sexy, blonde, Teutonic dominatrix. Helen Dallimore is like an athletic cheerleader as the ditzy, all-American Gloria and Rachel Gordon is pouty and passionate as Italian, Gabriella.

Strangely, the French characters are not portrayed with absurd accents although this might provide more comedy, glamour and exoticism. Micallef looks awkward as the cool Frenchman until Bernard loses control of his environment, at which point Micallef lets loose with his comic, ungainly goofiness.

Butel plays the dopey, provincial Robert as a confused country boy agog at his luck being trapped in a madhouse filled with gorgeous gals. Judy Farr misses the mark with her portrayal of Bertha, the maid. Bertha, the forbearing, critical, over-worked but perfect servant appears simply grumpy and rude. This role should have some of the great sight gags and double takes.

The intermittent hysteria and erratic rhythm make this a patchy, albeit entertaining, show.

By Kate Herbert

Scarlett O’Hara At The Crimson Parrot, June 11, 2008 ***

Scarlett O’Hara At The Crimson Parrot 

By David Williamson, MTC

Playhouse, June 11 to July 12, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on June 11, 2008

Stars: 3

Caroline O’Connor is a funny, impish poppet, with the perfect clown face. 

In David Williamson’s new play, Scarlett O’Hara At The Crimson Parrot, directed by Simon Phillips, she delivers a verbal gag or a prat fall with as much skill as she sings and dances her socks off in her usual milieu, the stage musical.

Williamson wrote this play for O’Connor and her obvious enjoyment is infectious. She plays the scatty, accident-prone waitress, Scarlett, who has the dubious privilege of bearing the surname O’Hara.

Scarlett is sweet-natured daydreamer, a hopeless romantic. At 36 she is single, in a dead end job, infatuated with her boss (Andrew McFarlane) and bullied by her mother (Monica Maughan). She avoids her dull life by escaping into old movies and imagining herself as Vivien Leigh but is blind to the potential, albeit weird, leading man right under her nose (Matt Day).

Light humour is popular – and this script is lighter than flummery (Anyone remember flummery?). It combines physical comedy with an armoury of puns and gags and adds uncannily accurate recreations of famous romantic movie scenes featuring O’Connor as Vivien Leigh, Doris Day or Ingrid Bergman. There are plenty of laughs and dozens of movie references for the aficionado.

 Most of the characters, however, are cardboard cutouts. There is no depth to them or the story – although girl does get boy in the end, in the “totally predictable second act”. It is difficult to have any sympathy for anyone but Scarlett.

O’Connor plays Scarlett as a slightly demented but lovable ninny. She is initially so restrained she is unrecognisable but her energy is released when she falls on her face, trips over her couch drunkenly, passionately embraces a table cloth or carefully pours a glass of wine to the brim.

Maughan has impeccable comic delivery as Scarlett’s self-centred, critical mum. Bob Hornery fires some comic gems as Gordon, the ageing queen and Simon Wood has a field day as rude and randy sous-chef, Gary.

Matt Day is more comfortable as the socially inept Alan when he finally bursts his boundaries to pursue Scarlett. His 1940s movie proposal is a study in movie star glamour. McFarlane is in the unenviable position of having to cook real food in an on stage commercial kitchen and he makes a very credible screen idol – or idols. Marney McQueen captures everything we loath in a smug waitress.

This Williamson is a laugh – but will you remember it in the morning?

By Kate Herbert

Moliere (Movie Review), June 6, 2008 ****

Moliere by Laurent Tiraud

Kino/Dendy, Brighton Bay

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Moliere is probably the most famous and successful French playwright and this year Melbourne sees two modern translations of his Tartuffe (Malthouse February, MTC October). Moliere, Laurent Tiraud’s lavishly designed and superbly acted French film, depicts Moliere’s 17^th century France and guesse the creative origins of his social satires that changed the face of theatrical comedy. His acerbic dialogue and story lines originate from the lives of the rich whom he satirises.

by Kate Herbert

Circus Memories, Article, June 10, 2008

Circus Memories

Comment article by Kate Herbert

June 10, 20008

Published in Herald Sun

I remember laughing and cheering Soapbox Circus at the old Melbourne City Square. My memory tells me it was a show but I think it was probably at an anti-Uranium mining, pro-aboriginal land rights or East Timor protest.

