Queensland Story, NOv 26, 2002

Music Theatre from the Cane Fields

What: Agents' Day. Bachelor of Music, Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music.

Where: Chapel off Chapel

When: Tuesday December 3, 2002

Time: 3-5pm

Writer: Kate Herbert

If you like singin' and dancin' and tropical sun, there is a Bachelor of Music Theatre course for you at the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, (CQCM) in Mackay .

At the inception of the course at CQCM in 1996, students studied in sheds erected a cane field. Talk about suffer for your art.

Seven students from the course will strut their stuff for Melbourne theatrical agents on December 3 at Chapel off Chapel  in Prahran.

Melbourne is a hub of music theatre and many of the trainers for the CQCM course come from the southern states.

Australian music theatre celebrities, Toni Lamond  and Nancye Hayes,  are industry mentors for students.

"This year," says Hayes, "I did workshops in movement and practical performance. They'd perform a song for me and we'd talk about it then move it. It's a collaborative thing."

Hayes also presented her solo show, Nancye with an E and directed the major production, Kiss Me Kate.  

"The skills of the students are varied," says Hayes.  Most come into the course with one skill area in dancing, singing or acting.

 Students audition as performers for the three year course but they may choose to specialise in production work.

Cheryl Mitchell  entered the course in her forties after teaching dance.  She is now the Production and Manager and Lighting Designer for the Agents' Day. Her job began a year ago with fund-raising for the tour.  Busy woman.

Melbourne music theatre identity, Will Conyers,  creator of the National Theatre Music Theatre course, is the ultimate commuter. He directed the show in a series of flying weekend visits to Mackay.

In 2000, he was a full-time singing and acting teacher at CQCM. Now he teaches intensive blocks several times a year.

"They are multi-skilled," he says. All the students study technical and production areas, developing skills in lighting, sound and design. This makes them employable in many areas of theatre.

"The course graduates are "very young fresh talent," says Conyers admiringly.

The music theatre industry needs young people in its ranks not only for the ingenue roles but to develop talent early. Six of the eight graduates are 19 to 21 years.

The building they work in is still in a cane field but it no longer a shed. It is now a state of the art building housing a magnificent theatre with great acoustics.

Conyers quips, " Its acoustics are too complimentary for actors."

 Lucky students.

By Kate Herbert

Shadowlands, Nov 24, 2002

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What: Shadowlands by William Nicholas  Chambers Theatre Company

Where: Athenaeum Theatre 2

When: Until December 8, 2002

Time: Wed to Sat 8pm Sunday 6pm

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

After New Year we will see on stage C.S. Lewis's children's book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Meanwhile we can see a snippet of his personal life on stage in Shadowlands by William Nicholas.

Lewis, writer of the Narnia  series of books, is here depicted at the watershed of his life. This stuffy old Oxford don falls in love with a most inappropriate woman.

Jim Shaw  plays Jack Lewis  with sympathy and skill. This old-fashioned Mediaeval Literature scholar mixes with only men who are equally stitched up and incompetent with women. ( Tony Thomas, Jim Alexander)

Between his scholarly studies Lewis wrote very successful science fiction and children's novels as well as treatises on Christianity. One of his avid fans was an American, Joy Gresham.  After they met, they formed an unusual platonic relationship.

When Joy's husband divorces her, Lewis secretly marries Joy purely to allow her to stay in England. Their friendship flourishes. Joy's sudden diagnosis with cancer is the catalyst for Lewis to confront his need and love for her.

As Joy, Gloria Ajenstat  is a fine foil for Shaw's fuddy-duddy propriety as Lewis. Joy is emancipated, garrulous, Jewish and American - a complete antithesis of the English don. She is also completely unafraid of the Oxford men who dislike her.

Bill Johnston  as Lewis's brother, Warnie  is a still, warm presence. The brothers' relationship represents the quiet pond of Oxford world before Joy tossed in a stone.

The script by Nicholas is a finely wrought emotional journey with detailed characterisations of Lewis and Joy.

Jasper Bagg's  direction focuses on script and character. There are some advantages to this choice.

