Becky Shaw ***1/2

Becky Shaw 
By Gina Gionfriddo, Echelon Productions,

Lawler Studio, MTC, until November 14, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:*** 1/2

Gina Gionfriddo’s darkly comical play may be called Becky Shaw, but the character we see most of is Suzanna (Suzie) Slater (Amanda Levy), a neurotic woman in her 30s who is completing a PhD in Psychology when she should be analysing her own muddy, inner world. Suzanna’s life is “epic Faulknerian chaos”, which means everything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Gionfriddo’s play deals with Suzanna’s fraught relationships with her family and their emotional and ethical dilemmas. Suzanna’s formerly wealthy father dies before the play begins, leaving a financial and emotional mess for his wife, Susan (Judith Roberts) who suffers with Multiple Sclerosis, his daughter, Suzanna, and his adopted son, Max Garrett (Daniel Frederiksen), a high-flying money manager.

Suzanna and Max squabble then consummate a sexual attraction stemming from their childhood. Mum has a young lover-minder who is a conman. Then Suzanna marries sensitive Andrew (Alex Papps) who has a history of rescuing needy women then abandoning them.

That all seems complicated enough but things get worse when Becky Shaw, the next damsel in distress, appears. Kate Atkinson is always unbeatably charming, but as the outwardly “delicate” and needy, but inwardly manipulative, obsessive and dangerous Becky, we want to slap her and scream, “Leave them alone”. But she gets her claws well into this family.

Levy is maddeningly accurate as the neurotic, little, rich American princess, playing Suzanna with a brittle, feistiness and obnoxious irrationality. Frederiksen is delicious as the brusque, unsentimental Max, giving this tough-boy-made-good a charm and sexual energy that is both attractive and dangerous. He looks after the people close to him but dismisses losers such as Becky – at his own peril. Papps plays the unbearably feminist Andrew with relish.

Although the script wanders a little, there is some fine dialogue, smart social observation and several compelling characters. It is funny and disturbing like Yasmina Reza’s play, God of Carnage, although less savage and visceral. Contemporary America is lampooned mercilessly for its mad political correctness and its greed and acquisitiveness that run on parallel tracks. Indira Carmichael’s direction of story and characters is slick but her scene changes and repeated moving of furniture interrupt the flow.

 Becky Shaw is good entertainment with plenty of recognisable personal and social dilemmas and without too much mental challenge.

By Kate Herbert

Life Without Me ***

Life Without Me 

By Daniel Keene, Melbourne Theatre Company

MTC Sumner Theatre, October 15 to November 21, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:  ***

Daniel Keene’s plays are produced more often in France than in Australia. Life Without Me is the first produced by Melbourne Theatre Company. 

Keene’s earlier plays, developed by the Keene-Taylor Project, ranged from poetic-abstract to the gritty realism of life in Australia’s underclass that featured short plays performed in the Brotherhood of St. Laurence warehouse.

Life Without Me is a different animal; Fawlty Towers collides with Sartre’s existentialist play, No Exit. It is a comedy with a smattering of simple, philosophy. It opens with a funny, slapstick routine between Nigel (Robert Menzies), the hotel clerk, and John (Greg Stone), the hapless guest. The verbal and physical comedy continues with the arrival of Roy  (Brian Lipson), a bemused, linen salesman, and Nigel’s dotty mum (Kerry Walker).

This is not to say that it is all absurd and comical. The characters are trapped, physically and psychologically, in this down-market hotel with its “private and adequate rooms”, a non-functioning elevator and not even a pen to fill in the register. When anyone tries to leave, they are driven back to the hotel by a raging wind, an incompetent taxi driver, a lost train station or other incomprehensible interference by the universe.

Menzies is a sad clown as the obstreperous, unhelpful and defeated hotel clerk. He makes a super, comedy double act with Stone who plays the desperate, directionless, lost soul, John, who is literally blown through the revolving door (get the metaphor?) arriving bedraggled, sodden and crazed. Lipson’s impeccable comic timing and eccentric delivery make Roy sympathetic and hilarious and his budding relationship with Alice (Deidre Rubenstein) is charming. The younger characters (Kristina Brew, Benedict Hardie) are not as successfully drawn in Keene’s script.

Rubenstein’s character refers in French to, “La salle des pas perdus” (the room of lost steps). It is like a lobby, a place to pass through, hoping to find directions to your destination. All these characters are lost, seeking, spinning in a whirl of ideas, random choices and confusion.

By Kate Herbert

Intimacy, Ranters, October 8, 2010 ****

Intimacy
Devised by Ranters Theatre, text by Raimondo Cortese

Where and When: Malthouse Theatre,  October 8 to 2, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: ****

Intimacy makes me smile. It gives us a warm, comfortable glow, inviting us into intimate conversations between strangers who feel like our friends. It is deliciously soothing, despite its characters being sometimes dislocated and unsettled.

The performance style has an easy, gentle, conversational quality rarely seen in theatre. It avoids any heightened vocal or acting style and echoes the casual quality and lengthy pauses of everyday dialogue. By the end, it is as if we have wandered the streets with actor Paul Lum, chatting to the singular individuals who also haunt the night.

Ranters Theatre is a collaborative company creating deceptively simple theatre co-devised by its actors (Paul Lum, Patrick Moffatt, Beth Buchanan), director (Adriano Cortese) and writer Raimondo Cortese). The comfort, truthfulness and clarity of the acting and dialogue are a testament to the success of this devising process.

Lum briefly explains that he spent an evening wandering the streets near his flat, asking total strangers if they wanted a chat. “Some people said, ‘No’”, Lum quips. Intimacy is a record of some of those chats.

