Sanctus by Chris Dickins, Nov 6, 1996

At Merlyn Theatre
Performed by Ballarat University

Until November 9, 1996

Reviewed by KH round Nov 5, 1996

Chris Dickins is a gem of a playwright whose plays continue to appear in productions from country Victoria. Sanctus is the latest and has arrived as the graduate production for Performing Arts students from Ballarat University.

The core narrative of Sanctus is the convergence of two stories based in a church on the Murray River. One begins in 1900 when the church was constructed, the other in 1996 when it is to be demolished. They collide during the war in 1940.

Dickins has always been interested in challenging dramatic structure and Sanctus does so with a cocked eye. It is a brain teaser to follow the story both backward and forward through discrete episodes, but Dickins' writing has such a lively lyrical quality and his characters are so quirky and colourful that it a joy to watch and listen to his ramblings. A priest's nightly "midnight moan", a swaggie's broad Aussie lingo, a novice's existential dilemma, a madwoman's dislocated ravings: all fill the broad stage at the Merlyn.

Director, Peter Tulloch's production showcases students' acquired skills in an entertaining and coherent piece which has a fluid choreographic style. Although actors shifting character was at times difficult to follow, the story rolled on like the Murray alongside which it resided. Tulloch has developed a delightful, live vocal soundscape with actors out of scenes but visible evoking creatures, elements and Gregorian chants.

The students must be commended for have found funding, designed, produced and mounted the production, in line with much of the fringe theatre industry in Victoria.

Although, for some of the actors, the emotional layering of Dickins writing is out of reach, there are several strong performances within the ensemble: Kylie Lockwood's cameo as the madwoman, John Bolger's Father Brendan and Renee Willner as the 60's hippy, "Jesus H Christ'.

However, for this audient, Damien Muller's exceptional design was the star of this production with its extraordinary flexibility and swift scene changes creating evocative spaces.

KATE HERBERT

The Mourning After, Oct 26,1996

The Mourning After by Verity Laughton

Playbox Beckett Theatre until Nov, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Oct 25, 1996

If you have never experienced the death of someone close, it is impossible to explain the very odd actions and reactions which grief may cause. For example, why would a woman whose husband has died the night before, spend Christmas Eve picnicking alone on a beach?

Well, she does not feel alone. Former singer and radio star, Belle Doyle, (Nancy Hayes) dines with the phantoms of her absent children and dead husband on the familiar beach by Aunt Luce's holiday home.

As she lays out the turkey and scoffs a bottle and a half of wine, she ambles about in her past, leading us gently through births and marriages, comings-out, conflicts, joys and pains. Mainly, she tries to fathom whether she killed hubbie, Harry by proposing to accept, against his wishes, the lead role in a new musical. Harry has controlled her world for too many years it seems.

The basic idea for the play is a good one. We listen to the unfolding of Belle's history, her fraught relationships with Harry, lesbian daughter Yvette and smug, pretty son "Magnus the Magnificent". The problem is that there is little dramatic tension in the text. The narrative and emotional journeys of the character are simplistic, lacking the layering which is essential for a solo piece. 

It relies on the stage being peopled with characters by one actor and this is not effectively realised. The other characters are not sufficiently significant and are left incomplete. There is too much explication in the dialogue which could be left to the action. The major conflict for Belle is whether she is betraying Harry by taking the role of Ned Kelly's mother but her final decision is so swiftly achieved, that the drama of the problem is obliterated.

Nancy Hayes was well received by the mainly older female audience at the Saturday matinee but her musical skills were wasted in this piece in which she sings only a single finale. Her performance and direction by another musical identity, Tony Sheldon, did not provide the dynamic range which might have invested this piece with some emotional texture.

The Mourning After is quite watchable but it does not even scratch the surface of the issue of grief and its associated guilt and nostalgia.

KATE HERBERT

Aive At Williamstown Pier, Oct 24, 1996

Alive at Williamstown Pier Neil Cole

La Mama until November 11, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Oct 23, 1996

The combination of politician and mental illness is evidently a sure-fire entertainment drawcard. 

La Mama was stuffed to the rafters even on the second night, notoriously quiet night of Alive at Williamstown Pier written by Neil Cole (MLA Melbourne). One wonders whether Jeff Kennett's appearance on IMT had something to do with a psychotic episode.

As a playwright, Cole is a better politician. This is not to suggest that Williamstown does not have its merits. It boasts some sharp political satire, numerous snappy gags and a singular, interesting, well-shaped character in Mick, the manic-depressive.

The deficiencies reside in the fragmented structure of the script, its mixture of styles and in the clumsiness of the actual production. The script is at its best when it focuses on the relationship between Dave, the manic-depressive politician who is Cole's alter ego and his institutionalised pal, Mick. The naturalistic warmth and wit of their dialogue is a great strength.

