Piccadilly Bushman , Nov 18, 1998

Piccadilly Bushman by Ray Lawler by Playbox Theatre

 at Merlin Theatre until Dec 5, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

When we think of writers of Australian theatre classics, we think immediately of Ray Lawler and his Doll trilogy written in the 50's. His plays dealt with the Australian landscape, language and character in a way that was provocative in its truth.

Actors no longer spoke with English accents, characters were representative of Aussie culture and dialogue was peppered with our slang. It was time for Australian Theatre to grow up.

Later, he wrote a lesser-known play, The Piccadilly Bushman, which premiered at the Comedy Theatre in 1959 directed by John McCallum Lawler was in England so this re-vamped incarnation is the first time he has seen it staged. Aubrey Mellor directs a stellar cast including Julia Blake, Rachel Ward and Frank Gallacher. Sleek contemporary design (Shaun Gurton) and evocative lighting (David Murray) establish a strong atmosphere.

The play, in spite of re-writing, is a time capsule and its naivete and datedness must be judged accordingly. For its time, it was progressive, provocative and perhaps risque. Today, it is tame and its issues predictable and unchallenging.

Expatriate actor, Alec Ritchie (John Walton) returns to his native Sydney after ten years of cultural cringing in England eliminating his Aussie accent ("It rasps the nerves like tearing tin") where he is a successful Shakespearean actor. He arrives with producer Vincent (John Finlayson) and script writer Stuart (Humphrey Bower) in tow, to make a film based on a gritty Australian novel written by Mick O'Shea (Frank Gallacher). He is cossetted by his ex-agent's wife (Monica Maughan)

He returns to his fraught marriage to Meg (Rachel Ward) who, with Chris her son, has been in hibernation here to eliminate her alcoholism, sexually predatoriness and offensive Aussieness. Daddy wants Chris to go to English boarding school. Mummy doesn't.

The minor players are the most effective. The two leads, particularly Walton, seem uncomfortable. Julia Blake as Elaine, Alec's wealthy Anglophile fan, is superbly detailed and hilarious. Terry Norris's cameo as her embarrassingly antipodean husband is wonderful. Finalyson plays the perfect snob. and Gallacher is compelling as the educated, earthy Mick .

The play is less meaty than The Doll but it attacks the issues of colonialism that forced most of our top artists, including Lawler himself, to rush off to London to talk posh and get a good job. Hollywood companies  now replace snobby Brit film crews but what’s changed? Our actors are still being whisked off to far shores for bigger bucks and larger audiences.

By Kate Herbert

Mum's the Word, Nov 9, 1998

At Athenaeum Theatre 1, from Nov, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Mum's The Word is critic-proof. People, particularly women with children, will flock to it no matter what is said hereafter. The show is a phenomenon akin to Wogs Out of Work in the 80's. It is identification theatre that is theatrically naive but socially and emotionally significant.

If you've given birth, you will identify with the six women on stage who spin yarns about excruciating labours, messy houses, dirty nappies, screaming infants, demanding toddlers, absent husbands, tantrums (from both mother and child), loss of memory, libido, career, earning power, beauty... The list goes on.

What is evident is that, in spite of all the grime and discomfort, pain and anguish, having a bub is the greatest love affair you will ever have. One woman quotes a husband, saying, "It's difficult sitting here watching you fall in love with someone else."

Six Canadian women wrote Mum's The Word when they met every Saturday without their kids, to tell stories and develop a stage show. It is not a play so much as a collection of candid, recognisable anecdotes and monologues told directly to the audience by each actor as the other five look on, nodding and laughing in sympathy.

The problem is that the show lacks any sense of the theatrical. The direction is pedestrian and the script lacks any dramatic tension, character development or narrative. The most complete character is the fraught, forgetful young mum (Pepe Trevor) who shakes bodily in order to rock her baby to sleep.

Director, Kaaren Fairfax, could have been more adventurous with the staging and direction. There are only two segments with any theatricality: the park and swimming pool scenes. The actors struggle to bring any theatrical life to such a banal script. It relies on skilful comic acting and this re-mounting misses two of the previous cast, Denise Scott and Sally Cooper.

Jane Clifton is hilarious and engaging throughout, with impeccable comic timing. Tracey Harvey's broad comic brush-strokes are exactly what the piece requires. Carmelina Di Guglielmo, Meg Nantsou and Trevorall give creditable performances but Mickey Camilleri is out of her comic depth much of the time.

The audience of mostly women were muttering in sympathy and recognition constantly. Mum's The Word is entertaining, but repetitive and an hour too long. It is essentially a community theatre piece for women with babies but the more dramatic stories are compelling for anyone.

Dark: The Adventures of Diane Arbus, Nov 9, 1998

 by Gerald Lepkowski

Universal Theatre II from October 14, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Diane Arbus should be discovered at the age of 20. Her photographs are essential stimulus during that brooding, philosophical period when drugs and suicide seem exotic, freaks compelling and one is young enough to look artistic rather than deadbeat crouching in the gutter.

Gerald Lepkowski was so riveted by this American photographer's representations of the underbelly of the New York population that he wrote a play based on Arbus' life and work. Dark began its life on stage in Perth then developed into a play for Radio National. One wonders how the work of a visual artist could be portrayed with only sound.

This third incarnation has the textual tone of radio but is enhanced by the addition of projected photographic images. These are not from Arbus' collection (her estate is tetchy about use of her images), but by local photographer, Ilana Rose whose photos of people from the "Underbelly" of society resonate with those of Arbus and are also exhibited in the foyer.

