Fire, Fire Burning Bright , Oct 17, 2002

Melbourne Festival  

 by Neminuwarlin Performance Group and Jirrawun Aboriginal Arts

At State Theatre   October 17 - 2, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Any performance of aboriginal stories on a conventional stage has political echoes. This story, about a white station owner's murder of aboriginal workers, is a minefield.

Fire, Fire Burning Bright  is presented by Neminuwarlin Performance Group and Jirrawun Aboriginal Arts.

It is an elaborate adaptation of a traditional corroboree or Joonba.  

What makes this show vastly different from the original is the incorporation of aboriginal dance, song and performers into a Western narrative form with advanced technology.

In part, this is successful. Of course the production cannot be assessed on any conventional theatre criteria. It is another creature altogether perhaps more closely related to Community Theatre.

Placing traditional aboriginal performance inside a conventional building is strange and often uncomfortable but it may be the only way an urban audience can access these stories.

The sometimes too literal contemporary telling of the story is enhanced by film footage, (Chris Knowles) evocative lighting (Philip Lethlean), and a beautiful realistic set of red rocks, dust and gum trees. (Tony Oliver)

The aboriginal men kill and eat a bullock. They have no understanding of private property nor of white man's 'justice'.

They were shackled by the neck, incarcerated then returned to their station wearing signs around their necks saying "to be killed". The men did not believe helpful travellers who warned them of their fate.

The men were poisoned with strychnine by the stationowner then burned on a funeral pyre fuelled by the wood they had cut. The story is horrifying, brutal and profoundly moving. 

The spirits of the men travel to the sea. We see the relationship between the real and spirit world clearly.

Peggy Patrick  is Creative Director of the show and a Senior Law Woman for her people. The creative collaboration with Andrish Sain-Clare,  Hungarian born actor and musician, culminated in this production which is now touring the country.

After the performance, Peggy told us that this horrific story was performed secretly in a form unrecognisable to the white population because the aboriginal people feared for their lives.

What strikes one is the warmth and charm of the performers, all of whom members of the families from the Kimberley whose ancestors were murdered. This casualness cannot be rehearsed and is not a part of Western theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Interior Sites Project, IRAA, Oct 10, 2002

 IRAA Theatre  until November 2m 2002

 Live webcast: www.melbournefestival.com.au 

tickets $150

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

We are all voyeurs in some way. We peer into through windows into cosy, well-lit rooms. Real dramas and real life television fascinate us.

The Interior Sites Project  by IRAA Theatre, is theatre veritè. Director, Renato Cuocolo  and actor Roberta Bosetti  provide us with a twelve hour experience that challenges our concepts of theatre on a fundamental level.

There is no conventional theatre. The relationship between actor and audience is completely altered. The fourth wall, that artificial separation of audience from the stage, is broken down.

Seven guests are invited to a secret address. We are instructed to bring a towel and jim-jams. Renato collects us in a van.

The event begins as he drives us through the virtual streets of an Italian village: Vercelli.

He gives us a key to a house. We enter and roam freely, reading letters, books, peeping at photos and feeling naughty.

Suddenly, an amazed woman in a bathrobe appears. "What are you doing here? How did you get in?"

This personal, intrusive and intimate relationship develops over an entire evening, night and morning. We become her confidantes, her friends her dinner guests.

The natural flow of conversation is interfolded amongst the theatrical text. At moments we do not know what is script and what is conversation.

In addition, the entire night is filmed and sent out on the internet. Even our lives are not private any.

After dinner, we witness her gruelling and intimate performance in a tiny downstairs room. We sit at her knees, enthralled.

Bosetti is captivating as person and performer. We are charmed. We want her to be happy, want to ease her pain. We are part of her world now and cannot escape.

Is it art or life? The boundaries bleed. This is innovative theatre that question what constitutes theatre and narrative.

The sleepover in a room full of single beds is like a slumber party except we have Roberta on our earphones and her bedroom on the monitor all night.

She wakes us like mummy at 7am. We breakfast, expectant, awaiting something momentous. She farewells us at the door and we are ferried to our cars at 8.30am.

