Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday, Oct 11, 2014 ***1/2

Created by Roslyn Oades & Collaborators, Malthouse Theatre
Beckett Theatre, Malthouse; Oct 9 to 26, 2014
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Sat Oct 11, 2014.
Stars: ***1/2
Full review also  published in Herald Sun online on Monday Oct 13, 2014 and later in print. KH

  L-R Diana Perini, Haiha Le, Jim Daly, Roger Oakley,Evelyn Krape: Pic Jeff Busby

The personal stories and foibles of real people are eminently more interesting than many fictional characters.

Director, Roslyn Oades, clearly believes this because her audio-script for Hello, Goodbye and Happy Birthday exclusively uses her interviews with real people who are over 80 and living in aged care, and 17 or 18 year-olds in high school.

This is Verbatim Theatre, which means that the production uses recordings of actual words spoken by real people in their daily lives and the result provides an insight into the worlds of the young and old interview subjects.

What makes this different from other Verbatim Theatre pieces is that the actors, who wear headphones, listen to and replicate the voices of their characters simultaneously, a method that heightens the immediacy and truth of the dialogue.

None of the six performers are the same age as the interviewees but much of the humour arises from Oades casting the three older actors (Evelyn Krape, Jim Daly, Roger Oakley) as teens and the three younger ones (Haiha Le, Diana Perini, Matthew Connell) as oldies.

What we hear and see is a collision of realities, a juxtaposition of the 18 year-olds’ ebullient, puppy-like youthfulness against the 80 year-olds’ lack of energy and more sedentary, introspective lives.

Cirkopolis, Oct 11, 2014 ***1/2

Cirque Éloize; Melbourne Festival
State Theatre, Oct 10 to 12, 2014
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on 11 Oct, 2014
Stars: ***1/2
I saw this on Sat Oct 11, 2014.  I am not reviewing this for Herald Sun but I have put a short comment below. It is not a thorough review so forgive the brevity. KH

Cirkopolis, by Cirque Éloize, merges a conventional, contemporary circus show with its a parade of fine circus acts, with the design concept of Fritz Lang's movie, Metropolis. 

The resulting production is successful in part although it does not break any new ground in contemporary circus.

The projected design of grim, industrial machinery and urban landscape underscore the dehumanising routine of the Metropolis-inspired world of grey-faced, grey-coated office workers pacing like automatons through their rigid, repetitive, daily routines.

The show, directed by David St.-Pierre and Jeannot Painchaud, boasts some marvellous acrobatic, dance, gymnastic and circus skills amongst its artists and several acts are stand-outs.

However, the choreography feels busy and unfocussed at times, with the stage cluttered with moving bodies and the music is relentless with few quieter or subtler moments.

Cirque Eloize, performed their show, Rain, an astonishingly lovely and imaginative piece, when they came to Melbourne for the Commonwealth Games Festival in 2007 to perform at Crown.

Cirkopolis is skilful circus entertainment but the Metroplois concept feels as if it is bolted on to a regular circus show.

Kate Herbert

Have I No Mouth, Oct 10, 2014 ***1/2

By Feidlim Cannon & Gary Keegan; by Brokentalkers; Melbourne Festival;
Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse; Fri Oct 10 to Mon Oct 13, 2014
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars:***1/2 
Not a Herald Sun review. KH

For a performance that deals with family bereavement and anger, Have I No Mouth is surprisingly sweet, gentle, funny and approachable theatre.

Dublin-based theatre maker, Feidlim Cannon and his family suffered a horrifying loss 13 years ago when Feidlim’s father, Sean, underwent an unnecessary and dangerous surgery that caused his death.

In Have I No Mouth, Feidlim’s mother, Ann, and psychotherapist, Erich Keller, join Feidlim on stage to explore and expose their lives and grief in a conversation.

Their touching story encompasses Ann’s first date with Sean, Feidlim and his brother’s childhood, the death of baby Sean, the third son, and Sean Cannon’s untimely and horrific death.

On a near-empty stage, Feidlim and Anne, joined by cardboard cut-outs of Feidlim and his younger brother, Padraic, quiz each other about their family life, share tales about Sean, list objects that are important to them in telling their stories and argue about points of difference in their memories.

We enter their intimate world, hear their recorded therapy sessions with Erich, see pictures and film of the family and experience their joy, grief and rage.

The style is unembellished and natural, using simple theatrical devices such as direct address and some audience participation, but also employing Psychodrama techniques to replay moments for Ann and Feidlim, or to allow them to engage with Sean through role play.