Lum is like a low-key interviewer interested in the lives of others. Moffatt and Buchanan, perched on rocks that litter the stage (Anna Tregloan), play the strangers without embellishment or extreme characterisations. The first character is Russell, a 62 year-old teacher of Ancient History with a fascination for visiting Roller Coasters around the world. The Birdman is a street performer who imitates birds and refuses to have his photo taken. Adrian is a pilot who has panic attacks and Mary is a Glaswegian who suffers crippling insomnia.

Encounters with strangers allow an artificial intimacy with neither past nor future. The strangers meet, commune, share their secrets and lives, then part never to meet again in most cases. (Although one of the strangers is now Lum’s mechanic.) The chats amble aimlessly, then touch on sensitive, personal issues or veer away to safer topics.

People’s lives are endlessly interesting and Intimacy allows us into worlds normally closed to us. We are like villagers around the campfire, listening to stories that enliven and educate, making us alert and more attuned to others.

By Kate Herbert

Intimacy makes me smile. It gives us a warm, comfortable glow, inviting us into intimate conversations between strangers who feel like our friends. It is deliciously soothing, despite its characters being sometimes dislocated and unsettled.

The performance style has an easy, gentle, conversational quality rarely seen in theatre. It avoids any heightened vocal or acting style and echoes the casual quality and lengthy pauses of everyday dialogue. By the end, it is as if we have wandered the streets with actor Paul Lum, chatting to the singular individuals who also haunt the night.

Ranters Theatre is a collaborative company creating deceptively simple theatre co-devised by its actors (Paul Lum, Patrick Moffatt, Beth Buchanan), director (Adriano Cortese) and writer Raimondo Cortese). The comfort, truthfulness and clarity of the acting and dialogue are a testament to the success of this devising process.

Lum briefly explains that he spent an evening wandering the streets near his flat, asking total strangers if they wanted a chat. “Some people said, ‘No’”, Lum quips. Intimacy is a record of some of those chats.

Lum is like a low-key interviewer interested in the lives of others. Moffatt and Buchanan, perched on rocks that litter the stage (Anna Tregloan), play the strangers without embellishment or extreme characterisations. The first character is Russell, a 62 year-old teacher of Ancient History with a fascination for visiting Roller Coasters around the world. The Birdman is a street performer who imitates birds and refuses to have his photo taken. Adrian is a pilot who has panic attacks and Mary is a Glaswegian who suffers crippling insomnia.

Encounters with strangers allow an artificial intimacy with neither past nor future. The strangers meet, commune, share their secrets and lives, then part never to meet again in most cases. (Although one of the strangers is now Lum’s mechanic.) The chats amble aimlessly, then touch on sensitive, personal issues or veer away to safer topics.

People’s lives are endlessly interesting and Intimacy allows us into worlds normally closed to us. We are like villagers around the campfire, listening to stories that enliven and educate, making us alert and more attuned to others.

By Kate Herbert

Britney Spears: The Cabaret ****1/2

Britney Spears: The Cabaret
Written by Dean Bryant

Where and When: Chapel off Chapel, until Oct 24 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: ****1/2

Christie Whelan is a musical and cabaret talent not to be missed. She made me want to hug Britney Spears – a huge surprise to me, not being a Britney fan in this, or any other lifetime. I also wanted to slap her.

In this intimate and sensational cabaret, Britney Spears: The Cabaret, Whelan, writer Dean Bryant and pianist Matthew Frank, mercilessly satirise the vacuous, perky but troubled, pop diva then spin 180 degrees with a poignant depiction of Britney’s life.

She is propelled by an ambitious stage mother into TV and pop music where she flails, abuses drugs and alcohol, marries badly twice, loses her children in a court battle, is hounded by paparazzi, shaves her head, mimes on stage, sings off-key and appears in her underwear.

The charismatic Whelan – tall, blonde, vivacious, with a fine voice and poured into a little, black mini-dress  – plays Britney with a mischievous twinkle. The lyrics of Britney’s hit songs have new meaning when threaded between her life stories.

I’m A Girl, Not Yet a Woman tells all in its title. Oops I Did It Again, I’m a Slave for You, Toxic and Womanizer reveal her foolish choice in men while Overprotected has sad echoes of her domineering father sending her to a psychiatric ward. This is a masterpiece of cabaret.

By Kate Herbert

Sugar, The Production Company, Sept 30, 2010 ***

Sugar
Book by Peter Stone, music by Julie Styne, lyrics by Bob Merrill, based on the screenplay, Some Like It Hot by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond

The Production Company
State Theatre, Arts Centre, Sept 30 until Oct 3, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:***

Some people certainly like it hot, and Marilyn Monroe was steaming in Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy, Some Like It Hot, starring Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Sugar is the 1972 musical based on Wilder’s film, and the sassy Christie Whelan, as Sugar Cane, channels Marilyn.

Director, Adam Cook, casts three of Australia’s most successful music theatre performers in his slick, funny production. Whelan has a fine, bright musical theatre voice and is delectable as ditzy Sugar, the ukulele-playing, blonde bombshell who’s looking for love – with a millionaire – but always falls for the penniless saxophone player.

Matt Hetherington (Joe/Josephine) and Mitchell Butel (Jerry/ Daphne) are a perfect comic-musical duo in the cross-dressing roles made famous by Curtis and Lemmon. They enter girlishly, wearing blousy women’s suits and feathered hats, singing The Beauty That Drives Men Mad.  Despite Butel’s skinny, chicken legs and Hetherington’s brawny shoulders, they pose, prance, disguising themselves with squeaky voices, bad wigs, sequined gowns and bathing suits. They are caught shaving in the ladies’ room, bellowing in gruff male voices or sneaking peeks at Sugar’s peachy bottom.

The plot (Peter Stone) echoes the movie. Joe and Jerry, unemployed musicians, after witnessing the Chicago St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, flee the tap-dancing mob boss, Spats Palazzo (Peter Lowrey). The pair escape by dressing as women to join an all-girl band, Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators.