Lepkowski has compressed Diane's (Nell Feeney) life after her divorce from her husband. She is attracted by difference and depredation: hermaphrodites, the intellectually disabled, deformed, the freakish. In one distressing and silent scene she stares obsessively at a man's facial birthmark, awaiting his tacit approval for her to photograph him.

Her images appear in magazines, exhibitions and finally in a book and were considered offensive, repulsive, peculiar but compelling. Norman Mailer said,"Giving Diane Arbus a camera is like giving a baby a hand grenade." Given her own depressive and dysfunctional personality, it appears that she contemplates her own internal deformities through the reflection of her "freaks".

Feeney captures the compulsion of Arbus and portrays her vulnerability in a face that looks like a broken heart. An ensemble of four (Mandy McElhinney, Peter Roberts, Louise Siversen and Lepskowski) supports her superbly, and people the stage with Arbus' associates and subjects.

Special mention must be made of Siversen's numerous marvellous cameos, which range from a bag lady to Germaine Greer, and of McElhinney's extraordinarily accurate portrayal of a disabled child.

Arbus may have vowed that she always took photos with the subjects' permission but her work was invasive and manipulative in spite of this. She was an artist. Her work was for herself not for the greater glory of humanity. In the end she was the greatest freak.

by Kate Herbert

Dream Kitchen, Nov 9, 1998

 by Rhonnda Johnson

Universal Theatre 1 until Nov, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Walls the colour of peach cooler: that's what Betty is considering for her dream kitchen colour scheme. Or perhaps she may choose apricot and olive, the same colours as her bridesmaids' outfits forty or so years ago.

Betty is the working class creation of Melbourne playwright, Rhonnda Johnson and is brought to full technicolour life by Toni Lamond in Dream Kitchen, a one-woman play directed slickly by her son, Tony Sheldon. Lamond's years in the Tivoli, musicals and television sketch comedy stand her in good stead as she struts her stuff before an audience of true believers, none under 50.

Betty not only has appalling colour sense but has equally poor taste in husbands. Jack, since retiring, "Gardens, drinks, sleeps". Nor has her fortune in offspring been too hot. Leanne, a recalcitrant daddy's girl as a teenager, is now married to the "Rabbit". Betty's son, Brian, a 34-year-old public servant, still lives at home, trapped in his adolescent CB radio phase.

In the style of Shirley Valentine, the audience is like flies on the wall. Betty asks our advice on colour choice, tells anecdotes about her wedding, parenting, her stale marriage and her humble but happy working life. She slaved at the meatworks on the 'offal table" stuffing sausages.

With a youthful voice, Lamond interpolates songs into Betty's narrative, Moonlight Becomes You and If You Ever Go Across the Sea to Ireland to name a couple. The radio is Betty's companion. She is an avid listener to Frank Lee, an evening talk-show host. Like innumerable other middle-aged lonely, married women, she has a long-distance crush on him and fantasises about calling to talk with Frank about important things, instead of the trivial complaints of all his other fans..

Lamond is engaging, warm and accessible as Betty and captures a naivete and sweet sadness in this cheerfully lonely woman, incarcerated in her kitchen. She relishes Johnson's dialogue which comes thick and fast, riddled with gags. She quips, "Without the Irish we'd just be white lumps of Pom."

But mostly, the humour is cleverly observational. Betty is familiar. Like so many women who battled unsatisfactory marriages in the suburbs she is laconic, good-humoured and easy-going. She cooks, irons, plans her new kitchen or talks back to her lolly-pink radio. She putters about preparing snags for dins, laying the table and entertaining herself. She is strong in her domain and she is not allowing the "Rabbit" and Leanne to move her into a tiny unit. Nobody pushes Betty around.

By Kate Herbert

November 1998 - list of shows

• The Idiot, VCA graduating year Nov 6, Grant Street Theatre, VCA  (Very good adaptation of Dostoyevski
• 
  Stage Right: 2 seasons of Short Plays (New Writers, Nov 4-8 11-15, 1998) at Gasworks
• 
  Heavy, Lucy Guerin Choreography, Nov, 1998,  Ath II (before Lucy goes to NY for something big)
• 
   Fuckwit by Angus Cerini Nov 10, 1998, at  Courthouse (A clever young writer)
• 
  Man from Ironbark,  Nov 10, 1998, Trades Hall   
• 
  Legacy and Petroleum Raimondo Cortese   Nov 11, 1998, La Mama
• 
  Savanah Bay, by Marguerite Duras, Nov 12, 1998, La Mama 
•  
• Horace and Doris, by Henry Maas,  Nov 17, 1998, Universal Theatre

Teatro, Nov 9,1998

By Renato Cuocolo & Irene Vela

 Playhouse October 21 – 24, 1998

We are fascinated by our immigrant backgrounds whether they are recent arrivals, second generation, or fifth generation settlers and convicts.  This undying interest demonstrates that the potential exploration of the migrant experience as theatre is limitless. Renato Cuocolo, director or IRRA Theatre, continues his penetration of stories and characters that emerge from observation and personal experience as a Italian migrant.

Teatro is the third in Cuocolo's Exile Trilogy and his second collaboration with composer, Irene Vela, Canto Coro and musical director, Mark Dunbar. The first collaboration was the very successful Little City.

Teatro does not function as a musical or strictly as a piece of theatre. As in an opera, the score provides the emotional layering to a simple story although there are other strata to the narrative.