Soapbox, a political circus troupe, was the precursor of Circus Oz. It evolved out of the constantly bubbling and inventive theatre collective, the Australian Performing Group (APG) that was based for years at the Pram Factory (where the Lygon Plaza is now). The acrobatics and juggling were pretty ordinary initially but the music from Mic Conway from Captain Matchbox combined with rowdy, political commitment of the members to make challenging, innovative entertainment.

Excited members of the APG participated in The Great Stumble Forward circus training in Albury. After that the skills of Soapbox Circus developed from simply goofing around to, well, the beginnings of circus acts.

The ratbag Australian style messed with the cheesiness and rigid rules of traditional circus. The sequins were replaced with contemporary costume designs, wacky acts, new comedy and, more significantly, radical left political commentary by MCs such as Jon Hawkes and Robin Laurie.

As they got bigger, more popular, more cash, they exploded into Circus Oz. I witnessed the fading of the APG as the older, original members created splinter performance companies, but Circus was the new art form. Meanwhile, in the 80s at the Last Laugh Theatre Restaurant Collingwood, Vaudeville was alive again.

I was just starting as a stand-up comic when Circus Oz performed at the Last Laugh. I can still feel the wind in my hair as a glossy, muscular trapeze artist flew overhead. I nearly choked on my soup. O.H. S. laws would never allow it today.

I directed street and circus performers in huge community projects, for Moomba street events and in circus productions. Recently, I spent a few years teaching performance to students in the Circus Arts degree. (Yes, there really is a degree in hanging by your toes.)  These gymnasts and acrobatics needed to learn how to perform, engage an audience, inhabit a character and weave their technical skill into an innovative circus act. Being the best athlete does not make entertainment.

I was surrounded by a phenomenal, international array of Circus evacuees who were now trainers or directors. I devised solo and group acts or full circus productions that were then directed and staged by circus directors such as Robin Laurie, one of the founders of Soapbox Circus.

The sheer bravado and brazenness of those scruffy early Soapbox Circus shows created a lively relationship with the audience. In the end, it doesn’t matter how amazing your technique is, you must entertain and communicate with your audience.

There comes a time when all the decorative colour and movement of Cirque du Soleil leaves us cold and we just want them to look at us - and be charming.

By Kate Herbert

MelBorn08, June 9, 2008

What: MelBorn08

When & Where: ACOPA, 14 Raglan St, North Melbourne, June 9, 10 & 17, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Each night of MelBorn08 features rehearsed readings of ten 10-minute plays by Melbourne playwrights.  

Ten of the 30 ten-minute play readings will be chosen for full productions in this year’s Fringe Festival. Each night boasts ten new short plays by local playwrights. 

 The quality is inconsistent but on opening night I enjoyed Dina Ross’s Masterpiece, a simple but inventive piece about Da Vinci’s conversation with Mona Lisa. Drip, by Tom Taylor, was a cunning and funny twist on a dysfunctional father-son relationship. 

They vary in style, theme and quality but there is no time to get bored.  Season One included plays about choosing your own  heaven, Leonardo painting Mona Lisa and Cate Blanchett being a Facebook stalker. 

 The advantage with 10-minute plays is that if you hate one, there’s always the next.

by Kate Herbert

Yes by OpticNerve, May 29, 2008 ****

Yes by OpticNerve

adapted from film by Sally Potter

Where and When: fortyfivedownstairs, May 29 to June 8, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: 4

Yes, directed by Tanya Gerstle, makes the stage sexy and dangerous. 

It is a beautifully wrought, physical adaptation of Sally Potter’s post-September 11 film about a passionate love affair between a very blonde, 40ish, white Irish-American woman (Meredith Penman) and a Lebanese immigrant (Grant Cartwright).

The performance style is non-naturalistic but the narrative of this clandestine sexual relationship is always clear. The space is open and empty, the characters surrounded by huge calico drapes that become part of the action.

The lithe and youthful ensemble - all graduates of VCA, Melbourne - appear in black underwear, dressing and undressing as they transform into character. Penman has a luminous quality and she captures the sense of a woman who surrenders control as she is freed from frustrated desire. As her lover, Cartwright is seductive and fervent, although his fair colouring is not quite credible as a Middle Eastern man.