The tunes (Julie Styne) and lyrics (Bob Merrill) are not ground-breaking but the incorporation of original movie dialogue, characters and comedy makes the show fun. Doin’ It For Sugar is a cheerful duet by Joe and Jerry. November Song features the inimitable Dennis Olsen as a naughty, old millionaire Sir Osgood Fielding III accompanied by a chorus of wheelchair-dancing, ancient millionaires.

Olsen sings Beautiful Through And Through, a charming love duet, with Daphne (Butel) who is the love of his life and his future, seventh wife. Melissa Langton belts out a fine version of When You Meet A Man In Chicago as the domineering Sweet Sue.

Christopher Horsey’s eclectic choreography showcases the versatile chorus. One highlight is a tap routine by machine-gun toting killers. George Ellis conducts a tight band with rich string and brass sections.  Sugar is a taut production with exceptional performances from a talented cast.

By Kate Herbert

A Sondheim Triptych: Saturday Night ***

A Sondheim Triptych
Saturday Night
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Book by Julius J Epstein, produced by Magnormos and Melbourne Recital Centre

Melbourne Recital Centre, Mondays Sept 20, Sept 27, Oct 4, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: ***

Saturday Night was on Monday night. Confused? Stephen Sondheim’s first professional musical, written in 1955 but not staged until 1997, is called Saturday Night. As a celebration of this music theatre legend’s 80^th birthday, Magnormos is staging three of Sondheim’s less frequently performed shows on three consecutive Mondays. Clearer?

Saturday Night, directed by Terence O’Connell, is a concert performance rather than a fully-fledged production. This means that, because rehearsal time and budget are limited, there is no set, no orchestra and the singers carry beautifully bound scripts to which they refer occasionally.

This does not detract from the musical quality. Sondheim’s music is capably played by musical director, Vicki Jacobs (piano), Brett Canning (double bass) and Toby Lang (drums) with a cast of 15 performing the 22 songs with commitment and skill. Zac Tyler, as the ambitious, aspirational Gene, has a cheerful presence and a warm voice. Claire George, as his love interest, Helen, is a highlight with her bright, clear soprano and engaging style.

Although Saturday Night is his earliest musical, it has signatures of Sondheim’s later, much-applauded style: cunningly wrought, funny lyrics, complex rhythms, unusual intervals and some themes shared with his successful show, Company.

The story, based on the play, Front Porch in Flatbush, occurs on consecutive Saturday nights in Brooklyn when Gene (Tyler) and his pals complain about being desperate, dateless and broke every Saturday. “When you’re alone on a Saturday night, you might as well be dead,” says Sondheim’s lyric. While the single guys moan about being alone, their only married pal sings, “She’s always there when you want her, and she’s always there when you don’t want her.”

Gene works in a low level, Wall Street job but has expensive tastes and a total lack of scruples. He convinces his hapless, trusting friends to invest on a sure thing in the stock market, but he blows their cash on his own expensive, idiotic schemes. Somehow, Gene remains their golden boy, the one who gives them hope with his crazy dreams. They forgive him everything – even selling his cousin’s car illegally.

You have missed Saturday Night, but you can see the concert versions of Merrily We Roll Along and Anyone Can Whistle on upcoming Mondays.

By Kate Herbert

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ****

 A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Adapted from by William Shakespeare, by Yohangza Theatre Company, South Korea

Playhouse, Arts Centre, Melbourne, until Sept 1, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:****

This Korean adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream captures the playfulness and mischief of Shakespeare’s original comedy but director, Yang Jung-Ung, injects it with an idiosyncratic Asian style. It effectively incorporates contemporary and traditional Korean and European theatrical, clown and dance conventions.

This is an intensely physical performance that echoes the Chinese Opera, Japanese Kabuki theatre and even some of the magical, martial arts films. The movement is stylised and often acrobatic, with broadly comical acting, clown-like characters and make-up, vivid costumes and a sparsely decorated stage.

Shakespeare’s play is adapted into a Korean folk tale about mythical fairies (Dokkebi) and four young lovers who are victims of the fairies’ mischief in the forest. Shakespeare’s language is translated loosely into Korean (surtitled) and the actors employ a heightened, musical style of vocalisation.

Yang Jung-Ung’s (OK) production and multi-skilled cast are laugh-out-loud funny. The audience clapped and cheered the Duduri, acrobatic and impish clown twins (Jung Woo-Keun, Kim Sang-Bo [OK]) based on Shakespeare’s Puck. Kim Jun-Ho (OK) is a deliciously wicked, sensual Fairy King with Kim Ji-Youn (OK) as his sassy and powerful Fairy Queen.

The four lovers (Kim Jin-Gon, Chang Hyun-Seok, Lee Eun-Jeong, Jeong Su-Yeon [OK]) use language and movement to create a complex, comic but symbolic emotional landscape and Jeong A-Young (OK) is feisty as the nuggety, old woman, Ajumi.

This is a cheerful, naughty interpretation of Shakespeare that leaves the audience smiling. Even their curtain call is memorable.

By Kate Herbert

Pasolini’s Leaves – Shining Trash ****

Pasolini’s Leaves – Shining Trash 

By Fondazione Aida, Verona Italy

La Mama Courthouse, Aug 26 to Sept , 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:****

Poetic abstraction is at the heart of Pasolini’s Leaves – Shining Trash, a tribute to controversial, Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini on the 35^th anniversary of his death. It is a visceral, theatrical production by Italian company, Fondazione Aida that is visiting Melbourne from Verona.

The piece, constructed around the rich, verbal landscape of Pasolini’s poetry, features the compelling acting of Lorenzo Bassotto and Monica Ceccardi. Bassotto is sturdy, grounded and a little scruffy, in stark contrast to Ceccardi who is small, fine-boned, but muscular. They are two anonymous, non-specific people who engage in passionate and intensely emotive relationships.