Melbourne Festival, from Oct 9, 2014

Melbourne Festival Shows

The following are the shows that I will be seeing in Melbourne Festival. 
 
All shows I am seeing and will review for this blog: 

• The Complexity of Belonging
• Have I No Mouth
• Cirkopolis
• Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday
• Carrousel Des Moutons
• My Lovers' Bones
• Team Of Life
• Nanjing Project
• Hipbone Sticking Out
• Something Very Far Away
• The Trouble With Harry
• Opus
• When The Mountain Changed Its Clothing
• AM I
• Pure Movement: Trisha Brown Dance Co.  2 

I am reviewing for Herald Sun only these two theatre shows:

Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday 
When The Mountain Changed Its Clothing

Pennsylvania Avenue, Opens Nov 13, 2014

Written by Joanna Murray-Smith
Performed by Bernadette Robinson
Directed by Simon Phillips
Melbourne Theatre Company, Sumner, from Nov 13, 2014

 I like the sound of this show so keep an eye out for it in Nov. KH

From MTC Media Release

"Bernadette Robinson’s renowned power of transformation in evoking the great divas of our time is the stuff of legend. Her sell-out one-woman shows include You Might As Well Leave, Calling all Angels and Patsy Cline: Her Songs, Her Story. In Pennsylvania Avenue, audiences are treated to a new collection of iconic singers whose relationships with the White House spanned concert recitals to friendships, Presidential endorsements to tabloid speculation.

"With Bernadette Robinson’s unique talent in mind, Joanna Murray-Smith has created a seamless narrative entwined with music that blends show business and political history.
The final box is packed and the door is open, but Harper is not quite ready to leave. Having worked in the East Wing since the first weeks of the Kennedy presidency, there are just too many memories holding her back. For forty years, she watched history being made. And listened to it being made too – all those singers who sang for the President, defining the times while creating their own unforgettable moment."

Once, Oct 4, 2014 ****1/2

Music & Lyrics by Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová; Book by Enda Walsh; based on the movie by John Carney
Produced by John Frost, Melbourne Theatre Company, Barbara Broccoli, John N. Hart Jr., Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo
Princess Theatre, Melbourne from October 4, 2014
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ****1/2 
Review also published in print in Herald Sun on Sunday Oct 5, 2014. KH
All photos below by Joe Calleri. 

Tom Parsons & cast of Once. Photo by Joe Calleri.

 

I SAW ONCE TWICE!

 Once is an exquisite jewel of a musical that will make you want to go home and hug your loved ones to your heart.

Its beguiling story, music and characters are uplifting, enchanting and funny, but Once is simultaneously an achingly melancholic, theatrical experience.

Just when disillusioned, Irish busker, known simply as Guy, (Tom Parsons), decides to abandon his lacklustre music career in Dublin, he meets a young, Czech woman, AKA Girl (Madeleine Jones), who makes it her mission to revive his love of his music and heal his troubled, lovelorn soul.

John Tiffany’s smart, swift-moving and imaginative direction looks deceptively simple, but he skillfully balances intimacy with bold passion, using a complex, theatrical language to transform the stage and transport us into the world and music of the characters.

A vivacious chorus of actors play the eclectic, evocative music (Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová) live on stage and Steven Hoggett’s movement provides an inspired physicality that combines stomping, folksy dance with a subtle, abstract, gestural language.

Completing the vivid picture is the rustic, naturalistic design that recreates a Dublin pub (Bob Crowley) and atmospheric lighting (Natasha Katz).

Enda Walsh injects his witty, beautifully structured script with his wicked, Irish humour, whimsical dialogue, poignant romance and surprising Irish and Czech characters, all of which makes Once a play about and with music, rather than a traditional musical.

The Sound of Waves, 3-12 Oct, 2014

 Performed by Jodie Harris
Written by Gareth Ellis, directed by Naomi Edwards
45downstairs,  3-12 October,  2014
 I  will not be reviewing this show this season but I wrote a short review of it in 2008. See below.  KH

The Sound of Waves by Gareth Ellis

Where and When: VCA, Nov 28-30, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: ***

http://kateherberttheatrereviews.blogspot.com.au/2008/11/sound-of-waves-nov-28-30-2008.html

The Sound of Waves is a whimsical fairy tale and an allegory for performer, Jodie Harris’s own experience as a young deaf woman who received a cochlear implant then studied acting and voice at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Harris portrays a child who is slowly becoming a fish, growing gills, losing her hearing and choosing to live at the bottom of the ocean with the sound of waves and the company of other fish.