Public and private places, exotic or homely locations are all created impressionistically rather than realistically. A metal hospital gurney carries the woman’s dying aunt. War torn Lebanon is evoked when the Man – who was a surgeon in Lebanon – recalls the execution of one of his patients. The couple’s ardent lovemaking is like a dance as they roll, entwined on every available surface.

Although the focus is on the secret lovers, others are affected. The woman’s relationship with her husband (Gary Abrahams) is distant and cold. She betrays him but he too is having an affair – with his wife’s best friend (Anne-Louise Sarks). Meanwhile, the Lebanese lover struggles with the prejudices of his co-workers and his lover deals with the death of her beloved Irish aunt (Penman).

A Cleaner (Ella Watson-Russell,) like a Greek Chorus, comments upon the action, drawing parallels between the dirt in our homes and the secrets and lies in our messy lives. She and others surprise us by speaking in rhyming couplets, particularly during the most passionate and angry exchanges.

The unfolding of the affair reveals more global issues about religion, politics and sexuality. The culture clash between the liberal West and the Islamic East is epitomised in this meeting of two people.

By Kate Herbert

Neighbours Choice: An interview with Ian Smith, May 24, 2008

Neighbours Choice 

An interview with Ian Smith who performs in Hobson’s Choice by Harold Brighouse

By Kate Herbert

Hobson’s Choice by Harold Brighouse is at Chapel off Chapel from May 29 to June 12, 2008

Ian Smith, the dignified and skilful actor who plays dotty, old Harold in Neighbours, describes the theatre as his first love. Many years ago he performed in theatre and musical comedy but now, because he was a smoker for many years, he laughs, “I sing with a vibrato you could drive a truck through.”

Many screen actors return to the stage and Smith is treading the boards playing He plays Dr. McFarlane, a dour Scot, in Hobson’s Choice.

“His entire life has been frustration with human beings who won’t do what he tells them to do,” says Smith. “He loves medicine. The only problem is, it involves human beings.”

Smith is retiring from Neighbours in August after his final six episodes are recorded. “I’ve been an actor for 50 years and the last 21 it’s been Harold. That’s a big slice of your life.”

Smith sees differences between television and stage acting. In theatre, he says, “You plot your character, you talk your character over with the director and, sometimes, the writer. After much discussion and much rehearsal, it’s set in cement.” However, he believes that, in theatre, one can be more adventurous and take more risks.

In the theatre, he says, “You have to lie well enough for those people sitting out the front to believe you. Because it’s all about lying, isn’t it?”  Perhaps theatre is simply advanced deception.

Peter McTighe works on Neighbours as a script editor and writer but leads a double life as an actor. In Hobson’s Choice he plays Willy, the illiterate bootmaker who builds a successful business. McTighe prefers screen acting to stage because he likes “the challenge of the stop-start and piecing together the sequence.” He is usually cast as a bad guy so he says he enjoys the journey of this dynamic character.

Director Richard Sarell, another Neighbours veteran, met Smith in the 1970s on the set of the popular ABC series, Bellbird. He admired Bellbird’s excellent actors who all came from live theatre and recalls that actors learned on the job in those days both in front of the camera and by watching their performances on videotape.

Sarell, who runs an acting studio, believes that the fundamentals of acting are the same for stage and screen. He says he looks for people who are listening and likes to work with actors who can “stay on the story; move the story forward.” Young actors, he says, want to focus on emotion in their character but Sarell wants actors to explore the difficulties that characters experience in the story.

This play was written in 1916 but is set in the late 1800s. Sarell says that he selected it, “Because it is a lovely story about a strong woman and a man who doesn’t trust himself.”  He thought it was an optimistic story and “we need a bit of optimism.”

By Kate Herbert

Richard III Unhinged, May 21, 2008 ***

Richard III Unhinged
By William Shakespeare, Australian Shakespeare Company

Athenaeum Theatre, May 21 to June 1, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Shakespeare’s representation of Richard III was designed to please Queen Elizabeth Tudor who had no love for Richard’s Plantagenet lineage that usurped the throne during the War of the Roses. 

Richard is depicted with a withered arm, a limp and a hunchback and is described caustically as “deformed, unfinished” and “a bunch-backed toad”.