Their performance fills the empty space with Pasolini’s despairing and beautiful language, evocative black and white imagery from his films, eclectic music ranging from classical to Lou Reed, and the vigorous physicality of two bodies immersed in a primal struggle.

Fragments of text from four of Pasolini’s poems are used as a foundation for a loosely connected series of vignettes. Each investigates a particular compulsion, emotional struggle or obsession around themes of love, isolation, entrapment, darkness and light.

In one disturbing but riveting scene, the actors laugh like children at play while they violently attack one another in turn. In another, the woman is stuck and cannot move her feet so the man draws her a chalk path along which to travel. When she collapses dramatically to the floor, he draws a chalk line around her prone, lifeless body as if she were a murdered corpse.

The final projected film is footage of piles of fetid rubbish lining the streets during the 1970 street cleaners’ strike in Rome. Pasolini’s obsession with decay, death and filth is encapsulated in these images, in the clutter of crumpled newspaper on stage, and in the actors’ desperate efforts to scrub the floor clean.

Bassotto and Ceccardi employ a vivid, physical, theatrical language to portray the vitality of Pasolini’s poetic world.

Fondazione Aida is also performing Peter And The Wolf daily at 1pm and running Commedia del’Arte mask workshops on two weekends.

By Kate Herbert

She’s Not Performing **1/2

She’s Not Performing  

By Alison Mann

La Mama, Aug 25 to Sept 5, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: **1/2

She’s Not Performing, by Alison Mann, has disturbing content about the emotional pain of a birth mother relinquishing a baby for adoption. However, the problems with the production are not related to content but to script, acting and staging. It all feels a little uncomfortable.

Margarite (Andrea Close) is a dysfunctional 42-year old suffering a profound sense of loss 25 years after giving up her baby girl. She is naïve, aggressive, unable to sustain relationships and tortured by self-loathing. Her feelings of worthlessness are so severe that she self-harms with razor blades. It is distressing and chilling to see her separate herself from the physical pain.

Margarite is not a likable character. It is difficult to sympathise with her crudeness, her brutal behaviour and her irrational pursuit of Annie (Rachel Purchase), a young lap-dancer who Margarite desperately wants to believe is her daughter.

Director, Kelly Somes, begins the show with Annie’s titillating sex club dance, but this initial physicality and visual dynamism disappears quickly. The script deteriorates into rather colourless realism with shallow dislikeable characters and flat, predictable dialogue.

The catwalk stage leaves little room for any on stage action. The actors look cramped and trip over the audience’s feet as they enter and exit. The most interesting part of the staging is the dancer silhouetted behind a full-length, sheer, red, upstage curtain. The aggressive sex scene between Margarite and her casual partner, Iain (Mike McEvoy), is suitably unpleasant and dangerous.

The acting is awkward, particularly from Close who has trouble finding the nuances to make the thin dialogue effective and the woman-child Margarite, credible. We remain strangely unmoved by the play and its emotional topic until perhaps the final confessional and honest moments of Margarite with her baby’s father (Christopher Bunworth).

There is a uncomfortable relationship drawn between women who relinquish babies and dangerous or inappropriately sexualised behaviour. I am sure the writer’s intention is to sympathise with the continuing plight of these women and the pain that they suffer, but the play seems to diminish the issues rather than to illuminate them.

By Kate Herbert

West Side Story ***

West Side Story
Book by Arthur Laurents, Music by Leonard Bernstein, Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Regent Theatre, Melbourne, from August 19, 2010 for six weeks only
Reviewer: Kate Herbert Opening night review Sunday August 22, 2010

The Jets and The Sharks in West Side Story may resemble the Labour and Liberal Parties, but their street battles involve more real bloodletting and actual bodily harm than those fought at the ballot box this weekend.

Jerome Robbins’ 1957 Broadway production of West Side Story broke the mould for musicals when those brawling street kids –the white Jets and Hispanic Sharks – burst on stage performing Robbins’ brutal, primitive choreography to Leonard Bernstein’s pounding, dramatic score. Arthur Laurents’ gritty narrative about gangs struggling for power is based on Shakespeare’s warring Capulet and Montague families, and Stephen Sondheim’s cunning and emotional lyrics illuminate the characters and story.

Joey McKneely directs this production, reproducing Robbins’ dynamic, athletic choreography with a highly trained, muscular chorus of dancer-singers. They effectively recreate the lusty street battles of the Prologue and The Rumble, and the sexy, latin moves in Dance at the Gym. The versatile band plays Bernstein’s astounding, energetic score that incorporates orchestral, latin and jazz styles.

The cast competes with our memories of the movie cast, but they delight and challenge us with their character interpretations. Tony (Josh Piterman) and Maria (Julie Goodwin), like Romeo and Juliet, are central to the violence that erupts between their respective cultural groups.

There is electricity between Piterman and Goodwin who sing the impassioned romantic duet, Tonight, and the beautiful, plaintive Somewhere. Piterman sings the tender ballad Maria, and Goodwin enjoys the girlish, playful I Feel Pretty.

Alinta Chidzey, as the feisty, vivacious Anita, sings the exuberant (I Want to Live In) America in the role made famous by Chita Riviera and Rita Moreno.

The aggressively chest-thrusting, macho gang members are played by Dan Hamill as Action, Rohan Browne as tough guy Riff, Nigel Turner-Carroll as Bernardo, Brendan Yeates as Diesel and Turanga Merito as Chino. The Jets are entertaining when singing the tricky lyrics of Gee Officer Krupke by wordsmith, Sondheim.

West Side Story is a musical masterpiece and this production revives some of its stirring, musical romance and passion, its choreographic vigour, its tragic, urban landscape and lives cut short by violence and racism.

West Side Story runs for a limited, six week season at the Regent Theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Twelfth Night **

Twelfth Night 

By William Shakespeare, Bell Shakespeare Company

 Regional Arts Centres, then Playhouse from Sept 1 to 1, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:**

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a dark romantic-comedy. A subtle balance of darkness and comedy is essential to its success. Director, Lee Lewis, counterpoints tragedy with broad farce and makes several crucial errors in this production that throw out the balance.