We feel the need to debrief. If you see this, have coffee together before you go home. It is a marvellous, cheering, warming, wrenching experience.

By Kate Herbert

Still, A Piece of Pie & Gangland, Oct 10, 2002

Still by Jane Bodie, A Piece of Pie by Rik Brown,  Gangland  by Mirra Todd.

At The Store Room  until  October 20, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The Store Room in Fitzroy is maintaining its reputation for interesting programming. Its second season of plays for the Fringe Festival is a clever mix.

Still, by Jane Bodie, is a fine series of eight monologues dealing with craving, desire, sex and human foibles.

Four actors ( Shaun Worrell,  Natalie Carr, Mike McLeish  and Julie Eckersley) each perform two characters. The performances are consistently strong.

Eckersley is particularly magnetic as a woman who spies her ex-partner with his new lover in the produce section of the supermarket. Her performance as a woman breaking up with the love of her life is moving.

In Come, Worrell plays the desperation, passion and frustration of first sexual encounters. His other character is an oily, silver-tongued cad in Not Currently.

Carr's woman over-preparing for a date is very funny in Order. In Want Me, she is sympathetic and moving as a woman confessing to an affair.

In Seeing Somebody, McLeish is a harmless voyeur warmly attached to a woman he watches through her window. As the stylish young gay guy at party in Faking It, he is entertaining.

Bodie's writing is well observed, complex and witty. Each monologue captures a moment, a personality a common problem in life and love.

A Piece of Pie  by Rik Brown  is a lighter piece. Although it is about a mad couple who play a game of murderous Trivial Pursuit with a kidnap victim, it is a comedy with some black humour.

The third play of the program Gangland, by Mirra Todd, is a frightening investigation of male violence and misogyny. He writing and themes are tough and relentless. Although the action escalates too quickly, it serves the story well.

Three young professional men meet for a catch up night on the booze. Taylor,  (Simon Roborgh) is a married lawyer trying to get pregnant with his wife.

 Aaron  (Eddy Segal)  is a confused and insecure single male. Their friend Sam  (Sean Barker) is an emotional thug who taunts them both about proving their manhood. The outcome is a violent off stage attack on a woman that changes all of them for life.

The final piece, that I did not see, is Direct From Broadway, an Australian production of a US musical show that won five Tony Awards.

By Kate Herbert

Hello Dolly!, Prod Co. Oct 2002

Music and lyrics by Jerry Herman  Book by Michael Stewart   

by The Production Company   

at State Theatre October 9,10,11,12, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Amanda Muggleton  plays Dolly Levi , the bossy, scheming matchmaker, with a touch of Mae West.  Muggleton, with her broad New York Jewish accent, is brassy, bold, sexy and provocative as Dolly.

This is a concert version rather than the full musical. This means it has no set, some dancing but concentrates on the songs and characters and Hello Dolly! is jam-packed with singable tunes  by Jerry Herman.

The production, directed by Rodney Fisher  in a frighteningly short ten day, is slick and stylish. Tony Bartuccio's  choreography is witty and smooth. Under John Foreman's musical direction, Orchestra Victoria  is excellent.

Muggleton shines as Dolly. Her presence is magnetic, particularly in the second half when she boots the energy. Her entrance for the title song is a show-stopper. She is sassy, sexy and vampish as she parades down a staircase in a scarlet sequined gown.

Hello Dolly! is a story about finding love and the great adventure that follows.

Dolly wants to give up her lowly position as a marriage broker and marry her richest client, Horace Vandengelder,  (John Stanton) the feed store merchant from Yonkers.  Her naughty, comic and mostly harmless manipulations to carry out her plan are the heart of the story.

Meanwhile, Horace's disgruntled shop clerks, Cornelius Hackl  (Anthony Weigh) and Barnaby Tucker) (Lindsay Farris) embark on a journey to New York to meet girls.

The musical, based on Thornton Wilder's  play, The Matchmaker, . opened in 1964 with Carol Channing  as Dolly.