Brendan O’Connor captures the manipulative charm of this bloodthirsty tyrant. His leg may be in a brace and his arm deformed, but this Richard is as nimble as a spider as he capers about his newly acquired kingdom. O’Connor’s portrayal allows us to understand the devastating seductiveness of this smiling villain. Richard is vicious and malicious but disguises his evil intent with flattery and dissembling.

This is certainly Richard’s play but some fine actors support O’Connor. Kevin Hopkins is a dignified Buckingham, Ross Williams a stalwart Stanley, Mike Bishop is stately as Hastings and Dennis Coard plays a sympathetic Clarence, the murdered brother of Richard.

Glenn Elston’s production focuses on Richard, as it should. However, other elements are less successful than this potent character at its centre. Queen Margaret (Lisa Angove), whose venomous curses are visited upon Richard and his cronies, is inappropriately portrayed as a crazy bag lady while Lady Anne (Hannah Norris) pushes to find the requisite strength and complexity when Richard seduces her. Glenn van Oosterom (OK) lacks the power required of Richmond and this weakens a normally powerful ending.

The pace and rhythm of the production are uncertain at times and the final battle has some peculiar, raggy costuming that makes it less than credible. It is the vivid and malevolent Richard that makes this production.

By Kate Herbert

My Fair Lady, May 17, 2008

My Fair Lady

By Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe, Opera Australia

State Theatre, May 17 to  May 31, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

One can’t go wrong with a musical as successful as My Fair Lady and Stuart Maunder’s extravagant, entertaining production for Opera Australia casts performers from both opera and music theatre to great effect. 

This famous story of Eliza Doolittle’s transformation from street urchin to lady originated in Shaw’s Pygmalion then evolved into the stage musical with Julie Andrews and the Audrey Hepburn film.

Taryn Fiebig (OK) plays a pert Eliza. Although her Cockney accent sometimes has echoes of Australia, her bright voice gives warmth and energy to the character. Wouldn’t It Be Loverly establishes Eliza’s credentials as a London flower seller and the ensemble provides an excellent chorus of street peddlers.

Fiebig’s vivacity adds sparkle when she sings I Could Have Danced All Night and Eliza’s growing excitement at her achievements is palpable in The Rain In Spain. In her simple and stately silence, Fiebig is also able to capture Eliza’s melancholy during Pickering (Rhys McConnochie) and Higgins’ (Reg Livermore) celebratory song, You Did It.

Livermore is very funny as the cynical misogynist, Henry Higgins, playing him as an ageing brat of the first order. He sing-speaks many of his songs, as did Rex Harrison. Livermore’s rendition of Hymn to Him (“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”) is a tease while I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face gives more light and shade to Henry’s character.

Nancye Hayes, stalwart of the musical stage, is delightfully acerbic and elegant as Henry’s mother and she wears a gown with regal grace. McConnochie brings dignity, charm and credibility to Colonel Pickering and even gets away without a singing voice in You Did It!

Robert Grubb is simply delicious as Eliza’s ne’er-do-well dad, Alfred P. Doolittle. Supported by the fine chorus, he embodies Alfred’s mischievousness and good humour in both With A Little Bit of Luck and Get Me To The Church. Matthew Robinson is an appealing and lively as Freddy, singing On The Street Where You Live.

Richard Roberts’ sumptuous set design, incorporating refined Georgian architecture and realistic interiors, becomes a lead character and the lavish costumes by Roger Kirk are almost mouth-watering. The Ascot Gavotte provides a splendid parade of gorgeous gowns in peach, grey and white while the Ambassador’s Ball is so spectacularly luxurious it is difficult to breathe.

This is an exuberant production with fine performances and voices as well as opulent design.

By Kate Herbert

Hedda Gabler, May 15, 2008

Hedda Gabler

By Henrik Ibsen, PMD Productions

Chapel off Chapel,  May 15 to 31, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen is a seminal play for its time and boasts productions starring Cate Blanchett and, in years gone by, Diana Rigg.

To risk such comparisons, a new company should be confident that they got it right. Unfortunately, this PMD production gets too many things wrong.

Although director Paul Knox modernises the context and content of Ibsen’s 1890 play, this is not the main problem with the production. His editing of the script omits much needed detail that contributes to Hedda’s story and causes dramatic action to leap forward clumsily.