Lewis starts the play in a non-theatrical way. Seven actors enter in silence and darkness, their torches adding eerie light to the huge, central mound of abandoned clothing and surrounding packing boxes.  They wander aimlessly, grubby and dejected, watching bushfires news footage. The only woman (Andrea Demetriades OK) weeps suddenly while the men look on helplessly. They are displaced fire victims arriving in a safe location.

An old man (Max Cullen) finds a book –Twelfth Night. They take turns reading snippets without inflection or characterisation. Suddenly, each begins “acting” as characters. The play begins and the bushfire theme is lost, apart from their costumes and piles of detritus.

Twelfth Night begins with Viola shipwrecked and rescued on the shore of Illyria, believing her twin brother, Sebastian (Adam Booth), drowned and mourning his loss. Disguising herself as a boy, Cesario, she becomes servant to suave Count Orsino (Elan Zavelsky (OK)) and falls in love with him. But must carry his love missives to Olivia (Kit Brookman) who falls in love with Cesario/Viola.

It is a play about mistaken identity, love, grief and redemption.  Lewis’ vision of fire victims performing the play works in theory, but the fire context is lost after 15 minutes. Despite one oblique reference, the notion of fire victims diverting themselves from their predicament is not reincorporated. Would it have made more sense to use a boat disaster or flood if altering the context of the play?

The show took off when Cullen, as Feste, Olivia’s Fool, sang St. James’ Infirmary and the audience applauded. There are some funny slapstick routines, especially when the naughty servants are hiding in the tree to trick puritanical Malvolio (Ben Wood) and Brent Hill is particularly entertaining as Maria.  

However, cross-gender casting muddies the characters; the dialogue lack clarity, being often shouted or too fast; the obtrusive pile of clothing pushes action away from the strongest, central stage position; and actors disappear when in front of its motley colours. It works best when they perform on it during the clown scenes.

This production has positive intentions but it ends up disrespecting fire victims, the play, the writer and the audience.

By Kate Herbert

The Boy From Oz ***

Todd McKenney stars as Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz 

Songs by Peter Allen, book by Nick Enright, by Production Company

 State Theatre, until Aug 22, 2010 with return season in Jan 2011

Reviewed by Kate Herbert

• August 19, 2010 12:00AM
• 4 comments

IF you sing along or play your mime maracas to I Go to Rio on the radio, you'll love The Boy From Oz. 

And, if you are a fan, or even a foe, of Todd McKenney on Dancing With The Stars, you can toss roses (or something harder) at the stage as McKenney reprises his role as Australia's absurdly camp expatriate performer and songwriter Peter Allen.

This new concert version opened on Wednesday night and a mischievous McKenney gleefully prances, minces and shakes his maracas and sequined loud shirts, looking totally at home as Peter Allen, having successfully performed the role in the original, late `90s Aussie production. Hugh Jackman replaced him on Broadway.

The clever book, written by Nick Enright, depicts the light and shade of Allen's life. We see the child's budding showmanship, his rise to stardom, marriage to and divorce from Liza Minnelli, the death of his male partner and his father's suicide.

Veteran musical star Nancye Hayes provides taut and sensitive direction, weaving Andrew Hallsworth's vivacious choreography among the narrative.

 Musical director John Foreman leads a tight band in a repertoire featuring Allen's best loved tunes, including Quiet Please There's a Lady on Stage, Everything Old is New Again, Tenterfield Saddler, I Still Call Australia Home and a sassy, Latin, carnival-inspired version of I Go To Rio.

The inimitable Christen O'Leary, as Judy Garland, captures the tremulous, tottering star in her final days, singing All I Wanted Was The Dream. Fem Belling captures Liza Minnelli's spirit in Sure Thing Baby, a Bob Fosse-inspired Cabaret scene. David Harris, as Allen's partner, sings a heart-wrenchingly beautiful version of I Honestly Love You and Robyn Arthur is impassioned when singing Don't Cry Out Loud as Allen's supportive mum.

The chorus of dancer-singers, including a special trio of talented gals, is delectable.

McKenney is dynamic and versatile as Allen but he shares the lead with Allen's memorable songs. The Boy From Oz is one of a few Australian-born musicals to make it overseas and it is a suitable homage to Peter Allen's exceptional body of work and flamboyant personality.

The Boy From Oz runs at the State Theatre until August 22 and will return for another season in January.

Mary Poppins Article

Mary Poppins Strikes The Right Chord

Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne, from July 29, 2010

Arts News article by Kate Herbert
Star rating: *****

What makes Mary Poppins so freakishly successful? Did the GFC depress us so badly that we are in such desperate need of magic in our lives? Is raising kids so tough now that, like the beleaguered Banks’ family, we crave someone like Mary Poppins who whips families into shape and solves domestic problems? We need a Super Nanny who, with a finger snap and “spit, spot, spick and span”, tidies the kitchen.

The children of the 60s, fans of the movie, are now taking their children to the musical. The show is the spoonful of sugar, the antidote for a world that faces wars, increasing violence, repression, self-centredness and greed. For three hours, anything is possible when Mary transports us into her cosy, enchanted world where rules make the world better, not worse.

Musical aficionados, including producer Cameron Mackintosh, and original songwriter, Richard Sherman, agree that our Melbourne production is the best, topping Broadway and London. As the new song says, it’s Practically Perfect. When I met them after the curtain call, song-writing duo Anthony Drewe and George Stiles looked dazed. At the after-party, Richard Sherman told me that the “creatives” cried for joy at the success of Melbourne’s production.