The text would be enhanced by concentrating on this instead of the rather awkward stylised Vox Pop-come-cabaret interludes and unnecessary readings from a "Premier's award-winning" novel.

Cole, as playwright, has drawn on his own experience with bi-polar disorder, otherwise known as manic-depression, to create this narrative. The character's battle with the public airing of his dirty psychological linen is directly related to his own newsworthy illness. Not only is the play a courageous "outing" but it gives mental illness a high profile and a human face which can only be a positive move.

The direction is unwieldy and the production suffers from clunky scene changes, painfully slow pacing, a cluttered although interesting set design and unimaginative staging. The problems with performance arise from expecting stand-up comics to carry a play. At times, the lead actor was inaudible in the tiny venue and the emotional landscape of his character remained unexplored. Richard Heath, however, had some high points as the lively and tragic Mick.

Death in this play is somehow life affirming. Those who survive their illness carry on after losing friends to their psychic demons. It is chastening to remember that the wolf, psychosis, is never too far from the door.

Kate Herbert

The North, William Yang, Oct 22, 1996

The North William Yang 

George Ballroom St KIlda Until Nov 2, 1996

Reviewed by KH around Oct 22, 1996

There is something harmonic in the tone of William Yang's The North which is not only due to its eccentric musical accompaniment. Yang's voice is not resonant but its unaffected un-actorly quality is refreshingly naive.

As he did in the deeply evocative and moving Sadness, Yang stands in a spotlight at the side of the stage in front of huge projections of his own photographs. The images are of his childhood home in Dimbula, North Queensland, his Chinese-Australian relatives and his visit to mainland China. Like Sadness, this is no mere holiday slide show. Although it lacks the anguish and pain of Sadness, Yang's attachment to people  and place is simply but intensely felt.

Through his monologue, we meet people from his family and his past, we encounter the arid North country, tobacco plantations and small town anecdotes. We travel to his parents' "home" in China and watch him discover Daoism and his deep-buried Chinese-ness.

The lyrical quality is enhanced by an exceptional live soundscape by Collin Offord who plays his invention, the Great Island Mouthbow which conjures sounds akin to a Chinese violin, wind through tunnels and a whole string section.

Yang explores the nature of cultural identity in a very personal way. the moment he stepped into the obviously topical and political, namely the Pauline Hanson racism debate, he lost his focus. His very circuitousness and dreamy delivery allows us to be surprised when ideas are suddenly woven together and we have an ' ah-ha" experience.

"Home is many places,” he says "-and one". Denying one's cultural heritage is a way of absorbing racism to the point where it becomes self-loathing.

The path is warm and easy for we, the audience, but it is evident that Yang's own path to self-awareness and acceptance has been more of a struggle. As he says, "It is easy to hate and blame but hard to understand another and change oneself."

Kate Herbert

Corrugaton Road, Oct 18, 1996

Corrugation Road by Jimmy Chi

Black Swan Theatre. Fairfax Studio until October 26, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Oct 17, 1996

Sheer anarchy was loosed upon an unsuspecting audience on opening night of Corrugation Road. Writer, Jimmy Chi, who also wrote Bran Nue Dae, flies in the face of musical theatre convention, breaking every rule, avoiding narrative thread like the plague and dodging form. It left one gaping at the sheer gall of its being in the midst of the toffy old Melbourne Festival.

Chi writes peppy songs in a thousand divergent styles ranging from Gilbert and Sullivan rhyming silliness to Country and Western. The piece is more like a cabaret, a string of singable, completely unconnected tunes with quirky lyrics, than a piece of musical theatre. It is begging for a coherent storyline but, simultaneously, its very chaotic nature makes it entertainingly bizarre.

For the character of Bob Two Bob (Stephen "Baamba" Albert), Chi draws on his own schizophrenia, his prolonged institutionalisation and being drugged to the eyeballs. Bob's funeral begins the piece but what follows is a chequered journey through his dislocated, ambling mind. We visit his past, his friends and his psychotic episodes.

It becomes difficult to discern which are memories and which delusions. A few wild and goofy images leave one gob-smacked, the most memorable being a giant pink rooster shakin' its tail feather and the mental hospital is run by siamese-twin psychiatrists (Michael Turkic, Richard Mellick) and their slinky nurse (Becky Brown).

The story, what there is of it, is an anti-hero's journey from darkness into light. Bob's delusions allow him to revisit his past, come to some understanding of it and then to travel forward to the place he left long ago: sanity and Broome.

It is the joyful, energetic performances which carry this show, particularly Ningali Lawford who brings a freshness and magnetism to the role of Fiona. It brings aboriginal culture crashing into western musical form and the result is astonishing. In the end, it lacks an edge and is screaming for some moving moments.