However, the swift and frequent changes of location and time are uncomfortable and actors move too conspicuously from one part of the set to another.

Lighting (Des Jackson)  does not create sufficient sense of place. Music would enhance the movement between scenes and add atmosphere.

Shadowlands is a beautiful and eccentric love story that gives hope to those who have never loved.

By Kate Herbert

Faust, Nov 2002

Faust  by Goethe  by Grail Theatre

Chapel off Chapel, Wed to Sun , 8.30pm, Nov 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It is too rare to see the German writer, Goethe, on stage in Melbourne.

This production of his major play, Faust, directed by Fredric Lleaf , is economical and effective in its simplicity of staging and edited script.

Goethe's Faust is an exceptional work that occupied thirty years of his life in the writing.

Dr. Heinrich Faust  is an aging melancholic whose suicide attempt is interrupted by the devil, Mephistopheles.  (Michael Burkett)

He trades his soul for eternal youth and the promised love of Gretchen,  (Karla Silvey) the sweet, innocent daughter of his neighbour. A benign God (Leon Durr) witnesses the bargain.

The plan goes awry when Gretchen accidentally poisons her mother with a sleeping draft and Faust kills her brother Valentin in a fight.  ( Luke Doxey)

 Burkett is a delightfully impish and sardonic as Mephistopheles. He relies not on melodrama or portentous tones, but on a light, bright, insidious ease to create the manipulative evil of the role.

Donald Baigent  plays Faust with great skill, detail and sympathy. Faust's shattered psyche is palpable in Baigent's performance. He is an actor of whom we should see more.

Burkett and Baigent make a fine duet in this battle of good and evil. The relationship between Mephisto and Faust is intense. Goethe's witty, rapid dialogue makes it both entertaining and disturbing. Broken romance, abandoned love, human folly and free will are all themes in this tragedy.

Silvey, as Gretchen, the victim and ingenue, has an uncanny, alabaster, doll-like quality that makes her seem almost unreal.

Lleaf keeps the staging uncluttered, relying on the characters to speak Goethe's poetic and intelligent dialogue.

The script edits leave some gaps in the narrative but it moves swiftly. The pace heightens the relentlessness of Mephisto's plan.

Lleaf places audience on two sides of the long narrow performance space in a traverse seating plan. This is awkward for sight lines at times when action is at extreme ends of the corridor of performance.

Lighting design, by Becky Russell,  is simple, dramatic and evocative. Original music by Geoffey O'Connell  enhances the atmosphere.

There is more to be gleaned from Goethe's Faust but this is a strong smaller scale production which much to commend it, particularly the two lead actors, Burkett and Baigent.

By Kate Herbert

The Changeling, Nov 19, 2002

The Changeling,  by Thomas Middleton  and William Rowley  

La Mama   at The Courthouse

Wed to Sat 8pm Sun 6.30pm until November 30, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

English Jacobean playwrights of the early 1600s wrote two types of performances. One was the court masques which were glossy spectacles equivalent to our peppy musicals.

The other was the revenge tragedy, a play designed for an intimate space and small audience. It was steeped in blood, revenge, adultery and betrayal.

The Changeling, by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, is a fine example of the latter type.

This version of The Changeling, adapted from the original by Julian Rickert and directed by Suzanne Kersten,  succumbs to the fatal attraction of making the play feel contemporary.

The story is about Beatrice  ( Berry Liberman ) who loves Alsemero  (Leo Faust). She enlists the disfigured De Flores  (Ian Dixon) to murder Alonso,  her betrothed. (Paul Moi)

Everything goes pear-shaped when Beatrice is discovered to be an adulterous murderess.

Kersten puts a live rock band on stage. Interspersed between the Jacobean scenes are raunchy old pop songs including Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare  and Total Control  by the Motels.

The production does not work for a number of reasons.

 The acting is uneven although there are a few competent performers. Leo Faust  as Alsemero  and Susanne Chapman  as Isabella  are particularly good. Noel Jordan  and Richard Bligh are colourful in dual roles.