Perhaps its phenomenal success is also due to our exceptional Australian cast and the new star in the musical theatre firmament, Verity Hunt-Ballard. She is delectable as the mysterious, conceited and acerbic Mary and is “the triple threat” (sings, dances, acts). Her soprano is crystal clear; her character a perfect blend of prim, mischievous, pert and bossy; her comic timing is impeccable; and she maintains Mary’s poise and cheekiness while dancing complicated routines.

Our casting is ideal because Melbourne had an abundance of stars available whereas Broadway and West End productions competed against dozens of shows for their stars. Mackintosh said on Melbourne radio that our production is blessed with Australian leads that became stars in his shows. These include: Philip Quast (Javert in Les Miserables, Australia and London), Marina Prior (Phantom, Les Mis), Debra Byrne (Cats, Les Mis, Sunset Boulevard) and Judi Connelli (opera and musicals).

Mackintosh’s history of musical hits is another ingredient in the recipe for success. For Poppins, he wrested the stage rights from Australia’s own P.L. Travers then struck an unprecedented co-production deal with Disney executive, Tom Schumacher. He appointed Oscar-winning screenwriter, Julian Fellowes, to adapt Travers’ original stories into a cunningly wrought and coherent new script with interwoven narrative threads, charming characters, witty dialogue and moving stories.

Mackintosh engaged Drewe and Stiles to write new songs, including the singable Practically Perfect and Anything Can Happen. These fit seamlessly with the Shermans’ unforgettable classics: Chim Chim Cher-ee, A Spoonful of Sugar, Let’s Go Fly A Kite and Jolly Holiday.

Director Richard Eyre creates a cohesive, rollicking whole. The transformational set transports us from the Banks’ staid, domestic home into Bert’s pastel painting of a technicolour park with dancing statues, or to visit eccentric characters in gelati-coloured costumes singing Supercalifagilistic.

During the Great Depression and World Wars, audiences sought escapist entertainment as a diversion from dire circumstances. Nothing has changed. When Mary literally flies over our heads, she allows us to leave the real world outside in the cold. Poppins not only has supercalifragilistic production values, but it strikes the right chord at the right time.

By Kate Herbert

Mary Poppins *****

 Mary Poppins 

Her Majesty’s Theatre, (Opening night-Thurs July 29, 2010)

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:***** (Yes, 5)

 (This review was unpublished in the Herald Sun after opening night but these are some thoughts on this exceptional production)

A new star is born in the musical theatre firmament. Verity Hunt-Ballard is Practically Perfect, as she sings, in every way for the role. She is what is known as “the triple threat”: sings, dances and acts. 

Her soprano is bright and crystal-clear, her character is a perfect blend of prim and mischievous, pert and bossy. Her comic timing is impeccable in both physical and verbal gags, she dances up a storm, maintaining Mary’s poise and cheekiness as she performs complicated routines.

Mary Poppins comes to life and even the creatives and producers of this production state categorically that not only is she the best Poppins they’ve seen, but this is the best cast in the six year history of the stage show.

This Poppins is the super-nanny who, with a spoonful of sugar, a snap of her fingers and a “spit, spot, spick and span” makes the kitchen tidy and the toys tuck themselves away.

The magic of the movie is present but it is even more spectacular because we see it immediately before us. Crowley’s set design is transformational, transporting us from the proper and staid domestic home of the Banks into Bert’s pastel painting of a technicolour park as it comes to life with ballet dancing statues. 

Mrs. Corry Conversation Shop is populated with eccentric characters is exceptional costumes who perform with Mary and Bert the supercalifagilistic dance routine and song.

Philip Quast as Mr Banks is commanding and accomplished with a fine resonant voice and a suitable thawing of his icy demeanour. Marina Prior captures our sympathy with Mrs Banks, the former actress who craves more time with her family. 

As the children, Jane and Michael, Hayley Edwards and Kurtis Papadinis were natural, playful and without that glossy artificiality of stage children.

Sally-Anne Upton funny, bold and booming as Mrs Brill and Judi Connelli’s bullying nanny Andrew is a treat. Rickerby awkward and hilarious in the slaptick kitchen scene.

Matt Lee is perky and charming as cockney Bert and stuns us with his dancing on the ceiling while Debra Byrne is poignant and in fine voice in her cameo as the Bird Woman.

This is a stunningly polished and wildly entertaining production that beats all other international productions to date - and that's according to the show's creative team themselves.

By Kate Herbert

Songs From The Middle****1/2

Songs From The Middle

By Eddie Perfect and The Brodsky Quartet, Melbourne Cabaret Festival

Where and When: South Melbourne Town Hall, 25-26 July

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: ****1/2

Eddie Perfect’s passionate voice brings tears to my eyes. It is thrilling. His witty, ironic lyrics make me laugh until I hurt. When you blend his soaring vocal tones, charm and wit with the silky, sexy strings of The Brodsky Quartet, additional musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music and arrangements by Iain Grandage, the result is a cabaret masterpiece.

Songs From The Middle is a collection of songs about Mentone ­ yes, Mentone, that bayside suburb that is neither glossy, well-heeled Brighton nor the tranquil Mornington Peninsula. Eddie grew up there, went to St. school there, fell in love, visited to malls and Bunnings there. He left Mentone in anger but this time, he sings, “I’m leaving in peace.”

The relentlessly prosaic quality of life in Mentone stands in stark contrast to the complexity of Grandage’s arrangements, the sheer beauty of the strings plus percussion, wind instruments and piano. But, mixed with the pure ordinariness of Eddie’s memories and the banality of the stories is a wistfulfulness for the lost past, a social commentary on the suburbs and an honouring of the lives that ordinary people lead.

The show is about personal history so Perfect begins with a witty lament for the loss of the simple life in (I Liked It Better) The Way It Was. He follows it with Frankston Line, the pulsating, percussive song that echoes the rattle and clunk of a train ride, in the voice of a disenfranchised, young vandal who tags (graffiti) his signature on every station along the Frankston train line.