One level is our reality: a choir (Canto Coro) has come to rehearse a musical version of I Love A Sunburnt Country on stage for an invited audience under the eagle eye of their Director/Conductor (David Pledger). An obsequious old Stage Manager prepares the space and fawns on the Director.

The singers introduce themselves in their real, culturally diverse identity. Their own stories filter through as do images from a tragic immigrant couple who died years ago

Within the choir are dissenting voices objecting to the repetitious rehearsal and irrelevance of this old-fashioned, unrepresentative poem set to music. The first rumbles of mutiny come from a single voice (Elly Varrenti) who believes it does not reflect their mixed cultural nature.

They are patronised by the Director who is excited by working with an ethnic choir. Mistake! "We're not an ethnic choir!" "This is what we want to sing!" "I want to sing in my own language!"

Teatro is warm and charming in its simplicity and Vela's music is evocative. Set in a sea of duck feathers, the light swims and th floor moves. I pity singers with fluff in their throats.

The narrative threads need further development and parts are awkward and uncomfortable.  The occasional political statements are simplistic and the earlier generation Aussies get a verbal beating with no justification apart from the paternalistic attitude of the "on stage" Director.

Cuocolo always challenges the theatrical convention and shatters one's expectation of theatre. It craves more of the orchestration of the choir as a physical mass to kick it into a more visually enthralling performance.

The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde, Oct 28, 1998

By Thomas Kilroy, Abbey Theatre

 Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, October 28, 29, 30, 31, November 1, 1998

Reviewer: KATE HERBERT

We all know of Irish-born Oscar Wilde, brilliant, self-absorbed, razor-tongued, who wrote a swag of comic classics. Most know nothing of his abandoned wife, Constance. Thomas Kilroy, with Ireland's Abbey Theatre, has redressed this inequity with his play The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde, here for the Melbourne Festival.

Oscar married bright, young Constance Lloyd in1884 only to betray her soon after with innumerable young men. The steel-cold aristocratic lad who eventually broke both their hearts was Lord Alfred Douglas, AKA Bosie, the inter-galactically narcissistic son of the creep responsible for boxing, the Marquis of Queensberry.

Bosie (Andrew Scott) describes himself as Oscar's inspiration and Constance (Jane Brennan) as his peace. To Oscar (Robert O'Mahoney) she is his lifeline to land and he blithely uses her as his life raft, water wings, goggles and snorkel. Watching these three, one wants to warn Constance, slap Oscar and strangle Bosie.

Director, Patrick Mason, has created a deceptively simple, gloriously theatrical production blending visual, mimetic, and textual elements with exceptional finesse. Images, language and emotions are heightened. Oscar speaks in familiar epithets. He poses and parades while Bosie struts and swaggers. The style tilts toward the mannered and teeters on the hyper-real.

The grand scale and sleek lines of Joe Vanek's set exaggerate the puniness of Wilde in relation to his tragic fate. A terrifyingly tall, narrow staircase is the site of Constance's mysterious 'fall'. Oscar is whisked upward in his gaol cell and huge black screens slam shut like a rectangular camera aperture.

Constance, Oscar and Bosie meet, greet and argue on a simple round downstage but Mason has used the vast depths of the Playhouse to accentuate the smallness of these lives by overwhelming them with enormous puppet figures representing the Magistrate who convicts Oscar and Constance's disreputable father.

His retinue of six attendants, disguised by fencing masks, provide a silent chorus, a jury, a classless commentary. They establish location, attitude, atmosphere with David Bolger's clean, crisp choreography and are a sensitive counterpoint to the dense dialogue. They manipulate and accompany the sweet, pale puppets, the Wildes' innocent sons.

The performances are uniformly inspiring. Scott, as the dilletante Bosie, is suitably dissolute and despicable while O'Mahoney pontificates and carps as Oscar. Brennan, in the most sympathetic character, is dignified, vivid and tragic as Constance. If only we could have shouted a warning down the ages: "Jump ship, Connie. He'll do you no good." Talent is no measure of a man's worth.

Reviewer: KATE HERBERT

Stolen , Playbox, Oct 24, 1998

by Jane Harrison, by Playbox

Merlin Theatre until November 14, 1998

Reviewer: KATE HERBERT

As a whitefella, it is easy to remain at arm's length from the Stolen Children of our aboriginal nation, easy to say "Sorry" and to want reconciliation. But actually being one of the stolen generation must be incomprehensibly hard.

Stolen, a collaboration between The Ilbijerri Theatre Co-operative and Playbox, sketches the stories of five children stolen from their aboriginal families in early childhood. We see them dragged from mum, told she is dead, terrified when incarcerated in a children's home, traumatised when abused by 'weekend' foster fathers or bosses.

This play left me weeping for broken lives, tortured souls and scattered families - and I was just an audience member, a white one at that. The company of aboriginal actors are immersed both as artists and as individuals.

Jimmy's (Paul Briggs) life degenerates into petty crime and tragedy, Ruby's (Kylie Belling) into servitude and mental illness. Sandy (Stan Yarramunua) maintains a sense of dignity in his original culture as an adult while Anne's (Tammy Anderson) adoptive family nearly expunge all relationship to her native culture.

Jane Harrison developed the script for Ilbijerri between 1992-97 with assistance from Reichstein Foundation, Australia Council and Playbox.

Stolen is directed with finesse by Wesley Enoch who co-wrote and directed The Seven Stages of Grieving about reconciliation. He was Artistic Director of Kooemba Jdarra Theatre from 1994-97.