Stanton, as the grumpy Vandegelder, is suitably gruff and unbending.  The stand-out performance is Anthony Weigh  as Cornelius. Weigh is a real talent both as an actor and singer.

 There are fine cameos from Christen O'Leary as the whining Ermengarde,  Melissa Madden Grey as perky Minnie, Katie Wilkins  as the trashy Ernestine, and Grant Pir  as a German waiter.

Vanessa Downing  as Irene Molloy, is dignified but lacks vocal strength.

The songs include: Before the Parade Passes By,  It Takes A Woman and Put On Your Sunday Clothes. The highlight is the lyrical love ballad, It Only Takes a Moment,   sung by Weigh with the company.

This production is charming and genuinely entertaining. Let's hope to see it with all the moving parts next time.

By Kate Herbert

Week, Platform Youth, Oct 2, 2002

Week  by Platform Youth Theatre  
 251 High St Northcote  until June 30

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

There is something totally charming and delightful about Week by Platform Youth Theatre. A cast of twenty-three aged 16 to 25, write perform, a show based on one week in their lives.

The result is a series of vignettes ranging from one to five minutes. Each has a different voice but all reflect the ordinary, the surprising, the intimate or tragic moments that may occur in anyone's week.

Dramaturg, Patricia Cornelius  developed script material from journals kept for the project by each participant. Director, Susie Dee,  creates an evocative space on stage using virtually only the bodies and voices of the young cast.

The entire 80 minutes is staged on a set resembling a train platform, (Adrienne Chisholm. OK). In this promenade stage, the audience sits on one side only of the long space while the actors face us, seated in a uniform line of chairs on the platform.

Dee brings an imaginative vision to the work. Individuals or small groups peel off from the seated line and perform scenes. Another layer is added to the vignettes by the choreographed movements and vocal interjections of the seated ensemble.

They sit still as if a backdrop to the action. Then they shift positions subtly, pose, echo the dialogue or simply react to the scene.

A trio drives to the country for a camping trip. A young woman tries to find the woman who adopted her dog. A man decides to start a quiet, 'nice guy' revolution in society. On a train, various people suffer, chat, eat or pretend to be what they are not.

Two sisters from Sarajevo  argue about forgetting their previous lives. Four teenage girls go clubbing, talk about fatness and look for love. Two girls diarise their boring Sunday at home or working in a supermarket.

These snapshots of lives are variously moving, funny or insightful. What makes this show work, is the unaffected quality of these young community actors. The professionals who worked on this show - Dee, Cornelius, and others - create a safe environment for the young people to develop and refine their ideas and present them to an audience.

The strange and accidental juxtaposition of images and stories adds another dimension. Chris Lewis's  sound design and Gina Gascoigne's  lighting enhance the atmosphere created by Susie Dee.

This is effective and affecting community theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Shakespeare Improvised: Bard-Prov , Oct 2, 2002

Improvised Shakespeare by Melbourne Impro

 directed by Kate Herbert

La Mama at the Courthouse Theatre

 349 Drummond St Carlton

Sundays October 6 and 13

"Out damned spot," says a woman to her stained laundry. This was not Shakespeare's intention for Lady Macbeth's words but it could be part of the upcoming improvised Shakespeares by Impro Melbourne.

Allow me to declare my hand here: I am the foolish director of these plays.

Having spent three months in San Francisco on an Australia Council grant studying the full length improvised play, it is time to mercilessly bastardise The Bard in Melbourne.

Obsessed academics argue about who wrote Shakespeare's plays four hundred years ago. The will have an apoplexy over these as yet unwritten plays.

Here is how it goes. The audience suggests a titles for a Shakespeare play that has never been written. In San Francisco we had Midnight's Desire  as our title.

The play was a romantic comedy but it might have been a tragedy  - except for the fact that it started with a royal lady in bed with her loyal Nurse.

Now you must believe that we really do begin with nothing prepared.  Nix, nil, nada. We have no idea what the story will be or who it will be about. We have no content, only form and a deep understanding of how a Shakespeare play is constructed and performed.