The rest of the show looks amateurish. The direction is clumsy and the style tilts hazardously toward the melodramatic verging on parody.

There is far too much meaningless dumb show between scenes. Actors engage in intense gazes, overly emphatic delivery of dialogue and at times an almost comical interpretation of the tragic mode.

 The audience laughed inappropriately for a tragedy, which is never a good sign.

The bedlam scenes were stereotypical, chaotic and badly acted. The rock music was inappropriate, too loud, poorly sung by actors and performed like a self-indulgent video clip.

It is always good to witness an adventurous production. However, this one is unable to meet its promise.

By Kate Herbert

Lonely Lennie Lower by Barry Dickins, Nov 15, 2002

Lonely Lennie Lower  by Barry Dickins  

At La Mama  

Thurs & Sat 6pm Wed 8.30pm Fri 10pm Sun 4.30pm, until December 1, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Barry Dickins and one of his best-loved characters, Lennie Lower, (Simon King) share many attributes.

Both are comic journalists, both are unpredictable, outrageous, love a drink and shift between the hilarious and the tragic.

Lennie Lower was a real newspaper humorist during the Depression years in Sydney. He made money for Frank Packer's papers by writing scathing satire. T

Dickins deals with the fact that Lennie was desperately lonely because of his alcoholism and his inability to connect with others except to vivisect them for his column.

It is difficult to discern where Lower's own writing departs from Dickins'. Dickins incorporates Australianisms, witticisms, absurdities and jolly japes into Lower's dialogue.

"I am an animated gully trap," Lennie quips.

Simon King is alone on stage as Lower and makes a feast of it. His performance is charming and challenging. He shifts from raucous drunken hooting, through biting satirical jibes to the moving revelations of a sad, dying columnist.

Director, Lucy Freeman, sets the entire piece in a crowded La Mama space designed by Jonathan Leahey. OK) he lies in a stupor on a long, wooden pub bar draped with beer soaked towels.

Piles of old documents, his battered portable Remington and a decorative cash register surround Lennie.

His bottles of scotch and stout appear magically through the bar and he sups on glass after glass as he regales us with comic stories, jokes from his column and maudlin references to his loneliness.

Dickins has a powerful way of tossing us about on an emotional ocean. He shifts us from face-aching comedy to poignant stories.

King plays the humorist in his last hours, crippled with rheumatism, soaked in alcohol and steeped in resentment and rage at his wasted life.

He tilts into a gruff Frank Packer then into Lower's squeaky comrade in drink, William Ernest Presser.

Lonely Lennie Lower is one of Dickins early and best plays. It has nto dated and is a delight to see, particularly with Dickins in the audience heartily enjoying his own jokes.

By Kate Herbert

Rapture , Nov 15, 2002

Rapture  by Joanna Murray-Smith  

Playbox Theatre  at Merlin Theatre, Nov 14 until November 30 , 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The question asked in Joanna Murray-Smith's play, Rapture, is, What do the godless do when their best friends discover faith?

In this middle-class faithless society, couples such as these live in comfort. They are high functioning, professional, self-serving city-dwellers. They live self-satisfied, neat, Nike-coloured lives.

Murray-Smith captures the smugness and obsession with image of this clan of forty-somethings. They are dislikeable but recognisable types who talk at each other rather than communicate.

The writing is smart, witty and sometimes glib. The play is a series of speeches and rants by individuals peppered with snatches of short, interrupted dialogue.

At times, this feels uncomfortable for both actor and listener.

The characters become ciphers for particular messages. They are vehicles for the writer's voice rather than fully developed characters.

Henny  (Marg Downey) known on TV as the Glamorous Gourmet,  is married to Harry,  (Greg Stone) winner of Real Estate Agent of the Year.  They epitomise the tacky, style-obsessed urban elite.

When they disappear for seven months after their home is burnt to ashes, their friends worry.

Publisher, Eve  (Natasha Herbert) and her award-winning novelist husband, Tom  (Neil Pigot) plan a reunion dinner when finally they track down Henny and Harry.

They invite Dan, ( Paul English) a journalist, and Jane  (Belinda McClory) his wife, a documentary film-maker.