Hedda (Miranda McGee) returns from a six-month honeymoon in Florence with Jorgen Tesman (Tyson White), her rather dull but ambitious academic husband. She despairs of a future of boredom, living in a house she loathes with a husband she neither respects nor loves and an interfering aunt (Brenda McKinty). When Lovborg, her former lover, returns, Hedda’s irrational quest for a beautiful and romantic end spirals out of control.

What is missing in this lacklustre production is Hedda’s inner turmoil, the Freudian complexity of her psychological landscape that made this play controversial in its time and allows it to survive over a century of reinterpretation and criticism.

Miranda McGee captures only one side of this dark and complicated character.

Her Hedda is relentlessly angry, nasty and manipulative but any sense of motivation, confusion, despair or alienation is sadly lacking. Her persistent hand wringing and surliness do not provide sufficient detail to a woman who should be a magnificent thoroughbred.

The director and most of his cast are out of their depth. A significant exception is Matthew Kenny as the troubled but brilliant academic, Elliott (Ejlert) Lovborg. The moment Kenny walks on stage he brings energy, commitment and truth. The inner chaos of this recovering alcoholic who struggles with his demons is palpable. Unfortunately, he is unsupported by the rest of the cast apart from McKinty who brings some dignity to Aunt Julia.

Knox’s interpretation of Ibsen is simplistic and a clumsy set does not assist this production. Hedda and Jorgen’s grand home looks like a shabby flat filled with bad furniture. A more abstract and atmospheric set design, lighting and sound might create a more evocative environment and mood.

When a group of teenagers laugh at Hedda shooting herself off stage, it is evident that this tragedy has lost its way.

Cellblock Booty, Preview article, May 1, 2008

Cellblock Booty

by Ash Flanders & Declan Greene, Sisters Grimm

Collingwood Underground Arts Park, May 1 to May 11, 2008

Article by: Kate Herbert

Sisters Grimm co-creators, the bright-faced and deliciously boyish Ash Flanders and Declan Greene, are hell bent on reinventing theatre by genetically crossing it with trash cinema, drag acts and farce. The latest hybrid, Cellblock Booty, sees a French-Dominican nun incarcerated in a tough women’s prison with a sadistic lesbian matron. There is torture, murder, knife-fights, sexploitation and everything else gratuitous, cheesy and hilarious.

“We’ve been wanting to do a women-in-prison play for two years but we didn’t know how it would look,” says Flanders. When they saw B-grade movie director, Roger Corman’s Women in Cages, the style for their new show was born: sexy, sleazy, exploitative, ridiculous and high camp. The show is an homage to Corman, the creator of The Little Shop of Horrors and other trashy horror movies.

“Our aim is to bring liveness back into theatre,” says Flanders. “Gore, nudity, swearing - anything that engages the audience and brings the fun back. To see someone stab themselves and blood pour everywhere – it’s good in a movie but you’ve seen it a hundred times. On stage it’s amazing.”

Sisters Grimm choose archetypal stories: a prison breakout (Cellblock Booty), a revolution in a hobo village  (Bumtown) or children locked in a basement (Mommie and the Minister).

The style of performance – grotesque, vivid and stylised – is epitomised in the 8-foot drag queen prison matron played by Simon Morrison Baldwin.  “She’s huge. She’s terrifying. The sight of him as a woman is one of the best sight gags because he’s so tall and imposing,” says Flanders.

This big, bad, bold work appeals to a new audience that does not normally attend theatre. Sisters Grimm aim to provide “independent raw theatre” as an alternative to major theatre companies, in the same way that the music and movie industries provide choices ranging downward from Hollywood blockbusters and big-budget commercial music.

Their unconventional choice of venue – the Collingwood Underground Arts Park – has added appeal for their alternative, young, non-theatre-going audience. It is a scruffy, disused parking lot. “This space is a huge concrete block which is great for a cell block,” says Flanders.

Cellblock Booty promises to push the boundaries of good taste with its impudence and wicked sense of humour. You have been warned!

By Kate Herbert

Big Business by the Business, May 8, 2008

Big Business by the Business

Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre, May 8 to May 17, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If you don’t get to see clowns – good clowns – often, Big Business, directed by Ian Pidd, is the show for you. 