The play is not a linear narrative. We see and hear snatches of each child's "theft" interspersed with his or her later experiences, mothers' letters to the lost children and adoptive parents' diatribes about gratitude. "Be good or the welfare'll get ya," chants Jimmy's mum prophetically.

The play begins at a cracking, almost playful, pace then tilts us into darker territory. Enoch conjures profound emotional responses from simple images. Nancy (Pauline Whyman OK) lines up 26 Christmas presents awaiting her adult son's return. Ruby returns with a girlish pink gift after each abusive weekend. A steel-frame bed is used as a gaol cell.

Slides of tin cans or barbed wire ar set against derelict concrete wall of Richard Roberts design. Richard Frankland's evocative soundscape tinges the air with anguish.

Stolen pays homage to those who survived and those who perished because of this appalling policy to separate children from their families - and lie about it. It is a sweet, startling and moving experience.

Panacea, Oct 15, 1998

by Arena Theatre

at Old Police Garage Russell Street October 15-November 1, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Young people are incessantly bombarded with visual input: imagery from film and television, billboards, computer programs or magazines. They catch life in sound bites or TV grabs.

If this forms their primary experience, there is logic in presenting young audiences with performance in the style of a music video.

In its AnthoPop trilogy, Arena Theatre, under the artistic direction of Rosemary Myers, has developed a hybrid theatrical form combining video, computer graphics, amplified music, miked voices and fragmented narrative. It is steeped in popular culture that cocks a snoot at traditional forms of narrative and characterisation. It has taken them on a tour to North America with Autopsy.

Panacea, part of the Melbourne Festival, is the most successful of the trilogy. Devised by Myers with Bruce Gladwin and written by Julie-Anne O'Brien and David Carlin it extrapolates on a true story.

Axel, an 11-year old East German, is training to swim for the 1974 Moscow Olympics but his performance is enhanced with steroid treatment which enlarges his heart and causes his subsequent drowning.

This play, of all three, has some emotional impact. Axel (Brandon Burns), a sweet, naive child, is a pawn of the Communist state. His mother (Nadja Kostich) is the most affecting character. Her desire for a better life, a house provided by the state and success for her son, finally cost her his life.

The accompanying video design (Daniel Crooks & Pete Circuitt) is vivid, rapid fire and evocative. It provides not only moving imagery but also a kind of stage set. Its large screens divide the space and provide levels for the cavernous Russell Street Police Garage. Lighting by Ben Cobham again completes the visual spectacle.

Other narrative threads are woven into the basic tale. Petra, (Genevieve Morris) once a child swimmer, is now a drug-addled adult. Shelley, (Fiona Todd) now an Australian sporting fashion icon, is wracked with resentment about her loss in the 74 Olympics.

The over-simplified plot allows confusing (unintentional?) connections between performance-enhancing drugs and recreational drug abuse, between lesbianism and steroid use. It also relentlessly represents East Germany as the bogie man in the sporting arena.

The politics of this play become questionable. A simplistic portrayal of any of these issues is dangerous. Let's not value style over content to the detriment of clarity.

 By Kate Herbert

Out of Chaos by Jill Curry, Oct 14, 1998

At Athenaeum Theatre II until October 24, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

People who find themselves in the public eye generally do all in their power to keep their personal lives behind closed doors. Choosing to expose one's private life is courageous. Translating personal trauma into theatre is an enormous challenge.

Playwright, Jill Curry, has done just this. She has pulled the curtains on her psychological breakdown and created a piece of theatre about a woman in a similar emotional situation. Caroline Holmes, played with passion and total commitment by Victoria Nicolls, is the primary carer for her recalcitrant, aged father and has now been offered a promotion in Event Management.

She is under pressure to mask any anxiety because, at the slightest whiff of stress or aberrant behaviour, her family cry "breakdown" again. Her husband (John Higginson) is well meaning but uncomprehending. Her daughter (Natalie Carr) is supportive but frightened. Her self-centred sister (Natalie Shostak) is more concerned about who will care for dad.

It is not my intention to belittle the courage which generated this play nor the genuine trauma of the writer but, unfortunately, Curry's attempt to make theatre of this painful experience is unsuccessful. Real life experience needs to be filtered and transformed to make good drama.

There is no dramatic arc to the story. Perhaps a less literal representation of the family's experience might have created more dramatic tension. Caroline's journey has no surprises.

The style, structure and even Kim Baston's direction, are reminiscent of a 1970's Theatre-In-Education play devised to demonstrate a social issue. There are some very awkward dream sequences and childhood flashbacks. The pace, overall, is very slow.

The characters are under-developed and their dialogue is repetitive often deteriorating into cliches. The shadowy, ever-present psychiatrist mouths platitudes such as, "It's all right to be angry," or "You feel guilty about this," as if they were insightful.

Caroline's fractious dad is a colourful character who is pivotal to the jealousies between the two sisters. It could have been interesting to put him on stage, although playwright Alan Ayckbourne suggests an off-stage character can be compelling.

I wish I could have felt more positively about this play but, in spite of its origins in truth, as theatre it does not do justice to the depth of the anguish experienced in mental illness.

By Kate Herbert

So Wet, 13 Oct 1998

By Samantha Bews 
At North Melbourne Town Hall Meeting Room
13-18 October, 1998
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
 
Being cool usually ends up looking just plain silly. At least if you are  under 30 being cool, you have licence to look indulgent, ridiculous and idiotic in your platinum hair, skin-tight vinyl or arse-hugging lime-green mini.

The cool rules are: "Never dress for the weather"; "Always be more visible than the next idiot"; "Always look and sound as if you are just about to orgasm"; "Wear uncomfortable shoes"; and most importantly, "Pout! Pout! Pout!"