There you will recognise if you know Mentone (I do) such as Bunnings, Nepean Highway, Mentone Beach. There are poignant memories of young love including Plummer Road that is about a storm water drain and a girl that lived on the street. There is a sweet instrumental dedicated to Susan Morgan, a childhood crush who passed away as a young adult. Then Perfect makes us roar laughing with a song about love falling apart like an IKEA shelf in I Wanna Go Home.

In What Are We To Do?, aliens land in Mentone in 1992 and no one knows what to do, including the Mayor. The aliens realise how boring the life is in Mentone and fly away leaving everyone changed.

The finale is a hauntingly simple anthem to Mentone and we get sing along with Perfect and, miraculously, The Brodsky Quartet. It is a musically scintillating show, with charm, skill and heart.

By Kate Herbert

Working – A Musical ***

Working - A Musical

 Adapted from Studs Terkel by Stephen Schwartz & Nina Faso, songs by James Taylor, Craig Carnelia, Micki Grant, Mary Rodgers & Susan Birkenhead

Chapel of Chapel, Prahran, Melbourne, July 18 to 31, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:***

If you thought that your working life was too boring to be art, think again. The dramatis personae is Working include: iron worker, parking attendant, waitress, cleaners, receptionists, truck driver, fireman, factory worker, stonemason, checkout chick, housewife, retiree, and a teacher who is the only middle-class professional.

Group and solo songs are interwoven with monologues about work that are adapted from Studs Terkel’s 1974 oral history interviews with American workers. The workers grab our attention with rousing chorus numbers including Hey, Somebody, Traffic Jam, and the finale, Something to Point To. A six-piece, on-stage band, lad by Daniel Heskett, gives a fairly tight performance, although the sound mix was a little loose.

Most of the songs are celebrations of the workers’ pride in their jobs and their determination to overcome challenges despite some suffering despair. This production, directed by Dione Joseph, is sponsored by Beyond Blue and incorporates projected information about helping colleagues with depression. These notes are informative although they sometimes distract from the characters or distort their message.

The structure of the show is a little unbalanced with more monologues than songs. The acting ability of some of the cast is limited (most come from amateur musicals) but the songs carry the show.

There are a few stand-out performances. Christian Cavallo has a versatile voice and compelling presence, playing three hilarious, detailed characters. He belts out a cool blues in Lovin’ Al as the parking attendant, is poignant as Roberto, singing Un Mejor Dia Vendra (A Better Day Will Come), and is funny and scary as the psychopathic copy-boy.

Rachel Collins is a sassy performer with a big voice singing I’m Just Movin’ as checkout chick, Babe, and is moving as Grace, the down-trodden, suitcase maker. Todd Morgan is engaging as both the cheeky mailman and a bratty, ambitious school-leaver, while David Barclay has a rock band vocal quality and matching looks.

Some of the characters break your heart but most challenge us to see their work as valuable and joyful. This is a show with heart that supports an important charity.

By Kate Herbert

The King and I ***1/2

The King and I

By Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II, by The Production Company

State Theatre, Arts Centre, until July 15 to 25, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: ***1/2

The Arts Centre whistles a happy tune during Rodgers and Hammerstein’s much-loved musical, The King and I. The enthusiastic crowd hums along with the impressive repertoire of evergreen tunes including: I Whistle a Happy Tune, Hello Young Lovers, Getting to Know You, We Kiss in a Shadow, Something Wonderful and the joyful Shall We Dance? Remember the movie with Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr?

It is an exotic romance about the King of Siam (Juan Jackson) who introduces Western culture to his country by employing the plain-speaking, elegant, English widow, Anna Leonowens (Chelsea Gibb), to tutor his dozens of children and wives in his Royal Palace. It is timeless and timely, dealing with culture clash, resistance to modernisation and colonialism.

The muscular, youthful Jackson looks striking as the arrogant, child-like King struggling to defend outmoded traditions. Jackson’s voice is warm and resonant and his character is most effective when he sings. Gibb is suitably bossy and proper as Anna, enunciating with rounded, English vowels. However, Anna’s brisk speaking style transfers into a slightly brittle vocal tone in Gibb’s singing.

The show starts slowly but takes off by interval.  Director, Terence O’Connell, and musical director, Peter Casey, stage this engaging musical with a versatile, on-stage band, Alana Scanlan’s Asian-influenced choreography, an exotic set (Kathryn Sproul) and vivid costumes (Kim Bishop).

One highlight is Silvie Paladino’s perfectly controlled, poignant rendition of Something Wonderful as Lady Thiang, the King’s loyal, number-one wife. Another is The Little House of Uncle Tom, a play within the play, narrated by little Tuptim (Emily Xiao Wang). O’Connell combines deceptively simple, theatrical devices, Asian imagery and clever choreography to tell a story of love, slavery, escape and death that echoes the story of the King’s oppression of Tuptim.

Adrian Li Donni and Xiao Wang are in fine voice as the star-crossed lovers, George Henare is commanding as the traditionalist Kralahome, and there are crowds of cute children to make us smile and coo.

By Kate Herbert

Dead Man’s Cell Phone ***

Dead Man’s Cell Phone

By Sarah Ruhl, Melbourne Theatre Company

 Sumner Theatre, MTC, July 2 to August 7, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:***

Do irritating ring tones and mindless mobile phone chatter drive you to thoughts of bodily harm? In Sarah Ruhl’s black comedy, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Jean (Lisa McCune) politely answers the persistently ringing phone of a stranger, Gordon, (John Adam) who is seated at the next table in a café.

After answering the first call, she discovers that the man is dead in his chair then calls for help – on his phone; a reasonable reaction, but her ensuing actions are totally bonkers. She chats to Gordon’s body while waiting for help. Still rational? She continues to answer keeps Gordon’s calls from his mother (Sue Jones), wife (Sarah Sutherland) and colleagues, telling them he will call back or breaking news of his death. Still sounding plausible?