For the novice this would be terrifying. For the experienced improviser it is- well - terrifying and exhilarating.

In a Shakespeare improvised we are both performers and playwrights. We really make it up as we go along.

In a recent improvised play, a tragedy called A Tale of Joy and Damnation, a king divides his kingdom between a son and disloyal daughter. The son fears for his father's safety and takes an army of loyal and lusty whores (yes whores) to save him.

There is a lot of 'verily' and 'mayhap' and 'What ho!' bandied about. Characters are named Bassacio, Filander and even Plutonium in one recently.

The creative mind in a whirl is a wonderful thing to witness. This is part of the attraction for an audience of an improvised play. They watch not only the product, but the moment of creation.

They are fascinated by the story and also by the incredible feat of imagination that created it in an instant before their eyes. An improviser could spontaneously combust at any moment.

The tricky thing in improvisation is to go not only to the comic but also to the dramatic level of the characters and the narrative.

The most successful improvised plays are those that balance the light and airy with the moving and personal elements of the story.

Of course, the form can apply to any other playwright or film genre you may choose.

In San Francisco (Yes, three months of fog and Californian sun) we performed plays in the style of Film Noir, Sci-Fi, David Lynch and Horror movies.

Some companies are doing weekly serials that last for months or even a whole year.

After Shakespeare, I tackle Chekhov, the Ancient Greeks, Film Noir. What the hey! Maybe even David Williamson. Hmm. What style is that? Middle class Australian whining and dining I suppose.

By Kate Herbert

The Angina Monologues, Oct 2, 2002

By Simon Kennedy  at Trades Hall October 2 to 19, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The Angina Monologues begins with the promise of being a challenging, dark comic walk through death. The title of Simon Kennedy's one-man show is attention grabbing. The opening story, about his dad dying from angina when Simon was nine, is interesting and risky.

There is definitely promise but not all is fulfilled. The Angina Monologues is more a stand-up comedy show than a series of theatrical monologues.

Kennedy has charm and his ideas are good. But some of his material and the loose structure of his show let him down.

His gags and stories range from smoking through serial killers, Adelaide, McDonald's,  Work Safety,  paternity and men's obsession with lingerie.

He draws much humour from he unlikely collision of images or ideas. Why is giving up smoking like masturbation? Toddlers as vigilantes

One clever twist of facts deals with actor Robert Wagner's  relationship to Adelaide serial killers.

He uses old slides of road accidents with police and ambulance in attendance. These are funny partly because of their 1960s period and goofy characters. Kennedy has not yet worked out exactly how to make them work as parody.

The show is too loose. It feels as if it needs a director and a script editor to tighten up both the comic material and Kennedy's performance.

He employs some recurring gags such as the slide that reads in huge letters after each problem is raised, What do you do?

The shifts between topics need to be smoother and Kennedy feels just a little uncomfortable on stage. With a stand up comic, we need to feel secure and safe.

Which brings me to the one part of the show that needs to be overhauled.

Kennedy coaxes onto stage a reluctant audience member and makes him responsible for making the resuscitation gag work. One rule of audience participation is Look after the audience member. Make him feel safe.

The poor man was most obliging but was embarrassed and profoundly uncomfortable with the heavy responsibility and focus put upon him.

He show is entertaining but the variable quality of material makes it too long at a full hour.

By Kate Herbert

Fever, MWT, Sep 19, 2002

Fever  by Andrew Bovell  Patricia Cornelius,  Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas  & Irine Vela Melbourne Workers Theatre

At  Trades Hall, Sept 19 to October 5, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

"Where does the fever in the nation burn hottest?' This was the challenging question asked of the four writers of the new Melbourne Workers Theatre production, Fever.

These same writers (Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves , Christos Tsiolkas) created the award winning MWT show, Who's Afraid of the Working Class?

Seven actors play variety of roles in all stories. (Daniela Farinacci, Eugenia Fragos, LeRoy Parsons,  Rodney Afif, (Pauline Whyman,  David Adamson, Tony Briggs)

The company wanted to revisit the artistic and critical success of its earlier production. Fever succeeds only in part. It does not meet the level of socio-political commentary of Who's Afraid…? Nor does it equal its artistic achievements.