The performances are all excellent. This is a fine cast assembled by director, Jenny Kemp.

Downey and Stone encapsulate beautifully the detached superiority of the couple who discover faith.

Herbert plays the glamorous Eve with style. As her husband, Tom, Pigot is a prowling, caged cat ready to pounce on those who attack his artist's lifestyle.

English brings warmth and richness to Dan and McClory comes into her own when Jane's secret is revealed.

The set by Dale Ferguson  is a cool steel and glass prison that seems to trap these couples in their own vanity. The stage is lit imaginatively by Rachel Burke.

This is entertaining theatre in many ways. Although it challenges the shallowness of these lives it remains superficial in its delivery.

By Kate Herbert

Sweet Phoebe, Nov 12, 2002

Sweet Phoebe by Michael Gow  

By Araucous  Productions  at The Store Room  

Nov 12 until  December 1, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Sweet Phoebe by Michael Gow is a play about a couple searching for a missing dog. Of course that is only the beginning.

Helen  (Sandra Rucins) and Frazer  (Mark Blackmore) are the ultimate dislikeable yuppie couple from the 1980's.

She is an architect. He is an advertising executive. Both are arrogant, opinionated and ambitious. They seem devoted to each other and to their meticulously planned future together. But the relationship, we discover, is built on sandy ground.

This production, directed by VCA graduate, Damien A Pree,  moves swiftly, taking advantage of Gow's economical dialogue and short, snappy scenes.  The problem is that much of the action seems over-directed.

One example is in early scenes when the pair circle each other like animals in a rather too obvious and stagy manner.

The two actors seem out of their depth in the first half of the play but are much more comfortable later.

When Helen and Frazer become desperate to find their friends' runaway dog, Rucins and Blackmore become far more connected to the characters and emotions.

Gow creates a couple in an obsessively ordered, controlled and insular world. They have a plan for their financial and romantic future.

When their friends ask them to baby-sit their dog, Pheobe, for a week, Helen and Frazer fear it will upset their china doll lives. They are right - but for reasons unexpected.

The couple fall in love with Phoebe. Their shallow lives need her. In just three days they adore her. They walk her, play with her and talk about her.

When she disappears they are frantic. Their carefully balanced little world falls at a rapid pace into complete chaos as they search for the lost pup in the grim suburbs and their grimy, unfamiliar populace.

There is something of a 40's Katherine Hepburn-Spencer Tracey movie in Gow's script. It moves speedily with almost filmic editing and has a similar wry, absurd style of dialogue.

The jazz sound track that covers the frequent scene changes keeps the energy pumping as we accompany the pair through their race against time to find Phoebe. Sharp lighting changes (Marcus Shutenko) enhance the starkness of the style.

My difficulty is that my first viewing of Sweet Phoebe was seeing Cate Blanchett  as Helen in the first Belvoir Street Theatre production. It is a tall order to top that performance.

By Kate Herbert

Sugar: The Story of a Boxer, Nov 11, 2002

Sugar: The Story of a Boxer  by Don't Get Upstairs

La Mama at Carlton Courthouse   

8.30pm Wed to Sat, 6.30pm Sun until November 16, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Two-hander clown shows are becoming de rigeur  on the  Melbourne fringe theatre circuit. Sugar: The Story of a Boxer, by Joseph Sherman  and Nick Papas,  is no exception.

This is a slight and short piece with plenty of slapstick routines. It has some funny, charming moments and very cute characters.

Sugar does, however, have some gaps and flaws that might need attention in any further production.

Sugar (Sherman) is a fictional boxing champion. He is born to Mamma ( Papas) in a shrill birthing scene performed in a goofy clown style. He emerges from between Mamma's legs as a fully dressed boxer.

We follow Sugar's life and career from birth through his early childhood Mamma feeds him on Sustain  cereal that miraculously makes him grow into a huge fighter.

He trains for the boxing ring, accidentally knocks out his trainer, fights a big, bad Jamaican, falls in love and, finally, wins the World Heavyweight Championship.