 It slides over the surface of Bob's painful world and satirises his delusional state so that it has little emotional impact. It lacks polish and has some clunky direction, mediocre singing and predictable choreography but it remains engaging, warm and silly.

KATE HERBERT

Cor Blimey It's Matt King, Oct 6, 1996

Cor Blimey It's Matt King

At Star & Garter Hotel Nelson & Dorcas Sts. Sth Melbourne, Wed-Sat until October 18, 1996

 Reviewed by KH around Oct 5, 1996

It's been a while since I was at a pub comedy gig. Aah! My misspent youth! The publican greeted me; "Are you the judge?"  Was I missing a wet T-shirt comp in the bar? I trailed upstairs, followed by the perfume of stale beer, to a windowless room with a kids' wacky alphabet doona cover/backdrop on a tiny stage.  Comedy still works on a low budget.

Matt King ambles onstage with a bad Geography-class map of England. He is a warm, mild-mannered, sweet-tempered stand-up with a Hertfordshire accent - or is it f...ing Essex? He started slowly but by the end this audient was laugh-weeping at frighteningly true, gruesome childhood stories about his militaristic dad's obsession with order and adventure holidays. King engenders a heap of sympathetic "Ohs!" and "poor sod" responses.

The word- gag picture of little Mattie painted by big Mattie is of a skinny, unsporty kid with attitude. He alienates his nightmare German exchange family, evades death by kayak in a France and finally escapes England for good for Oz, land of his favourite scary, lethal critters.

King is a great yarn-spinner and the longer the story the better. He re-incorporates snippets, appeals to our sympathies and our prejudices about the English, the Germans, the French, the military, the cub scouts - everything. The more excruciating the story, the funnier he is.

We squirm at his adoption story: " They did a bit of shopping on the way home and picked up a baby too." His father's homemade snake costume is every kid's embarrassing nightmare. The whole routine travels a path to dad getting his just deserts for being a total shit.

KATE HERBERT

Jump! by Crying in Public Places, Oct 5, 1996

Jump! by Crying in Public Places

Beckett Theatre, Malthouse, until October 12, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Oct 5, 1996

When my mouth falls open I know I've seen a good show and I gaped all through Jump! Again!  Crying in Public Places grab you by the heart, lungs and soul from the top and don't let go.

This is a reprise of 1995's successful show but nothing is lost of the bright, joyful, fulsome core of the original season. There are a few new songs but the four (Anni Davey, Maud Davey, Karen Hadfield, Jane Bayly) still work with the conversational-naturalistic, a' cappella singing, quirky movement and a consistently wry view of the world, themselves and their foibles.

The personal snatches are fascinating and as their re-incorporation is assiduously handled to tantalise us with snippets of an unfolding story. "What is the worst thing that could happen?" gives us a sniff of Anni's danger to come. "I'm pregnant," develops into grabs of Jane's painful birthing. "Where the fuck is my future?" signposts Maud's chequered life as she keeps leaving behind the girl that she was and we root for Karen to overcome her "Don't rock the boat" pattern.

Jumping is represented literally but so is falling down, tripping up, on life's little problems or, sometimes, its big doozies. We take chances or avoid risks. We leap into the unknown, dive into new experiences or, perhaps, turn aside just at the crucial moment. We fall in love and can never get back to where we jumped. Its all a game of dice and if you never jump you'll never know what might have been in store for you: the good, bad or ugly.

The joy and near ecstasy of this group as it croons and chants, whimpers, howls and grooves its original songs is infectious. I grinned and gaped, basking in their warm glow, wanting to rush up and hug them. Again. I fell in love with them all. Again.  I can't wait for the next show so I can drop my jaw, let go and love them all over again.

KATE HERBERT

Kaspar, Oct 3, 1996

by Theatr eTarquin

At Vaut Theatre, Banana Alley until late October 1996

Reviewed buy Kate Herbert around Oct 3, 1996

A "civilised" culture has always had a fascination with the barbaric and this romance with the "savage" has often manifested in his gross mistreatment. This may apply to whole racial groups and individuals.

Films, novels, poetry and theatre have all found such stories to transform into art. The Wild Boy of Aveyron, the Elephant Man and Kaspar Hauser who is the central character of Kasparˇ, by Theatre Tarquin

 Kaspar, directed by Nick Harrington, uses the narrative of Hauser's life as a springboard for a stark, stylised text and movement based performance with four actors and a live pianist. Kaspar's early undocumented life, incarcerated in a cellar, fed only bread and water, has left him unsocialised but, unlike the Wild Boy, not uneducable.

The process of his civilisation and his indoctrination in language and logic, social mores and religion is represented in bleak tableaux, faux-Berlin cabaret song and raw black and white lighting. The location is a disused railway vault on Banana Alley which provides a deep, narrow performance space and plenty of disturbingly thunderous overhead train noise to accompany Monique di Mattina's original acoustic piano composition which punctuates the action.