Jean then develops elaborate lies about being Gordon’s colleague, accepts invitations to visit the grieving family, meets with the mysterious lover (Emma Jackson) and invents comforting stories about Gordon’s last words about each of them. And she’s still answering his calls, insisting that Gordon left his phone to her as his last wish. Now, does she sound bonkers?

The idea is eccentric and funny, and some of Ruhl’s dialogue is hilarious. The cast, directed by Peter Evans,  has impeccable comic timing, capturing the eccentricity of the heightened, comical characters and plunging headlong into the mad world of the play. Gordon’s family dynamic makes Jean’s fantasies seem tame.

McCune is a charming, quietly funny Jean, making her a mousey, obliging, angel of mercy struggling to manage her web of white lies. Jones has fun portraying Mrs. Gottlieb, Gordon’s controlling mother, as a comically repellent, eccentric, selfish bully. As her ignored second son, Dwight, Daniel Frederiksen plays the family wimp with relish.

Sutherland tosses her blonde mane and totters drunkenly on high heels as Hermia, Gordon’s privileged but abandoned wife, while Jackson is exotic and sexy as Gordon’s Hispanic lover. Adam finally appears as the charismatic, egotistical Gordon in the final scenes, revealing Gordon’s murky, immoral, money-spinning role in organ trafficking.

Despite the marvellous performances, Ruhl’s script, by the end, feels contrived and lacks a clear dramatic structure and narrative arc, not because of its leaps of fantasy (inaccurately described as “magic realism”), but because even absurd narratives require an inner logic. The style is inconsistent, lurching from a commentary on contemporary life and phone etiquette to absurd comedy or existentialist drama. Versatile actors make this production entertaining.

By Kate Herbert

Fame the Musical ***

Fame the Musical
Conceived by David De Silva, Book by Jose Fernandez, Lyrics by Jacques Levy, Music by Steve Margoshes

 Regent Theatre, Melbourne, from April 2, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:***

Fame the Musical relies heavily on the success of the 80s movie and its title song, Fame, to attract an audience. Although it is a musical, its feature is the impassioned and high-energy dancing. The vibrant cast of young dancers seem to be pumped on hormones and caffeine. The scent of adolescent testosterone is in the air.

The songs are forgettable, with cheesy lyrics and uninspiring tunes – apart from Fame itself, which appears early in the show in an abbreviated version, then in its full form as a rousing curtain call finale. Dean Pitchford and Michael Gore wrote a spectacularly successful and memorable tune in Fame.

The problem is that Pitchford and Gore wrote none of the other songs. What happened to the original soundtrack songs: Hot Lunch, Out Here On My Own, Red Light, Never Alone? A fight over the rights?

Some tunes are saved by a couple of compelling voices. Let’s Play a Love Scene becomes a charming duet between Chris Durling, as earnest acting student, Nick, and Catherine Shepherd as his daggy, lovelorn admirer, Serena.

A flash of Fame magic appears when Jaz Flowers, as Mabel the over-eating, lusciously fleshy dance student, belts out Mabel’s Prayer with her powerful voice and vocal acrobatics. The crowd cheered, proving Flowers is a talent to watch. Rowena Vilar is a spunky performer playing Carmen, the parallel to the role of Coco made famous by Irene Cara while Darlene Love, playing Mrs. Sherman, has a thrilling voice.

The casting for this production appears to be linked with that well-known TV dance competition. Finalist, Timomatic, is a muscular and charismatic Tyrone, the illiterate hip-hop dancer, and 2009 winner, Talia Fowler, as Iris, bringing some lyrical, classical ballet moves.

Kelley Abbey’s choreography is certainly a feature. The entire company dancing the Argentine Tango is a vivid, sensual treat and you could power the city with the energy of the sassy dance routine in Hard Work.

The Fame finale is a highlight, with memorable dancing on the roof of a New York cab – pity it doesn’t appear until the final 3 minutes of the show.

Fame the Musical is let down by clumsy narrative and plotting, some lame dialogue and the loss of the award-winning, original soundtrack. But it is certainly a montage of great dance routines with a few musical high points, thanks to the band and a few good singers.

By Kate Herbert

Starting Here, Starting Now ****

Starting Here, Starting Now

Music by David Shire, Lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr., by Manila Street Productions

Black Box, Arts Centre, June 24 to July 4, 2010

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:****

Starting Here, Starting Now is a delicious musical revue written by David Shire and Richard Maltby Jr. in 1976. In this updated production, West End director, Andrew MacBean, casts four, versatile, Australian performers (Anita Louise Combe, Martin Crewes, Simon Gleeson, Christie Whelan).

All four boast impressive credentials on both London and Australia musical theatre stages.

The staging is deceptively simple, with four old theatre chairs, a couple of stools, a red velvet drape as a backdrop and, lurking at stage left, a grand piano played by musical director, Simon Holt.

The 26 songs – both group and solo numbers – are threaded together into an intelligent, comical and often poignant commentary about modern relationships. MacBean’s direction is seamless and clever and the four voices blend immaculately in harmonies. Each of Maltby and Shire’s songs has its own unfolding narrative, a dynamic range, and an emotional urgency that create a dramatic arc within each song.

Combe’s voice is expressive and impressive, shifting with ease from pure, classical tones to raunchier styles and transforming from sweetness to sadness or quirkiness. Whelan is a striking presence with a bright, musical theatre vocal quality and a capacity for sassy, cheeky characters. Gleeson has charm, warm vocal tones and a grin that lights up the stage. Crewe has a strong voice and presence, sells a song beautifully and dances with pizzazz.

The songs deal with lovers who range from desperate (I’m A Little Bit Off), to romantic (Just Across the River), lonely (Watching the Parade Go By), angry (I Don’t Remember Christmas) and cheerful (Pleased With Myself). This show is a rocket with catchy tunes, smart lyrics, exciting performances and slick direction.

By Kate Herbert