Fashion is intrinsic to Samantha Bews solo show, So Wet.It comments on the idiocy of fashion by being idiotically fashionable. In this stylishly performed short piece, directed with finesse by Nancy Black, we pursue a gloriously vain and leggy creature, with a fabulously cool wardrobe.

From midnight to 7am we scuttle after her from party, to depressed friend, to warehouse 'rave', to window-shopping then peculiar activities in Russell Street followed by late episodes of Bonanza tucked up with Horlicks in cottontails at home.

Bews struts and preens, poses and seduces as the profoundly shallow Shirley. She prances into a high-profile party to seduce a toy-boy, only to see him leave with another boy. Some episodes appear to be snatches from life but we hope the pretentious, selfish Shirley is not Bews' alter-ego.

This is definitely a good show for the Fringe Festival.However, its intended irony is not obvious enough and the character is sketchy. There is some clever lyrical text and Bews creates several well-observed cameos, but the intention of the play remains mirky and the narrative thin and directionless. The writing needs to develop the inner world of Shirley or to emphasising the latent tragedy of this tale of the night.

She is a polished performer who uses movement to create atmosphere, character and location. Shirley's regal parade around the first party accompanied by her bottom-wiggling and profiling is a treat. Bews' stylised interpretation of the "Dance. Dance. Sleaze. Sleaze,"of the warehouse party is simple but clever.

The much publicised fab outfits are made visible on stage by the simplest suggestions, shoes: a wardrobe of extraordinary platforms to make a 70's Glitter fan drool. Set on stage throughout, they suggest the silver dress, black mourning, the sweaty lime-green mini and blood red Geisha costume.

The men's lace-ups were discordant both on set and in their strange penultimate scene. Perhaps the intrinsically male violence perpetrated by Shirley at 5am, represents her naive attraction to the dark side, but it just does not work.

By Kate Herbert

More of a Little & Marlene by Jeanne Little, Oct 7 1998

At Capers Restaurant

More of a Little: Wed-Sat October 7-17,

Marlene: October 11 &12

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Jeanne Little has broad vowels that go on forever daaaaarling - and she's faaaaabulous! This reviewer did not expect to be so genuinely entertained by the mouth with the eyelashes who won a Gold Logie by wearing gladbags on Midday television with Mike Walsh and John Michael Howson.

Little is a truly warm and engaging cabaret performer and she can sing! Really! Who'd have expected such a rich controlled lower register to come from that rasping shrillness and nasal twang?

Her often hilarious narrative about her rise from poverty to Superstardom is intercut tastefully with familiar tunes: I get a Kick Out Of You, I Get Along Without You Very Well, You're The Cream in My Coffee. Some are comic, such as The Worst Pies in Sydney and Put It Back On, about the tubby stripper and Facelift, about a nip and tuck gone wrong.

Others touch a more serious note. I'll Be Here Tomorrow from Jerry Girls, which she performed for three years in Sydney with Judie Connelly and Marcia Hines, is a song with poignant lyrics which became the theme of the battle against AIDS.

Her version of Piaf's La Vie En Rose is also a part of her Marlene show which is showing the weekend of October 11 and 12. Evidently it is well worth a visit having been a hit in Sydney, the San Francisco cabaret festival and - well, all over really.

Jeanne's life story becomes a litany of shriekingly funny muddles, disasters and surprise successes. Her exploding pies at the Easter show, J.M Howson flying through the air in a pink suit, her fried permed hair, her first see-through plastic dress: all are hilarious. She even managed the biggest hoots from a gag about being near death. That's comic class!

Her second calling as a fashion design guru is evident on stage. Her outfits range from the elegant to the grotesque: a glorious silver lame gown follows a bizarre fat stripper costume.

Her miraculous survivor mother had a favourite expression. "It's not failure that's the problem. It's low ambition." Here is a very talented comic cabaret artist a la Carole Channing who has not been taken seriously here in Melbourne since she did that dreadful Sleeman-Ford commercial. It's time to forgive and forget. Jeanne Little rules! And the food is faaaabulous!

Kate Herbert

Conversations with my Father, 6 Oct 1998

By Herb Gardner 

Saltpillar Theatre

St. Martins Theatre until October 18

"English don't do the job," quips the Jewish mother when her husband insists she speak English in Conversations With My Father. English can't turn an answer into a question like Yiddish can. There is an enormous difference between, "Wake up!" and the Yiddish phrase, "Sleep faster. We need the pillow."

Herb Gardner is a delightfully laconic, witty, urbane New York Jew who writes about the underdog, "the endearing outcasts" of this relentless city, such as the two old geezers in I'm Not Rappaport, which was performed by the MTC in 1993.

In this play, directed economically by Caroline Stacey, Gardner draws mercilessly on his own Russian-Jewish background, plundering his fraught relationship with his father for every painful episode from babyhood to Pop's death.

At two years of age, Charlie (Ernie Schwartz) has not spoken and his mother calls him "a piece of meat with eyes". His father demands baby Charlie astonish them with the first words, "I'm Charlie Ross and I don't take no shit from nobody," which, fantastically, he does.

Charlie is revisiting his life with his father, Eddie Ross nee Goldberg, after dad's death. Eddie (Jonathan Glickfeld) was obsessed with becoming American. He bought a bar in Canal Street in the south of Manhattan, changed his name and language, finally eliminated all Jewish religion and renamed his wife's (Nici Gray) Yiddish menu as Mulligan Stew and Apple Pie. She decided to get "wacky and deaf" to cope.