The process of his civilisation and his indocrination in language and logic, social mores and religion is represented in bleak tableaux, faux-Berlin cabaret song and raw black and white lighting. The location is a disused, railway vault on Banana Alley which provides a deep, narrow, claustrophobic performance space and plenty of disturbingly thunderous overhead train noise to accompany Monique di Mattina's original acoustic piano composition which punctuates the action.

The production employs the house style of Tarquin. The narrative is fragmented, the design based in grunge, and characters are non-representational. There are moments of intelligence and sharp irony and some strong theatrical images but others do not quite make the grade.

There was a dull patch in the middle of the hour. The circus freak show was predictable, and some long speeches were unnecessarily expository but Kaspar's ingenuous pleas were moving and the final death scene was a powerful and memorable tableau.

 It seems that these stories have been done so often that Tarquin needed to find something new, which it did not. I wanted to be touched in some way but came away surprisingly unmoved.

KATE HERBERT

The Rape of Lucrecia, Oct 3, 1996

by William Shakespeare

Complete Works Theatre Company La Mama until October 20, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 3 Oct, 1996

Pouring a play into the confines of La Mama Theatre in Carlton is no mean feat at the best of times but when it is a Shakespeare it is nigh on miraculous. Of course, performing a mythic poem by Will rather than, say, the Scottish play, is another matter.

The Rape of Lucrece is an epic verse about the violation of the chaste bride of Roman commander, Collatine by his friend, the lusting, saturnine Etruscan Prince Tarquin. With two others, (Wade Beed, Caroline Lee) actor-director, David Wicks has created a suitable companion piece for his previous superb solo, Venus and Adonis.

 Lucrece concentrates on Shakespeare's sweet, scented language and abandons the rampant physicality and dexterity of the earlier Venus. The delicate stillness of the portrayals with the simplicity and starkness of the production, heighten the fragility of the language. Wicks allows the words to speak for themselves and finds the dynamic range within them.

The horror of the rape is not lost in such underplaying. In fact it could be too intense or melodramatic to overstate it in such an intimate space. Being so close to the almost tableau effect of images, we might be swamped. Such intimacy in the playing highlights the focus of the text on the psychological minutiae of the characters and their detailed observations.

We crawl inside their heads and wander about in the rhythm of their thoughts and sensations. There were, however, moments when  I was craving an emotional outburst, a clutch at the heart or to be sent into tilt - but this is not the style of this piece.

This exceptional trio interpolate six dulcet and unaccompanied Renaissance songs to great effect. Wicks, as narrator, shifts skilfully in and out of focus, engaging us and colouring the canvas. Beed's Tarquin is sinister and salacious and his rich baritone a treat while Lee's frail, pale English-rose quality is perfect for the violated Lucrece.

This is a fine theatrical interpretation of a beautifully crafted text.

KATE HERBERT

Because You Are Mine, Sept 29, 1996

Because You are Mine by Daniel Keene

Melbourne University Student Theatre until October 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Sept 20, 1996

Invariably, before a war, there is a period of time during which there is the possibility, the hope that there will be no war. 

Before the horror and despair there is uncertainty, an atmosphere of unrest, political upheaval, military activity, societal confusion and a hint of impending inhumanity. People cannot comprehend the fact that they could become the ones to suffer. Catastrophe happens to others.

In Because You are  Mine, people whisper incredulously, "They say there is going to be a war." The extraordinary happens to these ordinary people: war. It is their pain which makes them exceptional.

Daniel Keene's play is an episodic representation of the Bosnian experience. It takes fragments of lives, snatches of conversations, voyeuristic glimpses through windows or into dark corners and secret places. Intercutting these with the monologues of the dead, the raped, the abused, he weaves these formerly disconnected lives into a bloody tapestry. We witness the war opportunists, the rapists and the raped, the physically unscathed and the permanently scarred as they creep helplessly and in ignorance across the landscape.

Kim Hanna has directed this student production with simplicity and compassion. He allows the emotion, the truth and power of the text to speak for themselves. Kathryn Sproul's design with huge sliding, crashing steel doors, provides an icily sterile environment for the atrocities.

At times, the emotional complexity is beyond some of these young actors but their level of commitment and compassion speaks volumes. There are several good performances but it is the actor playing the street-dwelling woman (name unknown), who brings an exceptional clarity of vision and delivery to her role. Her presence is magnetic. Hers is a lovely, idiosyncratic, warm and detailed performance which makes the poetic images of Keene's language live for us.

One character, trying to understand this senseless war, variously cites economics, politics, religion and history as the causes. Perhaps it is far simpler: power and hate rule.