This performance is captivating on several levels for the audience. Harris’s performance is lyrical and physical and we are constantly aware of her voice bearing only occasional signs of her deafness after her years of Actor-Vocal training with Geraldine Cook (Head of Voice at VCA).

The play is preceded by an extraordinary seminar about Ms. Cook’s vocal training with deaf teenagers with cochlear implants. This program movingly demonstrates what Ms. Cook describes as “The joy of hearing and the joy of being heard.” It was a joy to be hearing it.

By Kate Herbert

From Media Release
 "Meet Shelly, a normal girl who unexpectedly finds herself becoming more and more fish-like every day. She takes refuge under the sea only to find that one day even the sea is not enough, and she must search for a way to walk on land again..."

Everyman & The Pole Dancers, Oct 2, 2014

By Lech Mackiewicz
A collaboration between Auto Da Fe & Shinjuku Ryozanpaku, Tokyo
@Metanoia Theatre at The Mechanics Institute
Oct 2 to 6, 7 to 11, 2014
I am not able to review this show but it looks wonderful and has a terrific cast and creative team. Get along and support them before they go to Tokyo. KH 

Cast
Matt Crosby (bow-tie)
Jane Bayly (black hat)
Keina Denda (hoodie)
Kazuto Shimamoto (beard)
Reece Vella (red hat), Kathleen Doyle (boa/snakeskin tights)
Maude Davey (beard)

Photos by Oscar Socia 

From Media Release

Everyman & The Pole Dancers

An Absurd Apocalyptic Comedy in 4 Quarters

“Everyman & The Pole Dancers is a collaboration between Shinjuku Ryozanpaku, Tokyo and Auto Da Fe Theatre. Text, visual-art-installation, music and dance converge from the diverse avenues of research and cultural roots of these two acclaimed companies. Everyman is a vision of our impending annihilation, seen as three generations of a family dance their perverse relationships around a lamp-post. Everyman guides them, and us, through the final stages of existence and helps them say their goodbyes with dignity before the curtains are drawn on the old world they knew. The performance relies on tension held between Naomi Ota's mysterious 'snap-frozen-nature' installation, the stretched intervals of Noriko Tadano's shamisen, the larrikin cabaret persona of Maude Davey playing Everyman, and the family process of this award-winning ensemble under Lech Mackiewicz' inspired direction.”

With Jane Bayly, Matt Crosby, Maude Davey, Kathleen Doyle, Keina Denda & Kazuto Shimamoto (courtesy of Shinjuku Ryozanpaku theatre, Tokyo) & Reece Vella. Live shamisen composition Noriko Tadano, Visual-art installation Naomi Ota, Light Design Shane Grant.

Carrie: The Musical, Oct 1, 2014 ***

Book by Lawrence D Cohen; Music & lyrics by Michael Gore & Dean Pitchford
Based on the novel by Stephen King
By Ghost Light with Moving Light Productions
At Chapel off Chapel, Prahran Sept 25 to Oct 12, 2014
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Wed, Oct 1, 2014
Stars: ***
Review also published in Herald Sun on Friday, Oct 3, 2014. KH

 CARRIE Emily Milledge, Chelsea Gibb

When you see Carrie: The Musical, don’t expect the same supernatural horror that characterised the 1976 film with Sissie Spacek or Stephen King’s original novel.

Instead, Carrie: The Musical is more of an American teen musical with just a tinge of gothic schlock.

This production, directed by Terence O’Connell and choreographed by Lisa Minett, is based on the rewritten, revived 2012 musical version, rather than on the original, 1988 version that was a very expensive flop.

Carrie White, (Emily Milledge) is a peculiar, reclusive and devout 17 year-old in her final year of high school where her classmates, particularly the mean-spirited, popular girls, bully and humiliate her mercilessly. 

However, their abuse looks tame compared to Carrie’s newly discovered telekinetic powers that eventually wreak havoc on the school Prom and dispose of her tormentors in a gory finale.

Milledge, whose pale, fragile appearance is strangely otherworldly, plays shy Carrie with an eerie, twitching quality that becomes a little repetitive but captures the peculiarity of the misfit that makes Carrie a target for bullies.

Milledge’s light voice suits the adolescent Carrie and her rendition of Why Not Me?, Carrie’s musings as she dresses for the Prom, is touching, although her generally sweet tone becomes a little harsh and she hits an occasional flat note when she sings with more power.