The bar is peopled with US wartime immigrant eccentrics. Zaretsky (Maurie Johns) is a star of the Yiddish Theatre, much admired by Charlie and maligned by Eddie who believes all artists are Luftmenchen: Airpeople.

The others include Blind Hannah (Faye Joske), old Nick (Ian Rubenstein) who believes he is Santa, Finney the Irish bookie (Jacob Oberman) and Italian standover man, Scalso (Pip Mushin) and his Irish thug (Elliot Epstein).

The play is really about a man who has never come to terms with his father who was a irrational, unpredictable and mercurial, a "Switcheroo" who "lived at the top of his voice and the edge of his nerves".

It is Eddie who is the centre of the story and the adult Charlie pays homage to him in his career as an award-winning novelist. He simply canot understand or really love him even after his death. He wants all the misunderstanding and grief to evaporate.

The performances are very good but Glickfeld is a standout as Eddie. He is credible and passionate but charming and lovable - which is what Gardner wrote.

By Kate Herbert

King Lear, Bell Shakespeare, Barrie Kosky, September 1998

I have been slowly posting my reviews from last century. Yes, I'm back to 1998 now. See this review of Kosky directing Lear for Bell in 1998. Great memories. KH

 By William Shakespeare

 Bell Shakespeare Company

Athenaeum II, Melbourne, until September 19, 1998

To misquote Gloucester in King Lear, "Like flies to wanton directors are we; they use us for their sport." Barrie Kosky is nothing if not a naughty, irreverent director and his interpretation of Lear for Bell Shakespeare is certainly not classical.

Imagine Texas Chain Saw Massacre colliding with the cartoon South Park and a Hollywood musical with gorgeous costumes and you have an inkling of the cacophony of styles. Do not expect Lear as you think you know it. Be prepared to discard your prejudices at the box office.

The text still follows its narrative and uses Shakespeare's language, but whole chunks have been excised, as have characters such as Cornwall, Albany, France and Burgundy. In fact, this production might be more successful with even more text removed. It is most effective and affecting when it relies on the imagistic, the musical and the high-tech soundscape (Peter Eades).

Some of the earlier scenes feel cluttered with text. The exception is the last scene that relies on slow, rhythmic, evocative imagery. The emotional thread, which is lost earlier in the play, is revived in the death throes of the whole company.

The lurid violence and mayhem of this production is reminiscent of the French Grand Guignol, a bloody style if ever there was one. Gloucester's (Russel Kiefel) eyes are sucked from his head, his bastard son, Edmund (Benjamin Winspear), is disembowelled by his brother Edgar (Matthew Whittet) who smears himself with excrement as a lunatic disguise. Lear's retinue are a litter of rabid doggy-men with prosthetic phalluses.

John Bell is a potent presence as Lear and is strongest in his final failing moments. Kiefel, as the second betrayed father, the counterpoint to Lear, is a poignant and ingenuous Gloucester.

Louise Fox is delightfully burlesque as the Fool who is somewhere between Eartha Kitt and Shirley Temple. Many Elizabethan witticisms are replaced with contemporary musical references and her rendition of "My Heart Belongs To Daddy" was a gift. Live piano and brass (Kosky, John Brennan, Keith Stirling) provide a further dimension.

The most compelling performance is from Melita Jurisic as Lear's eldest daughter, Goneril, who she plays as a brooding, sultry movie queen with a sensual, provocative darkness in voice and manner.

Grotesquery is rife. The final scene sees the stage littered with bloody bodies more in the style of Hamlet than Lear. The production highlights the filial betrayal and the gruesome consequences of greed and petty jealousies. Get a look at it. You won't see another like it.

By Kate Herbert Sept 1998

Cyrano de Bergerac - as told by three idiots, Sept 29, 1998

Another review from last century for your delectation. This one's a mad, clown version of Cyrano. KH

 

Adapted from Edmund Rostand

La Mama at the Courthouse Theatre until October 17, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If you do not know the original Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmund Rostand, you might know Steve Martin's film, Roxanne, based on Cyrano. A similar comic-poignant balancing act informs the style of Cyrano de Bergerac - as told by three idiots.

The idiots are three actors: David Adamson, Glynis Angell and Bruce Naylor who are directed by Alex Pinder. The three, according to the program notes, "share, perform and fight for all the roles" which allows the actors' own personae to be part of the performance.

As themselves, they bicker over their individual interpretations of the poet-fighter and vie for the privilege of playing the heroic, poetic, love-soaked Cyrano or, more to the point, who gets to sport his enormous, ugly honker.

Part of the play is classic clown with slapstick fight scenes, goofy caricatures and absurd references. These are interspersed with slabs of Rostand's fine text which is essentially poetic, romantic and, finally, tragic.

Cyrano has a reputation as a rabble-rouser, fearless soldier and fine poet. He suffers unrequited love of his pretty cousin, Roxanne. He finds himself in the invidious position of writing ardent love letters to her which are signed by Christian, a handsome young soldier beloved by Roxanne.

The dramatic, text-based scenes take precedence in the latter half of the 90 minute show and are poignant but less successful than the earlier idiocy. The clownery is often hilarious, although it could be pushed further to maintain its edge. When the energy drops and the voices and actions are too restrained, the show falters.

The director's balancing of the styles is awkward. They need to go further towards both the tragic and the comic. There are also some clumsy scene changes which cannot be covered by the trio singing prettily.

The ensemble is strong after developing this piece over a long workshop period. All three are charming and engaging and all have hilarious character cameos.