KATE HERBERT

Not Dead Yet: The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole, Sept 25, 1996

By Sarah Vincent and Vanessa Pigram

At La Mama at The Courthouse until October 12, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Sept 25 1996

Lottie Lyell may not have had a movie house named after her as has her hubbie Raymond Longford but, according to Sarah Vincent and Vanessa Pigram, she's Not Dead Yet.

Vincent and Pigram have teamed up with Lottie to re-vamp her 1911 film, ˇThe Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole. Only fragments of the Lyell-Longford original footage are extant so Vincent has created, in theatrical form, the missing story.

The style of the production is pure Victorian melodrama, complete with a villain’s, romance, danger, Sarah Bernhardt histrionics and wind machine sound effects.  Margaret's one true love is the smuggler, Will Long, alias Cut-throat Willy, for whom she rejects her other suitor, the law-abiding coastguard, Edward Barry. Both men come to no good as a result of their love for Margaret and Margaret in turn , resorts to crime and the poor wretch is transported to, you guessed it, Australia where, for her sins,  she cares for orphans.

The production, part of the Fringe Festival, is stylishly directed by Pigram and is light and funny with delightful performances from the cast of five. They prance about, mug at the camera, double-take, tear at their clothes and generally over-act in the best possible satire of the silent movie genre.

The black and white theme is echoed superbly in the costumes and set by Anna Tregloan and the style is supported by predominantly original music by Mark Pollard.

There are, however, moments when the narrative becomes confusing and difficult to follow particularly when it concentrates on short grabby scenes. Spoken dialogue interspersed with silent miming of text is amusing and clever but extremely taxing on the audience's concentration and the constant setting and re-setting of location and characters is exhausting.

All that said, it is a hoot and one of the most inventive concepts I have seen in some time.

KATE HERBERT 

Schnorky the Wave Puncher, Sept 22, 1996

Adapted by Sue-Anne Post from book by Jeff Raglus

Arena Theatre. Napier Street Theatre until October 5, 1996

Reviewed b y KH around Oct 22, 1996

There's no denying it. Kids' theatre can be great entertainment for adults too and Schnorky the Wave Puncher at Arena Theatre is a good example. The laughs rippled up from the shoreline of children seated on the mats and rose to a wave of hoots from the adults in privileged place on chairs.

Of course the laughs generally came in different places. The children, aged 4-10 years, giggled at the slapstick, acrobatics and cartoon-like characters. The grown-ups howled at the wry portrayals of conservative suburban values, the inverse mother-daughter relationship between "Bert" (Maria Theodorakis) and her husky mum, Audrey (Katrina Stowe) and mature love between single parent, Audrey and the crusty old sea captain (Bruce Gladwin).

When she's not chasing a wave, Bert organises her mother's life and health, governing her smoking habit and burgeoning sex life in a manner reminiscent of Saffie and Edina in ˇAbsolutely Fabulous.

The protagonist of this story, adapted by Sue-Anne Post from the popular book by Jeff Raglus, is Schnorky, the surfie boy (Katrina Stowe) who has become a legend in his own esky. He lives on the beach with his dog ("He's my friend not my owner"), watching the surf, riding the waves, testing the wind, fossicking, bartering and planting native trees, all to the chagrin of the neighbourhood puritans, the Tweets (Gladwin & Noel Jordan).  He speaks to nobody and, inevitably, Bert falls headlong in love with him.

Rosemary Myers has directed the piece in a roustabout, physical style with much poppy music, oodles of tumbling and balancing, and a kooky cast of broad caricatures, cartoon set design by Raglus and some clever, cute costuming by  Graham Long. The four actors pour energy onto the stage, singing, cavorting and generally have a great time.

Songs by Frank Wood support the whole lively populist form as does the garbled, bastardised surf lingo. There are some rough moments where the action needs clarification for both kids and adults but the show relies on the abstract representation of objects, mime and quick costume changes. My kiddie companions were particularly taken with Bruce Gladwin's Irish-Scottish- Lancashire captain and his silly Mrs. Tweet.

KATE HERBERT

Aqua Profonda, Sept 12, 1996

by Circus Oz

 Mebourne Town Hall until September, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Sept 12, 1996

Ever seen a nearly naked man play eight squeezy horns with body parts? Well, go see Circus Oz. When circus meets the bizarre, the witty, the political there will always be Circus Oz. The company may have received ongoing funding from the Australia Council but this can never make it  "establishment. It's just too weird and naughty.

Australians really are good at physical theatre, particularly circus. We have Rock and Roll Circus, Women's Circus, Club Swing, Fruit Flies.  But when circus meets the bizarre, the witty, the political we will always have Circus Oz. 

The company which was always so radical, is now part of the cultural establishment, having received ongoing funding from the Australia Council as a major organisation, along with the opera, ballet and state theatres.