The exceptional Chelsea Gibb plays Carrie’s mother, Margaret, and is the musical highlight of this production with her mature, rich voice and nuanced performance, particularly in her moving solo, When There’s No One.

The Riders, Sept 23, 2014 ***1/2

Music by Iain Grandage; Libretto by Alison Croggon; Based on Tim Winton's novel
By Victorian Opera and Malthouse Theatre
Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse, Sept 23 to Oct 4, 2014
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Tues Sept 23, 2014
Stars: ***1/2
Review also published in Herald Sun in print on Fri Sept 26, 2014. KH

This operatic interpretation of The Riders is a totally different animal from Tim Winton’s award-winning novel upon which it is based.

There is a haunting quality to the music (Iain Grandage), libretto (Alison Croggon) and style of this production (Marion Potts) that captures the grim tone of Winton’s novel, but the narrative is necessarily condensed to fit into 100 minutes of stage time.

After renovating their dream cottage in Ireland, Scully (Barry Ryan), awaits the arrival from Perth of his beloved wife, Jennifer (Jessica Aszodi), and 7 year-old daughter, Billie (Isabela Calderon), but is shocked when a traumatised, silent Billie arrives alone on a plane.

Driven by his obsessive love and with Billie in tow, Scully trawls familiar European locations, searching in vain for his wife who has vanished like smoke leaving only “the wounds of absence”.

This is an emotional story about a man’s consuming love and devotion that smothers his wife and almost pushes him to “fall off the edge of the world” in his grief, loss and isolation.

Grandage’s eclectic composition, conducted by Richard Mills, resonates with folk music of Ireland, Greece and France as well as referencing Modernist, Romantic and Serialist styles. The music shifts from dreamlike ripples to surging oceanic waves of brass and strings or pounding percussion.

Croggon tells Scully’s story simply and evocatively, through poetic lyrics and rich metaphor that heighten the mournfulness and confusion of Scully and Billie as they struggle to comprehend Jennifer’s abandonment of them and to fill the void caused by her absence.

Rod Quantock, Sept 24, 2014

Rod Quantock-Invitation to a Revolution
At Lithuanian Club, From Sept 24, 2014
Melbourne Fringe Festival
You know I love Rod Quantock but I can't see or review this one. Go see him doing his revolt against Abbott. Vive La Revolution! KH

From Media Release

"Sir Rod Quantock cordially invites you to riotous evening of incendiary humour* this Melbourne

Fringe. September marks the first anniversary of the election of the Abbott Government and what

better way to celebrate than an evening with Sir Rod (because he loathes the Liberals too).

"Each night, Sir Rod will recruit the audience, train them as operatives, assign them to Sleeper

Cells and give them an activation code. What happens when the activation code is triggered and

the Glorious Revolution begins? You’ll have to be in the audience to find out.

"Rod Quantock recently held a press conference (in his head) to mark his return to Melbourne

Fringe after a near 20-year absence. “The Liberals are torturing refugees as a warning to others.

"That’s what the Mafia do,”  said Sir Rod. “But Big Tony and his Gang of political thugs (or Big Ears

and The Noddies as I call them) are mere tools of the Dark Lords and Lady Reinhardt. If this were

France they’d be donning their berets and dusting off the guillotine!”.

 "Quantock is one of the reasons that Melbourne is the live comedy capital of Australia. As a

pioneer of stand up comedy, Quantock’s brilliance is in his ability to evolve. He is relevant and

contemporary. Celebrating his 45th  year in stand up in 2013, Quantock – who in 2004 was

awarded the Sydney Myer Performing Arts Award - remains sharp, insightful and fiercely political,

lobbing Molotov Cocktails of Mirth at mainstream politics.

"His last solo show at the Melbourne Fringe was in 1996 – the year Australia elected John

Howard. In 2014 he’s back to take on Abbott and his speedos. In a bold (and possibly

treasonous) move, Sir Rod has announced The Revolution. “The Forces of Evil must be

conquered and, in the absence of an actual Australian Opposition, I will start the revolution ! Viva

la Revolution! Viva, el Rod! ”. Don’t miss one of our very own national treasures in his triumphant

Fringe return this September.

"*Rod bestowed a Knighthood on himself in a drunken stupor late in the Third Quarter of the

Collingwood-Carlton match. DISCLAIMER: Should the Abbott Government collapse before The

Fringe starts, Mr Quantock reserves the right to do a show about living in a share house in the

Sixties."
End Media Release