Naylor's loud brash servant woman is a hoot and Adamson as the evil, grimacing Comte de Guiche is suitably slimy while Angell, in several small roles, demonstrates her excellent physical clown skills; the more extreme their interpretation, the more effective the result.

This piece could benefit from tighter direction, further editing of the text and some more wildly over-the-top clowning. My gauge of their success became the giggles from the six-year-old in the front row. He loved it.

By Kate Herbert September 1998

INFECTIOU$, Sept 27, 1998

The 90s really had some mad theatre. Here's another archived review. KH
 
by Maude Davey and Marcia Ferguson

Lower Melbourne Town Hall until Oct 11, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

INFECTIOU$ is a psycho-pop-sci-fi-medical-satire with songs. Please explain? A megalomaniacal capitalist, Mr. Sphinx, (Karen Hadfield) employs medical researchers Drs. Pathology (James Wardlaw) and Drip (Jane Bayly), to isolate a world-threatening virus.

A patient called Infection (David Pidd) is turning into a chair. Yes, a chair. Claudia, a Fitzroy resident with a social conscience, (Maude Davey) is enraged by the insensitive, capitalist trend and laments her own fading empathy for the troubled: the losers, loners, street-people.

A granny in pink dressing gown (Marcia Ferguson) is losing her grip on this world and no-one seems to care - except her grand-daughter, Claudia. This ugly, impersonal world values the virtual and the lucrative above the actual and the personal. A 2-dimensional, screen queen (Pidd) coolly comments on the virtual versus the real.

There is a social and political message. We are infected with selfishness. We are blind to poverty, anguish, age and illness. Our sense of community is virtually(!) gone. Without a dollar value to society we are dispensable.

The script for this wacky show was written by Marcia Ferguson with Maude Davey, Madam of the Fringe, She Who Guides Us through the lurid halls of alternative theatre.

The six actors, directed by Melanie Beddie, sing, dance and quip their choreographed way through 90 minutes of goofy hospital cabaret, reminiscent of the television grotesquery of Let the Blood Run Free.

The narrative is interspersed with diverse, original music by Pete Farnan (Boom Crash Opera). The songs are the most inspiring and satisfying component, making their political points with pithy lyrics and big, live sound. Titles such as, "What will happen if nobody gives any more?" "I object. I'm not an object," " I want to be human,” "If money is a disease, I've got it," and " Give me a dollar or I die," reveal the whole story.

 There are a few weaknesses that do not affect the fun of the evening. There are too many narrative threads to be resolved. In the end, whose story is it? Nanny's? Claudia's? Patient Infection's? The humour sometimes relies on bad puns and under-grad jokes. If it were not for the quality of the performers it might be mistaken for the Uni Med School revue.

But this is an hilarious, lively, impassioned night of satirical humour which touches the bleeding, ugly core of our shallow world. We do not want to " get over the empathy thing."

 By Kate Herbert 27 Sept 1998

I Cyclops by Robert McNamara, Sept 23, 1998

 I Cyclops by Robert McNamara

At La Mama until October 4, 1998

Reveiwed around Sept 23 1998

Cyclops is a sad old creature. He lives, blinded, on an island off Sicily with only his flocks for company.in the absence of his Cyclopian brothers.

American writer, Robert McNamara, in his comic-tragic monologue, I Cyclops, has extrapolated on the one-eyed monster who is encountered by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. The giant, before his blinding at the hands of the Greek sailors, is represented as a farcical figure who craves company, is a virgin and delights in the ambrosia given to him by the cunning marooned sailors.

William Gluth, directed by Malcolm Robertson, plays Cyclops as a scruffy, crippled grumbler wearing a tail coat and John Lennon sunglasses. He scuttles about the space, telling his tale of woe and bemoaning his fate. with only a table and chair to assist him on his journey.

McNamara derives his comedy from the pastiche of styles which works better at some times than others. There are snatches of Black American songs and characters, bad puns and witty references. There are some vulgar gags such as Cyclops' brothers being called Copraphilius, Necrophilius and Prophilaxis.

Gluth works hard in this solo show and has some high points, particularly when he plays the drunken Cyclops. His early nerviness gives way to a more relaxed and funny performance in which he more fully inhabits the giant, both vocally and physically. His comic timing is much better and his performance less mannered than in early sections in which he seems less connected with the character.

He peoples the stage with characters as he plays the group of smarmy, devious sailors as well as Cyclops and other incidental characters.

McNamara's text is patchy and wanders towards the end. There is a very odd interpolation of a court case in which "Dr. Cyclops" is tried by a Germanic judge who seems to resemble Freud. It takes a long time to reach the climax when Cyclops is blinded and there are unnecessary and unclear detours on the way.

Malcolm Robertson's direction keeps this one hour play simple and uncluttered. The tragedy of poor, lonely, blinded Cyclops is evident in the production although it could be milked further. the balancing of the grotesque,the comic and the dramatic is difficult but mostly effective.

By Kate Herbert

Rising Fish Prayer, Sept 17, 1998

Rising Fish Prayer by Adam May

 Playbox Theatre Malthouse until October 3, 1998

Review Sept 17, 1998

It seems to be the week of the fish plays with Rising Fish Prayer at Playbox following hard on the heels of Shark Fin Soup at MTC.

The rising fish of Adam May's title relates to the unlikely return of fish to the polluted waters around the fictional Australian "Menzies" gold mine in Papua-New Guinea. Christian missionary style prayers have been the daily fare of the local villagers who have worked the mine for years under a tyrannical lunatic, Captain Melcroft.