Oz seems to have really hit its straps again under the artistic direction of founding member (and ex-acrobat-musician-MC clown-muso etc.) Robin Laurie.  Her expertise and experience along with a finely tuned sense of the absurd, have provided a slick, seamless but still warm and homespun production. She composes spectacular, eccentric and colourful stage pictures using the equally spectacular bodies of the multi-skilled performers.

Gone are the halcyon (for this old hippy) days of perpetual onstage lefty patter and kitschy Australiana. Oz has acquired a newer, young and perky troupe of highly skilled and polished acrobats and clowns, some of whom have graduated from the Fruit Fly Circus.

As in previous shows, there is a loose narrative thread. A naive clown, played by the peppy and charming Nicci Wilks, falls to earth from her flyin' machine landing herself in the deep water of the title. She wanders lost in a land peopled with a mad masked clown race, chair balancers, a cluster of pole climbers, a golfer, a guy who lives upside down and a rogue clown who steals juggling clubs.

There are many wonderful acts but a few favourites were duo twin aerialists, Eleanor Davies and Nicci Wilks. Davies and Michael Ling do a great tightrope act set in a Hawaiian bar in which Ling walks on a burning rope. Just about everything Ling does is so exceptional it defies description.

Musical director Julie Mcinnes returns with another terrific set with the most hilarious act coming from one of the musos. Chris Lewis' near-naked horn playing is worth travelling through sleet and snow to see.

KATE HERBERT

Love's Labour's Lost, VCA, Sept 5 1996

by William Shakespeare

Victorian College of the Arts, Drama School

Beckett Theatre Malthouse until September 14, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Hebert around Sep 5, 1996

Love's Labour's Lost is a barrel of monkeys. This is probably why it is rarely done. It is simple comic-romantic fluff with little substance. The Victorian College of the Arts production, directed by Darryl Wilkinson, is light, fun and warmly performed by a cast of its graduating students.

It appears as if Shakespeare, with his comedy pals, decided to write a vehicle for the thrust and parry of every form of comic word-play; just a little something to while away the weeks between the tragedies. It is a gag-fest.

In fact, it is firmly based in the Italian Commedia dell'Arte style complete with "boy meets girl, boy gets girl" or rather "four boys get girls". The young King of Navarre and his three mates have decided to close his court to the distractions of women so they can study and fast. Yes. Study. Read it and weep, parents of slack VCE students.

It uses the classic Commedia devices of switched identities, misdirected letters, wily servants, unrequited love and bawdiness. There is a Harlequin character in the servant, Costard, and his conquest, Jaquenetta, parallels Columbina. Her other suitor, the Spanish Don Armado, is a replica of the braggard, Capitano. Armado is played by the jewel in this particularly wacky crown, Rodney Afif, who has impeccable comic timing and physicality. 

Wilkinson's direction keeps up a cracking pace which bounces us gleefully through an essentially verbose text. The company enjoy the romp and, although the performances are uneven and the women, who shone in A Doll's House, have limited roles, there are a few notables. Kyle Wright was engaging as the barbed wit Berowne and Rodney Power gave a sterling cameo as the commedia style know-all Dottore, Holofernes.

There are echoes of later comedies in the language and narrative: Much Ado, As You Like It, and even the Mechanicals from Midsummer Night's Dream are presaged in a very silly interlude by four blokes. The story falls over at the end leaving the lovers unrequited and seems to beg for an epilogue. Perhaps Shakespeare was awaiting the Hollywood movie industry sequel: Love's Labours Two, Three and Four.

KATE HERBERT

Chay Vong Vong, Sept 4, 1996

Chay Vong Vong by Tony Le Nguyen

Napier Street Theatre until September 15, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Sept 4, 1996

We should despair that each cultural group which arrives in Australia as migrants suffers frighteningly similar troubles.

The Vietnamese characters in Tony Le Nguyen's play, Chay Vong Vong, echo the pain and loss of European refugees from the Second World War or those from the Middle East in the 70's or Bosnia in the 90's.

They do not simply escape oppressive regimes, war-torn homelands, decimated families, poverty and starvation. They arrive to the same cool reception of the "natives", the same soulless Housing Commission flats, the same language difficulties, racism and abuse.

But the likenesses do not end outside their walls. The families suffer similar internal explosiveness. The teenager’s battle against restrictive parents rules, culture clashes, the incompatible but twin desires to please the parents and to fit in to a new culture.

Nguyen's characters have dragged their bloodied lives from Vietnam into a new environment where father still plots with their cronies to bring down the Communist government, mother is abused and oppressed and a teenage girl is treated like a chattel by her boyfriend.