This is not to say that the show has no merit. The important issues of xenophobia and fear of difference are raised in this testing period of our history since the refugee crisis and September 11.

These common themes and the image of a river link the four separate narrative threads.

Bovell's tightly written story, The Chair,  is about a frightened woman ( Fragos) holding hostage a man (Parsons) who invaded her land and her home.

This is the most effective narrative. The dialogue is spare, the themes are less obvious and the relationship between the two characters is dangerous and dramatic. It is the only story with any genuine dramatic tension.

Reeves' story, Savant,  is funny and eccentric. A young woman (Farinacci)  gives birth to a violent and fully developed baby. (Afif) " Mummy, I'm evil," quips the bub.

Although the baby's concluding political tirade is humorous, it overstates its themes and feels like preaching.

In Blunt  by  Patricia Cornelius,  a woman (Whyman) finds a baby floating on a river. Her primitive community of women are fearful of the baby because of its race.

Psalms  by Christos Tsiolkas,  attacks the issues by portraying a local community split by a river, race, religion and, subsequently, war.

Director, Julian Meyrick  keeps the pace rapid and the style and images consistent. The set (Louise McCarthy  is a red sandy desert reminiscent of Uluru.  Paul Jackson   lights the stage with flair.  

Music by Irine Vela  is a highlight of the show. It creates atmosphere with sultry evocative guitar and cello.

Fever is a noble effort but the outcome is, in part, a simplistic representation of complex themes.

By Kate Herbert

The Simple Truth by Michael Gurr Playbox, Sept 2002

The Simple Truth  by Michael Gurr

Playbox Theatre  at Beckett Theatre, Malthouse

Sept 12 until October 5, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

There is a disturbing quality to Michael Gurr's  new play, The Simple Truth. It challenges an audience to stay alert, to keep abreast of its wave-like motion and to comprehend its twists and abstractions.

It begins enigmatically, with a man engaged in a one-sided conversation with a silent and frightened woman. The air is thick with menace. He seems threatening.

 Hirst, (Kim Gyngell)  the man, we discover to be a police officer. Sarah, (Josephine Byrnes) the distressed woman, came to him to confess. We know neither to what crime nor even whether she committed a crime at all.

The premise of this play is interesting. What constitutes a crime? Is neglect, lack of interest or an unwillingness to help a crime?

As this bewildering relationship develops, we are compelled to ask why the pair seem so intimate so quickly and what is the simple truth of her 'crime'.

The play has an unusual construction. It begins with long monologues: the first from Hirst, the second from Sarah. Eventually they converse. The play is dense with cryptic dialogue and is demanding on the ear. 

Gyngell is both entertaining and menacing as the pseudo-intellectual cop while Byrnes provides a finely tuned performance as the fragile and despairing Sarah.

Bruce Myles  adroitly directs the two actors with a light hand. There is little physical action so the focus is on the speaking character much of the time.

Glenn Hughes'  lighting creates deep shadows and evocative atmosphere. Andrew Pendlebury's  original live guitar is a fine adjunct to the production. It provides the necessary emotional layer. Judith Cobb's  design replicates an interrogation room with Pendelbury seated upstage framed by what could be a two-way mirror.

The play is short and clever. The writing is witty, characters are smart and engage in entertaining repartee and romantic fantasy. What it lacks is an emotional connection for the audience.

There seems to be some connective tissue missing from the narrative or, at least, from the relationship between the two characters. They are pushed suddenly and inexplicably into intimacy, shared fantasy and flirtation. The leaps are not totally unconvincing and make the outcome a little unsatisfying.

Despite this, The Simple Truth is a short and intense experience in the theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, MTC, Sept 11, 2002

Great Expectations  by Charles Dickens  adapted by Simon Phillips

Melbourne Theatre Company at Playhouse, Vic Arts Centre 

Sept 11 until 12 October, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The multiple narrative threads of Great Expectations are rich and the gallery of characters fascinating and hilarious.  Simon Phillips' adaptation wrests a viable stage script from Charles Dickens' extensive novel.