When 50-year-old Ken Peterson (Robert Grubb) arrives to take over, he is unaware that his recent double by-pass, divorce from his wife (Janet Andrewartha) and his looming redundancy were a picnic compared to life at "Menzies".

 His dream escape to PNG becomes a nightmare. He faces a workers' rebellion, a closed mine and damning secrets about the death of his predecessor. He cannot escape without risking his life.

Here is a delightful recipe for farce and May, with director Aubrey Mellor, milks the culture clash for all it's worth. Characters are cartoon-like. Robert Grubb  plays Ken with a bluff, lovable coarseness. The dual-culturalism of Sam Tiko, his urbanised secretary, is played by a wry Theo Burns.

 The child-like Christian zeal of Ubuku, a uniformed volunteer who leads daily prayers, is a perfect foil to Ken's gruffness. Ubuku is played with relish by the adorable Kilori Susuve, from Playbox's co-production company, The Performing Arts Troupe of PNG.

Tiko is protective of his village and his daughter,.Sophie (Dobi Kidu) who has no respect for Ken because he, "Doesn't wear a uniform. Doesn't even make us pray." This is an indictment of our generally paternalistic relationship with PNG as is Sophie's fear of Australian men.

May's narrative is entertaining and potentially provocative but dialogue is repetitive, characters underdeveloped and some clunky dream sequences interrupt the story.

 Often the glib humour undercuts the more serious indictments of Australia's relationship with PNG: colonialism, economic exploitation and personal abuse. PNG forces are also criticised for hasty, violent action; shades of Bougainville.

This play was the winner of the Playbox Asialink Playwrighting competition in 1997. Its tropical feel is enhanced by an evocative lighting design by Philip Lethlean and sleek sea-grass set 

design by Trina Parker.

By Kate Herbert

Sept-Oct 1998 Shows in Melbourne

Sept-Oct 1998 Shows in Melbourne

Some of these shows also have reviews posted here from 1998.

• Scissors Paper Rock, by Daniel Keene at Trades Hall Tues Sept 15 -27    
• Bodysongs - The Fatman Tour at Theatreworks 
• Calculated Risks Opera  Sept 19 -Oct 3 
• Infectious Maud Davy et al, Fri Sept 25-Oct 11  
• Alice is a Big Girl Now, Scott Felstead Sept 11-27, Nth Melb T Hall 
• Cabaret of the Absurd ,at Theatreworks Sept 18 
• La Mama, Ricefields installation Sept 15 -19               
• La Mama, The Goldilocks Affair - An Opera,  Daniel Kahans Sep
• Heavy Metal Hamlet, A Frank Production, St Martins Sept 30 
• Wild Turkey Sept 30  at Cherry Tree Hotel Richmond
• Conversations with my Father Saltpillar Theatre St Martins Oct 3-18   
• Estimated Time of Arrival by All and Sundry Oct 1,  Lev 2 400 City Rd S Melb 
• Dream Kitchen, Toni Lamond Universal Theatre Oct10 
• So Wet, Samantha Bews Oct 13 8.15 N Melb T Hall

Shark Fin Soup by Michael Gurr, Sept 9,1998

Shark Fin Soup by Michael Gurr,  MTC

Fairfax Studio until October 10, 1998

Reviewed by Kate Herbert on Sep 9, 1998

Michael Gurr has a couple of hits on his hands already. Sex Diary of an Infidel toured Australia to critical acclaim and Jerusalem won Literary Awards for Drama in both Victoria and NSW.

These plays and others in his repertoire address political or social issues. Shark Fin Soup, directed for the MTC by the deft hand of Bruce Myles, is more concerned with relationships and fate, making it more clearly focussed on character than issue.

This production is a really good night in the theatre. The characters are colourful and eccentric in spite of their inherent ordinariness. Performances are uniformly excellent and the writing is witty, often hilarious.

Vera Benn (Catherine Wilkin) is a famous clairvoyant who "sees" people's fates only by touching objects owned by them. She is married to Frank (John McTernan). Her daughter, Lucy (Tammy McCarthy) has abandoned her failed fashion design career to start an innovative restaurant called The Common Dish. Her partners are her ex-engineer and security guard boyfriend, Daniel (Paul English) and their randy chef pal, Ewan (Simon Wilton). The manifesto is, "just soup, bread and no bullshit"

Their lives seem newly hopeful, charmed, as do the lives of Alan (Kevin Harrington) and Rosemary (Alison Whyte) who are just engaged. But there is a creeping sense of doom. There are misunderstandings, deceptions, financial problems are solved in unorthodox ways. And Vera's heart disease requires a transplant. Things start to fall apart and despair replaces hope.

Myles has woven together the various lives by allowing scenes to bleed into each other. Characters remain on stage after their scenes are finished or hover behind the huge, transparent jagged triangles of Judith Cobb's startling set.

Wilkin is stately and considered as Vera travelling her uncharted path. English is a fine study of the crumbling of a pedant's dream.  Alison Whyte plays Rosemary, a delightfully familiar fast-talking salesgirl, with relish and impeccable timing.

Vera is the conscience of the play although this is not really followed through satisfactorily. In fact, the ending leaves many issues unresolved and most characters' journeys through the play remain unsatisfyingly incomplete.

The significance of Shark Fin Soup eludes me although soups feature in the menu of the cafe. However, the notion of luck, fate and future ruling lives is pervasive. Our dream castles are built on sand. Nothing is predictable - not even a human heart.

By Kate Herbert