These four eccentrics come from the heritage of French clowns and The Marx Brothers. They create an entire, idiosyncratic world full of prat falls and sight gags. Ironically four women wearing bad suits, absurd wigs, caterpillar moustaches and spectacles play these four idiotic businessmen

As in any clown show, the narrative is minimal. The jokes arise from the status games between the four characters, their complex and silly rituals, failures and successes. The four live together. Each day they perform their breakfast ritual, prepare their thermos flasks and toddle off to work at their peculiar business. At work they engage in a bizarre production line of mad professor gadgets that produce – well, you’ll have to see the product.

At the top of this pecking order is Pierre (Clare Bartholomew). A plump gourmand (or glutton) who hogs space on the couch and in the bed they all share. Number Two seems to be Barry (Penny Baron) a nimble fellow and sharp dresser who cuts a caper and moons over his golden Sheriff’s badge.

Paul (Kate Kantor) is a cheerful sporty type who adores his gold Nike running shoe (one shoe only) and poor dowdy little Ray (Glynis Angell) who looks like a public servant from the 1950s is the submissive and bullied Number Four in this crazy troupe.

There are some delightful moments between the four clowns. Their manipulation of their contraptions makes some very funny routines. Their celebratory party is a grotesque and hilarious parody of high flyers who use cocaine, fly helicopters and dress to the nines. Their antics are enhanced by playful sound effects and live music (Madeleine Flynn, Tim Humphrey).

In this world madness rules instead of our social norms. It is the detail of the characters, their weird relationships and comic business that makes this show delectable. There are a few false endings and plenty of repetition (that’s clowns for you!) but it is a fabulous romp in the theatre.

By Kate Herbert

The Soldiers Tale, April 30 to May 10, 2008

 The Soldiers Tale 

by Igor Stravinsky & CF Ramuz, by Hayloft Project

Abbottsford Convent, 8pm Wed to Sat, April 30 to May 10, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Igor Stravinsky might not recognise his 1918 version of The Soldier’s Tale in Michael Robinson’s interpretation for The Hayloft Project.  

He stages this Faustian myth in a seedy bar constructed inside an abandoned church during World War One. Aptly, the venue is the disused Sacred Heart Chapel, Abbottsford Convent.

“The music is played exactly as it was written but the context is different,” says Robinson. He wanted a more visceral aesthetic than the original version of this Faustian tale. Composed by Stravinsky with verse by Swiss poet C.F. Ramuz, it was read, not performed, by actors standing at lecterns before a chamber orchestra.

Robinson’s concept, which had its first life in a Carlton bar, takes advantage of every arch and apse in the unconventional Chapel space. The characters become part of the action in this roughhouse bar.

The Devil is a collaborator, wartime scrounger and profiteer (David Whiteley) who established the cabaret bar in the church. “He buys sausage from the Germans, to trade for wine from the French, to buy bullets from the English, to sell back to the Germans.”

The Narrator (Frank Gallacher) is the barman and the Dancer (Bonnie Paskas), who originally appeared only at the end, is the barman’s moll. Even the seven-piece orchestra, usually separate from the drama, is integrated as the burlesque-cabaret band.

The unwitting Soldier, (Mark Winter) is under siege. This unholy trio launches a three-pronged attack, tempting him to gamble his soul in exchange for a book that can bring him wealth.

“He walks off the battlefield into this place but he doesn’t know what it is. It is a Purgatory. These people connive to take his soul away…lead the soldier into fantasies and use this to bend him to their will.”

Stravinsky’s music, played by The Orchestra Project, is eclectic and evocative of happier times, says Robinson, incorporating contentious contemporary music of 1918 including the salacious tango and popular ragtime. Stravinsky chose the haunting strains of the violin to represent the Soldier’s soul.

After the Great War, says Robinson, “They were without concert halls, without orchestras and money. (Stravinsky) could not do the shows that he did with Diaghelev - ballets with 110-piece orchestras.” So he wrote for seven instruments: double bass, violin, trumpet, trombone, bassoon, clarinet and percussion. 

Given Stravinsky’s progressiveness, he would be thrilled by this innovative contemporary interpretation of The Soldier’s Tale.

By Kate Herbert