Its long chronology, countless eccentric characters and Victorian landscapes would terrify a more timorous heart. This complexity is difficult to translate into dramatic language and imagery. There are more threads than even four hours can comfortably handle. A more ruthless edit might help. 

Phillips' creates some magical and transformational images. People become horses and carriage, characters appear out of darkness, dank and forbidding London streets come alive. Some images, such as the burning of Miss Haversham,  fly by too quickly.

The emotional landscape is provided by Ian McDonald's  music that underscores and punctuates. The production is enhanced by Nick Schlieper's  complex and dramatic lighting that creates atmosphere and deep perspective.

Benjamin Winspear  as Pip  creates a believable youth growing from working class child to city gentleman. As Pip grows, Winspear displays the complex passion, craving and warmth of the man. Pip grows up with his comically feisty sister (Julie Forsyth) and her kindly blacksmith husband played with great warmth by Richard Piper. 

He is privileged and tormented by his regular visits to the eccentric Miss Haversham (Angela Punch McGregor)  and her cold-hearted adoptive niece, Estella  (Sam Healy) whom he loves hopelessly. 

Punch McGregor's almost spider-like portrayal of Miss Haversham is compelling, capturing impeccably the jilted woman's grief, despair and remorse. Healy  is competent as the provocative, cold Estella but lacks intensity.

Pip's life changed radically when a mysterious benefactor catapults him into the life of a gentleman. Jonathan Hardy  is rivetting as Jaggers,  the surly lawyer who manages Pip's patronage.

 Linal Haft  as Pip's convict benefactor, Magwitch,  is powerful and Huw Higginson  plays a charming, quirky Wemmick.

A parade of vivid, hilarious characters are played with finesse by the ensemble. There is an enormous amount of action and innumerable characters in this story.  Dale Ferguson's  design is architectural and at times a little inflexible but allows a flow of action on stairs and balconies.

Great Expectations is an epic that is successful in the great part but is a little unwieldy and unmoving.

By Kate Herbert

Week , June 21, 2002

 Platform Youth Theatre

251 High St Northcote  until June30

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

There is something totally charming and delightful about Week by Platform Youth Theatre. A cast of twenty-three aged 16 to 25, write perform, a show based on one week in their lives.

The result is a series of vignettes ranging from one to five minutes. Each has a different voice but all reflect the ordinary, the surprising, the intimate or tragic moments that may occur in anyone's week.

Dramaturg, Patricia Cornelius  developed script material from journals kept for the project by each participant. Director, Susie Dee,  creates an evocative space on stage using virtually only the bodies and voices of the young cast.

The entire 80 minutes is staged on a set resembling a train platform, (Adrienne Chisholm). In this promenade stage, the audience sits on one side only of the long space while the actors face us, seated in a uniform line of chairs on the platform.

Dee brings an imaginative vision to the work. Individuals or small groups peel off from the seated line and perform scenes. Another layer is added to the vignettes by the choreographed movements and vocal interjections of the seated ensemble.

They sit still as if a backdrop to the action. Then they shift positions subtly, pose, echo the dialogue or simply react to the scene.

A trio drives to the country for a camping trip. A young woman tries to find the woman who adopted her dog. A man decides to start a quiet, 'nice guy' revolution in society. On a train, various people suffer, chat, eat or pretend to be what they are not.

Two sisters from Sarajevo argue about forgetting their previous lives. Four teenage girls go clubbing, talk about fatness and look for love. Two girls diarise their boring Sunday at home or working in a supermarket.

These snapshots of lives are variously moving, funny or insightful. What makes this show work, is the unaffected quality of these young community actors. The professionals who worked on this show - Dee, Cornelius, and others - create a safe environment for the young people to develop and refine their ideas and present them to an audience.

The strange and accidental juxtaposition of images and stories adds another dimension. Chris Lewis's  sound design and Gina Gascoigne's  lighting enhance the atmosphere created by Susie Dee.