Sherman and Papas perform in traditional red clown noses. In classic clown form , they postpone all action, perform directly to the audience, charm and engage us.

One of their comic signatures is that they make a meal of scene changes. They put on special see-in-the-dark spectacles and take forever to moving a table and changing costumes.

What makes it funny is that we can see every silly thing they do in their pseudo darkness.

This device is funny initially but is laboured and over-used by the end of the show. We know the gag by the third time then it stops being funny.

Papas and Sherman play dual roles: their actor-clown personae as well as the characters in Sugar's story.

They address the audience as Boris ( Sherman) and Bertie (Papas). Boris has a Russian name but a wonderfully fake French accent. Bertie seems to be from somewhere between Greece or the Baltic.

Both actors have delightfully mobile faces. They grimace and pout, grin and squint at us as Bertie and Boris fumble their way through their Story of Sugar's career.

With some tightening of the script and action, this will make a sweet clown show. We may look forward to their upcoming show:  Russian Soup.

By Kate Herbert

Emily of Emerald Hill, Oct 29 2002

Emily of Emerald Hill  by Stella Kon 

At Fairfax Studio  October 29 to November 2, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It is not the play so much as the performance by Ivan Heng  that makes Emily of Emerald Hill an extraordinary theatrical experience.

Heng plays Emily, a Chinese Singapori woman born early last century who marries into a wealthy Anglophile family.

He may play a woman but there is no parody or predictable drag acting in Heng. His transformation into a believable woman, in the tradition of the Wayang Peranakan  theatre, is total.

Every gesture is accurate and economical. The detail of his portrayal is phenomenal and his timing is impeccable.

Heng shifts effortlessly between Emily as innocent girl, young wife discovering her power and  middle-aged harridan manipulating her family.

There is joy and finesse in Heng's performance. He represents Emily warts and all as the loving, controlling and demanding mother.

Emily slips through time in this episodic play by Stella Kon.  Scenes are not chronological although, by the end, she is an old woman still fantasising about her dead son, Richard.

Kon's script is colourful and smartly written. It captures an entire cultural group that is unfamiliar to us.

What it needs is a rigorous edit. At over two hours it is unwieldy. Heng makes it work with his magical touch.

The pace of the script is a little slow. Heng and director Krishen Jit  keep the rhythm snappy and find some range of pace in it.

There is little dramatic tension as we know all Emily's losses quite early. However, Heng makes us weep with his sensitive rendering of Emily's traumatic moments.

One delightful element is Heng's mercilessly playing to the audience. He makes us his quilt-making students, guests at a birthday party.  He even follows us into the foyer to treat us as a market crowd.

The imposing design by Raja Malik  comprises simple white screens with appliqued geometric designs. It is lit with vivid and wonderful colour by Mac Chan.

Heng's virtuosity is evident as Emily playing her male and female relatives. She is acerbic, competitive, unscrupulous and betrayed.

In spite of her flaws, we love Emily and weep with her over her grief and laugh with her over her quilt making..

By Kate Herbert

Mil Quinientos Metros Sobre el Nivel de Jack, Federico León, Oct 25, 2002

Mil Quinientos Metros Sobre el Nivel de Jack by Federico León  

Teatro San Martin  at Black Box

October 25 to November , 2002

Melbourne international Arts Festival

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The emotional force is like an ocean - or in the case of this play - a bathtub. In Argentinian playwright, Federico León's play allows the metaphorical grief and rage to flood out of an overflowing bathtub on stage.

Mil Quinientos Metros Sobre el Nivel de Jack (1,500 metres Above the Level of Jack) is an intimate, almost voyeuristic black comic investigation of grief. It is indeed set in a bathroom and much of the surreal action takes place in the tub.

In darkness, we hear the sound of running water then splashing. A mother (Beatriz Tibaudin) and her aging son, Gaston ,  (Diego Jose Ferrando) tumble into a full tub. She wears a bathing suit. He wears a wet suit. She weeps. He laughs.

 She is mourning the loss of her deep-sea diver husband, Jack,  who never surfaced from his last dive.