Khoi, played with great sensitivity and truth by Thanh Vu Nguyen, is a quiet, serious teenager whose parents died in Vietnam. This is a recipe for disaster. His intensity leads him not to studiousness as it might with another, but to isolation, depression and drugs which have become an enormous problem in this community.

Nguyen seems to have based his play firmly in the Community Theatre tradition of intensive research into the Vietnamese community. He intersperses naturalistic scenes with monologues telling often wrenchingly tragic personal stories. His direction is well supported by Jane Rafe's wonderful geometric design on floor and banners.

The play takes off about half way through its two hours when the family conflict intensifies suddenly and the dramatic temperature rises steeply. At the beginning, it seemed to be a series of unrelated vignettes. 

Although these are explained at the very end, the style is not quite coherent and the text could benefit from a vigorous edit of the dialogue. The level of performance varies. This is the charm of community-based projects.

KATE HERBERT

Home Brew , Aug 21, 1996

By Peter Rowsthorn (With Simon Rogers, Ross Daniels, Robin Butler)

Last Laugh Theatre Restaurant, Aug to Sept 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Aug 21, 1996

Peter Rowsthorn has been doing stand-up comedy around town for about ten years or more and he's still funny even when he's doing old material. It's his physical humour which makes him standout.

If you don't know him, Rowsthorn is a bit of a local Jim Carrey with his rubbery face and body, fast patter, silly accents and impressions.  His stage persona is more than a little wired pushing him to the edge of incomprehensibility and vibrating goofiness.

Rowsthorn conjures up Australian images of 40 degree Melbourne summer days running barefoot on burning asphalt or towel-hopping over 200 degree sand. He muses at beach fashion changes. The coolites at Middle Park beach now posture and pose in G-string, bum-hugging bathers that once were just called "wedgies" and Slip, Slop, Slap and Osh Kosh have replaced the token stripe of zinc cream on a nipper's nose.

The TV trivia quiz drew the refreshingly uninebriated Wednesday comedy night audience into Rowsthorn's warm circle. Audience is divided in two to compete for points answering questions about Mr. Ed, Lost In Space and that fabulously eccentric Japanese show, Monkey - with a few side references to my childhood fave, Shintaro.

His impression of E.T., complete with tubby tummy and flapping arms, is still hilarious as is his finale routine about the Royal Show and Luna Park. Chucking up on the Rotor and shrieking on the now defunct Big Dipper ride are terrific examples of his wild, nervy physical comedy.

It's the warmth and charm of Rowsthorn which works for him. Even when the material lets him down, he is able to keep charming the audience and send them home happy and cosy and all laughed out.

KATE HERBERT

Wrung Out! Glynn Nicholas, Aug 21, 1996

Wrung Out! by Glynn Nicholas

Comedy Theatre from August 15, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Aug 21, 1996

Director Terry O'Connell with Ann Wilson & Anna Mitsikas

Glynn Nicholas certainly knows how to work a crowd. All those years begging and doing classical mime on the streets of Adelaide and Paris paid off. Once a busker, always a charming-bloody-busker.

They were eating out of his hand and throwing money ("Wrap it in bills. It's safer.") and there was a standing ovation – but more of that later.

Nicholas manages to find the perfect blend of the schmaltzy-sweet and wickedly grotesque. His fascist kindy teacher, Pate' Biscuit, remains a timeless and vicious satire on all those repressed, angry, child-hating Playschool presenters worldwide. Pate' with Bongo, her silent, salacious puppet alter ego, has become a classic for Nicholas.

Another skilful and hilariously well-observed character is Sergeant Smith, the local copper who mixes his cliches, uses the "f" word (sans "f") every second '...uckin' word, and is a grotesque parody of every old school Plod.

Nicholas strings together these characters with an engaging personal story about leaving hearth and home to go on his restless young man's journey to gay Paris to study mime. He even pre-empts any mime cynicism in the audience with, "I trained with Marcel Cliche." He covers a bad gag with a coy apology or a gaze tossed to his musician (Ana Mitsikas).

He gets away with appalling puns and gross tits and bums humour by the skin of his teeth. The seamy jokes come as such a surprise we laugh and let him move on.

He re-incorporates gags, latecomers, characters and references throughout the show. He is able to demystify the bull-dust of theatre by allowing us into his world and then amazing us with magic and mime illusions. The crowd still responds with most gusto to his mimetic skills. His motorcycle cop catching a drunken driver is a virtuoso set piece of comic mime.

Less successful are the sometimes icky-sweet songs and the love story narrative about Marlon Hickey the pavement artist from Wollongong who brings a classy Parisian bride back to Wollongong to "leeeeave". The integration of a second performer, the very skilful dancer-singer Ann Wilson, is not quite complete but this may settle as the season continues. Mitsikas' musical accompaniment enhanced the show but the star is always Nicholas himself.

That's who the people stood up for at the end - even if he made us do it.