This is effective and affecting community theatre.

By Kate Herbert

June… the place does not matter, June 6, 2002

Written by Louise Morris  and Rebecca Rutter
a CIA production  in La Mama carpark, June 6- June, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The Bouffon  is a wonderful and strange form of theatre with its roots in Mediaeval France. It is a grotesque form of black clown that is popular with experimental companies here. It is rarely done well.

In June….the place does not matter,  a developmental production, CIA  has a go at the Bouffon. The work is predominantly unsuccessful in this stage of its development.

The concept and location are interesting. The piece is performed in and around a caravan in the carpark in front of La Mama. A family of misfits runs a carpark.  A series of grotesque and deformed characters stumble, crawl and fall into the arena.

The audience huddles around a brazier or wraps itself in blankets.

The idea is a good one and perhaps more work will increase its definition. The twin lesbian characters ( Morris and Anna Voronoff OK) could develop into a grim clown routine.

Another character is crippled with leg braces and a crying baby lies ignored amongst the rubbish.

My favourite was a little terrier whining and confused as actors leap out of the caravan.

The final scene reveals a fine design element when we are herded by a cowboy through the van into the La Mama courtyard.

However, the actors are vocally limited and the troupe that teem out of the van on occasion are awkward. Dialogue is clumsy and sections of poetic text are incomprehensible.

In Bouffon's original form- so goes the unwritten story -  the deformed, inbred children of the French aristocacy lived in the swamps as outcasts until All Souls' Day, when they were permitted to perform in the cathedrals of Paris.

They were happy in their isolated community and lived unhampered by their deformities. This group of disaffected fringe dwellers performed cruel parodies of the ruling class and church.

There is yet to be an appropriately acerbic and relevant version of this for contemporary Australia. An actual disabled or minority group would make a political statement through the form.

 CIA's work does not touch the Bouffon's potential for social parody. It remains a thin satire with no darkness, depth or intensity. Some of the actors have not grasped the style yet.

.

By Kate Herbert

Casa d'Alba, June 1, 2002

 By Federico Garcia Lorca  
 School of Drama, Victorian College of the Arts Studio 45 Sturt St
June 1 to 11, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Federico Garcia Lorca's  play, Casa d'Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba) is written for six older women. This makes it all the more extraordinary that this production is so very successful. All six actors are very young graduating actors from Victorian College of the Arts.

Playing so far above one's age is difficult for professional actors but the exceptionally stylish and tasteful direction by Tanya Gerstle brings out a maturity and passion in these women that is inspiring.

Gerstle highlights the stillness, silence, the heat and sexual frustration of the women in Bernarda Alba's  house. She weaves amongst Lorca's dialogue, snatches of exotic flamenco and abstracted movement.

The production is beautiful both aesthetically and dramatically. The huge warehouse, designed by Danielle Harrison,  replicates a stone courtyard with distressed stone wall at the rear.

The whole is steeped in sepia tones enhanced by warm lighting ( Michael Jankie  that seeps through peepholes to the outside world. Under the voices lies an evocative soundscape by Jacqueline Grenfell.

The story takes lace after the death of Bernarda's husband. She incarcerates her four adult but unmarried daughters in her Spanish home.

The eldest, Angustias (Shelley Krape) is to marry the raffish young Pepe le Romero,.Adela, (Ming-Zhu Hii), the youngest sister, is already Pepe's secret lover.

Yet another love-starved sister, Martiro,( Karissa Lane) is infatuated with Pepe, the man we never see.

A calmer fourth sister, Magdalena, ( Suzannah McDonald) and an old servant, Poncia,  (Anica Koprivec) watch the tragedy unfold. The stage is infused with sexual repression and sexuality.

The performances are strong from all six women. However, Melissa Chambers) as Bernarda is exceptional. She plays the matriarch with composure and stateliness and a powerful vocal and physical quality.

McDonald is engaging and versatile as both Magdalena and the mad grandmother. Koprivec plays the wise servant with great humour and earthiness.

This is a delightful production of a passionate and provocative play.

By Kate Herbert