They struggle to catch both their emotional and physical breath. Eventually, Gaston's maudlin girlfriend, Lisa  (Carla Crespo) appears with her gangling, confused teenager son, Enso  (Ignacio Augustin Rogers).

The younger mother and son grieve over their abandonment by Lisa's husband. They, in turn, join Gaston and his mother in the bath.

This is an interesting although never masterly play written and directed by young Argentinian rising star, León. The script is flawed. It lacks resonance and depth and is clearly an early play.

 Its black comic elements override any possibility of a study in grief. It relies too heavily on the absurd and the surreal to the detriment of the poignant.

But the production is effective and entertaining. All four performances are compelling. The ravaged but beautiful face of Tibaudin as the older mother is a constant reminder of her loss.

As Gaston, finds an interesting balance between the childishness of the man and his desire to be a father.

Crespo is wonderfully underplayed as the almost silent, chain-smoking Lisa. As her son, Enso, Rogers is appropriately awkward and addled.

The set designed is absolutely realistic. We are so close to this hyper-real bathroom and the overflowing tub, it is like stepping into their bath with this mad family. The intimacy is what makes this work.

What fails the play is its lack of genuine connection to the emotion it seeks to explore - grief.

By Kate Herbert

Genesi - from the Museum of Sleep, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Oct 24, 2002

Genesi - from the Museum of Sleep  by Societas Raffaello Sanzio  

at State Theatre   October 24 to October 27, 2002

Melbourne International Arts Festival

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The Genesis, the genetic, the genital: all are elements of Genesi - from the Museum of Sleep. Director, Romeo Castellucci,  takes the first book of The old Testament  as the seed for this strange product of Italian experimental theatre company, Societas Raffaello Sanzio.

The play is in three parts: the creation of Adam and Eve,  Auschwitz  and Cain   and Abel.

This is not conventional linear narrative theatre. It is more a collage of images, moments, inflections and reflections upon the notion of genesis, humanity and man's foibles and horrors.

Threaded through these loose narrative points are images of and references to Auschwitz, race, science and invention and human vulnerability.

The cavernous State Theatre is draped in curtaining, littered with sand, bodies and anachronistic gadgets. In the Garden of Eden, the contemporary scientific object collides with primitive, naked mankind.

When Cain murders Abel, two live dogs amble aimlessly around them, sniffing the dirt ignoring the violence of the men.

In the background of part one, sheep mate, a primordial crocodile lowers over the scene, a contortionist cracks his bones horribly and a Hebrew ritual establishes the Biblical intent..

Part two has the atmosphere of a child's nursery. Children, some of whom are Castellucci's own, play voicelessly, moving in totally abstract choreography (Claudia Castellucci).  Finally, one is slaughtered and the others are gassed in this metaphorical Auschwitz showers.

The lighting is dim and evocative with much back-lighting through scrims, shadow work, stark spotlights.

The soundscape (Chiara Guidi) is at times percussive body thumping rhythm and at others lyrical and haunting.

Says Castellucci, "Divine creation unleashes the problem of possibilities. It creates an open sea of possibilities.  That is terrifying."

It is the near chaos of the montage of images and the cacophony of sound that we see and hear that is so compelling and disturbing.

The floor has no solidity as it rolls like waves. Children are murdered. Brother kills brother. Time is non-specific. Meaning is like dust in our hands. We cannot make it solid.

There is little speech. The phys ical and palpable is foremost. Actors appear with different deformities: a withered arm, a breast missing. All are totally rivetting.

To see Genesi is to witness n epic that leaves one with a flood of sensations and despair in many ways. It is also very beautiful.

By Kate Herbert

Medea adapted Tom Wright, Oct 20, 2002

By Euripides adapted by Tom Wright  at Horti Hall  

Oct 20 until  November 2, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned Shakespeare said. Medea is the ultimate in vengeful women. Her husband Jason, dumps her for a younger, richer, more influential woman. The King banishes her with her sons under threat of death.

She is a sorceress, which is handy, because the real world is none too kind to women of her ilk. So Medea proceeds to wreak vengeance on Jason  by poisoning the bride's wedding dress and murdering her own little sons to punish Jason.