KATE HERBERT

Strangers In The Night, Aug 8, 1996

 by Abe Pogos

Playbox until August 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around/before Aug 8, 1996

Lower West Manhattan feels like Blade Runner dubbed into several foreign languages: incomprehensible, bleak, dangerous, poorly but stylishly lit. Everybody in the subways is a potential threat. So why go there? - to experience this very danger, according to Daniel  (Adriano Cortese), protagonist and writer in Strangers in the Night.

How thin is the line between abusive and psychopathic? Playwright, Abe Pogos probes this question with a stiletto blade which is all too popular in his New York.  Daniel Lewin's cousin, Sarah (Jacqueline Linke) advises him to "murder something", so he can write about things he has really experienced. He ventures out of the bosom of his clinging limpet Aunt Lina (Heather Bolton) and begins his heroic journey into the dark cave of the beast which is New York.

The tension shrieks. Victims stay too long with their murderers, the nephew stays with the annoying aunt. The weak, using emotional manipulation, become the powerful. The homeless guy tells his tragic story and wins, the Jewish aunt bleats about loneliness. She wins. Gerry whimpers, "You hate me," and wins.

Strangers is almost too gruesome, too violent and suspenseful, too intentionally claustrophobic for this squeamish audient, but it is compelling theatre with some impeccable and layered performances, crisp direction and skilful text. The dialogue is taut, the narrative has the tension of a guitar string stretched to snapping and the plot has a final twist followed by a double somersault with pike. We peer into people's apartments, perv through their windows, poke around in their minds, eavesdrop on their conversations.

Hugh Colman's design effectively represents midnight New York with the seeping walls of a public urinal. It divides the space into three which is useful in providing differing locations but fragments the stage leaving us distant from the performance, albeit safer.

Gerry (David Tredinnick) is a gay misfit from Milwaukee (where that?). His rank little apartment is the site of nasty habits which have escalated into the tragic and psychopathic. Daniel's quest for 'experiences" remains firmly in the voyeuristic until his path and the plot, cross with Gerry's.

Tredinnick is riveting, terrifying but maintains a child-like, if psychopathic, vulnerability. Cortese is sympathetic in the difficult role of ordinary guy amidst weirdos. Patrick Williams transforms with ease from charming gay to Rasta peep-show spruiker. Melvin J. Carroll's pornographic narrative was marvellous despite its repulsive content. This is not a play for the faint-hearted nor the easily offended - but it is good.

KATE HERBERT  

Maestro, Aug 8, 1996

by Geoffrey Williams

Courthouse until August 17, 1996

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around Aug 8, 1996

There is a clause in small print at the bottom of every artist's contract with the devil which declares, "Create great art and be a tortured soul." Piotr Tchaikovsky was no exception.

Geoffrey Williams play, Maestro, focuses on the great composer's covert homosexuality, his love for pretty boy, Walsa Lekovsky (Richard Gyoerffy), and the torment this secrecy and deception wrought on his long-suffering wife, Nina (Kath Gordon). This sham of a marriage, designed to keep up appearances in polite Russian and French society, drove Nina to the asylum.

Williams uses the ravaged older and madder Nina as a constant presence and narrator after the fact. Although she talks of her marriage, we never actually see her with Tchaikovsky (Nicholas Stribakos). She wanders, dislocated, through the landscape of his past before she knew him and before she knew his secret.

The production fills the stage with numerous locations, characters and time frames. Its most effective moments were its simplest. Nina, alone at last in a single spotlight, speaks of her love of the piano. Later, Nadia and Alexei, Tchaikovsky's consumptive ex-lover, speak of their mutual love of the great composer. Less is more.

Its most effective moments are its simplest. Nina, alone at last in a single spotlight, speaks of her love of the piano. Later, Nadia and Alexei, Tchaikovsky's consumptive ex-lover, speak of their mutual love of the great composer. The rest of the time the production clutters the stage with numerous overlapping locations, characters and time frames. Less is more.

Nina is perhaps, the most complete character. Tchaikovsky himself is rather thinly drawn. It was surprising that he was not coloured more by his music which plays a significant role only in the second half as he writes Swan Lake for his patron, Nadia von Meck (Sue Dwyer).

Performance levels are uneven but Gordon plays Nina with a simple intensity which is very affecting, avoiding the "mad acting" of others which often upstaged her or made her words inaudible. Dwyer's Nadia is dignified and contained and manages the melodrama of later scenes with style.

This is a major shortcoming of this production. It lapses into overstatement and the melodramatic so that, at times, it is a period soap opera with too much shouting, coughing blood, whimpering under tables, tearing of hair and wringing of hands. The stage, particularly in the first half, is cluttered and the script could benefit from some rigorous editing of dialogue and some of its purple prose.

KATE HERBERT