Daniel Schlusser's  direction focuses on the text. Tom Wright's translation of Euripides play is also influenced by Seneca's Medea.

As Medea, Evelyn Krape  is compelling. Although known for her comic roles, Krape is powerful in this potent and dramatic role.

She restrains Medea's passion until the death of the sons at which time she becomes a snarling harpie.

Amanda Douge  plays the Chorus  with great sympathy and warmth. Tom Wright  plays all three male roles: Jason, Creon and the Tutor. He is strongest as Jason, playing him as a smug,  rich boy.

The set design by Paul Jackson  is simple and effective. Four levels like steps to a Greek temple are framed at rear with cage like wire. 

Dramatic and stark lighting (Paul Jackson, John Ford)  is enhanced by the opaque, smoky air and myriad red candles placed at intervals on the cage.

An interesting element is the emphasis on Euripides statement that Medea 'infects the air'. The gasping, grating breath and references to air and breath are constant.

The play is ancient and passionate. Euripides represents Medea as a wild, black hearted madwoman who is prepared to murder her babies to hurt her faithless husband.

Jason whines that she is wronging him. He is marrying the princess for money to give their boys a better life. What woman could hear this and not go mad?

The problems with the production are with the choreography which is out of sync with the ret of the show.

The abstract movement of the three dancers (Vanessa Rowell, Suzannah Edwards, Victoria Huf) seems intended as metaphor for the emotional inner world of Medea.

 However, it is so obtuse and obtrusive that it interferes with, rather than enhances, the meaning of the text.

Apart from the movement, Medea is a compact and interesting version of the original.

By Kate Herbert

Tinka's New Dress, Ronnie Burkett, Oct 18, 2002

 Ronnie Burkett  at Fairfax Studio  

until October 18- 27, 2002

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Puppets are not for kids. Never have marionettes been so wicked, moving and overtly political as in Ronnie Burkett's, Tinka's New Dress. In Burkett's adroit hands they are bawdy and achingly funny.

He is overwhelmingly talented. In this virtuoso solo performance he manipulates thirty-seven puppets and plays every character. He also designed set, costumes and marionettes and wrote this extraordinary piece of theatre.

Many elements make this an exceptional night in the theatre. It is the meeting of fine artistry and challenging content.

The plot revolves around Carl, a disenchanted left-wing puppeteer in a world ruled by a totalitarian government called The Common Good. It smacks of Orwell's 1984 or the Nazis.

Carl is a mouthpiece for Burkett's own socio-political views. Although Tinka's New Dress is set in non-specific time and place, the story is based on the Czech puppeteers of the Resistance.

It is a world of repression, censorship, fear of difference and of free speech. The play is a commentary on artists, activism and resistance.

Carl, with his costume-designer sister Tinka,  leaves his mentor and friend, Stephan, the elderly puppeteer, to perform his own show at an underground cabaret. His controversial critique of The Common Good leads to his arrest and demise.

It is unnerving to find oneself so moved and engaged by tiny wooden figures.

Burkett is visible throughout. He is charismatic, looming over his miniature creatures, manipulating strings, animating their uncannily human behaviour.

 Character appears in divers costumes. He blithely swings each from a horse on the central merry-go-round and magically breathes life into it.

He is totally absorbed in this world. His timing, like his craftsmanship, is impeccable.

He peoples the stage with credible, adorable and villainous characters: Morag, the gaspingly accurate drag queen, Mrs. Van Craig, Tinka,  Stephan,  Franz   and Schnitzel  and Madame Rodrigue,  the fat diva.

His ability to sustain a parade of diverse accents, genders and complex dialogues is awe-inspiring.

The puppet play within the play, The Franz and Schnitzel Show,  is bawdy outrageous and camp comedy. Burkett improvises on each night. Like a camp stand-up comic. He is hilarious.

He taunts the audience, makes us participate. He manipulates us as well as his little people.

He peppers the script with jibes at local identities. Kerryn Phelps copped a mention. Who knows who might get it next from this master manipulator.