Babes in the Woods by Tom Wright, Nov 26, 2003

 Babes in the Woods  
 by Tom Wright  Playbox Theatre

 Merlin Theatre, CUB Malthouse, Nov 26 to Dec 13, 2003  

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Nov 26, 2003

Tom Wright's pseudo-colonial panto, Babes in the Woods, is a rollicking good night. The audience came out smiling- a good sign.

This is not the style pantomime that features Neighbours stars. It is a tougher, less anodyne, more adult and political piece with a fine ensemble.

Running through the story of two abandoned children is a thread of criticism of our government, history and treatment of asylum seekers.

There is a play within a play. We see off-stage shenanigans between actors and then see them in the absurdist  panto story.

Auntie Avaricia,  the panto dame, is played within the play by the controlling drunken actor-manager of the company who is then played with relish by the extraordinary Max Gillies.  

Avaricia takes in her squeaky clean, recently orphaned niece, Ruby,  (Caroline Craig) and nephew, Reggie (Lucy Taylor).

In order to snaffle their inheritance, she sends her servants to take them into the forbidding Aussie bush and kill them.

The servants are a stupid, kindly and forgetful emu, Flapgherkin,  (Francis Greenslade) and his homicidal pal, Boingle,  (Julie Forsyth) a cruel, manipulative wallaby.

Add to the mix Avaricia's balletic, sensitive daughter, Phyllis  (Diane Emry) and her love interest, Jack,  (Eddie Perfect) the self-absorbed, heroic pioneer, and we have a tasty cast of characters.

The babes' story is a metaphor for Australian naivete. Politically, we are lost in the woods. Intercut with panto scenes are comical snatches of a jingoistic social history of Australia.

A mad dream sequence shows us our past fairytale old Baghdad. Gillies gives us a lesson in Australia's fight against terrorism - even before Federation.

The production, directed with a fine sense of clown and satire by Michael Kantor,  is riddled with anachronistic songs and absurd references.

We see Amanda Vanstone  singing Nutbush City Limits and Jack singing Hello, This Is Joanie.

Iain Grandage  plays wonderful, energetic panto piano live on stage. Lighting by Paul Jackson  paints a broad palette of evocative colour over a clever design by Anna Tregloan.

Gillies is a consummate lead with impeccable timing and Eddie Perfect has a rich singing voice and a wry humour as Jack. This hearty and lovable ensemble is clearly having heaps of fun.

By Kate Herbert

Stitching by Anthony Neilson, Theatre@Risk, Nov 20, 2003

Stitching by Anthony Neilson

Theatre @ Risk

Black Box, Vic Arts Centre, Nov 20 to Dec 7, 2003

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stitching, by Scottish playwright Anthony Neilson, evidently caused plenty of controversy last year in both Edinburgh and London.

Theatre@Risk takes up the challenge with Simon Kingsley Hill  and Alexandra Schepisi  directed by Lauren Taylor.  

The play is a brooding two-hander about a young couple who confront a change in their up beat lives when they discover the woman is pregnant. We can presume only not only the issue of abortion but the occasional graphic descriptions of ugly and aberrant sexual acts prompted the picketing by religious groups

The script has a few surprises and as many confusions in its development.  The final revelation makes some sense of the story. A series of short scenes are played in a cavernous Black Box and Taylor directs the piece simply.

The actors perform in an empty space facing each other in battle to salvage their relationship and decide whether to have the baby. When off stage they are still visible peeling clothing off and replacing it on the store mannequins placed at intervals around the outside of the audience seating.

The musicians (Jerome Haoust, James Cathcart) are also behind us pumping out percussive and sonorous music designed by Jethro Woodward.

Taylor uses the space well containing the intimate dialogue scenes in the space enclosed on three sides by audience. At other times the actors move to the curtained windows in the deep background.

Schepisi and Kingsley Hall give convincing performances as the fraught couple. Their relationship is credible while t heir sexual, intimate scenes are courageous and passionate.

Any problems are with the script rather than this production of it. Neilson, perhaps purposely, does not fill in all the blanks. The scenes that are inter-cut between Abby  and Stu's  attempts to solve their pregnancy dilemma seem at first to be a completely different couple. Then it appears they are scenes from their first meetings. Later we discover they are scenes from after their separation.

His dialogue is often smart and funny but sometimes repetitive. The scenes between the couple that occur after the end of their relationship seem to rely on shock value for their effect. It seems we are unshockable so his pornographic references are often adolescent.

I viewed this show at a preview and it will clearly sharpen up and the actors will work with greater confidence as it runs its season.

By Kate Herbert

Red Shorts, Red Stitch, Nov 14, 2003

Red Shorts  
3 short play sby Therese Cloonan,  Patrick Van Der Werf  Chris Howlett 
Red Stitch Actors Theatre

Rear 2 Chapel St. St. Kilda,  November 14 to 23, 2003

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on N0v 14, 2003

Red Stitch Actors Theatre leaps into a new form of work with its Red Shorts program of short plays directed by Greg Carroll.  

Not only are the three writers winners of a competition, they are Australian. This is a first for Red Stitch who, until now, has staged only works from overseas.

The program is an eclectic trio of half hour pieces by three local writers, Therese Cloonan, Patrick Van Der Werf  and Chris Howlett.

Skin Deep,  by Cloonan, is theatrically the least successful. It is a series of short scenes beginning with Sally  (Laura Gordon  accusing her lover (Brett Cousins) of infidelity.

From that point the intention of the character is unclear and, indeed, that of the playwright. The script lacks structure and direction.

Sally talks to her dog and the Devil, (Verity Charlton)  the Other Woman, (Ella Caldwell)  and we hear her two dolls version of her life. It is all very thin.

Van der Werf's play, Shelter,  is a different kettle of fish and the best play of the three. It is well structured and layered with compelling characters, dramatic tension and taut direction.

Geoff (David Whiteley)  picks up Snake  and Jaz  a suspicious couple (Dion Mills, Ella Caldwell)  on the country road near his isolated house. After that things start to get dangerous and unpredictable.

Geoff's wife, (Verity Charlton)  is wary - and she is right. Snake is cunning, secretive and threatening. The story unfolds cleverly to reveal everybody's secrets.

Johnny Flip, by Howlett, is a quirky and funny take on the concept of determinism and fate. Fate (Whiteley) is both a mysterious cosmic force and a disgruntled public servant. He manipulates lives all day but is dissatisfied with his lot.

To spice things up he tries to alter the direction of boring little Johnny Flip's life. Awkwardly, Flip (Cousins)  is happy being a labeller living with a shop mannequin.

The performances are strong from the Red Stitch actors and Carroll keeps the pace moving and the energy high.

The entire cast of Shelter are strong but Mills, as the insidious Snake, is rivetting and frightening. Whiteley and Cousins are particularly good in Johnny Flip.

The scripts may have variable levels of quality but the evening is entertaining and a great new venture for Red Stitch.

By Kate Herbert

Two by Ron Elisha, Nov 11, 2003

Two  by Ron Elisha
Soul Theatre Inc.

Theatreworks,  November 11 to 29, 2003 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Complex and intelligent writing with impeccable acting - there's a good recipe for a night at the theatre. Ron Elisha's play, Two, has both.

Two deals with a series of meetings in a basement in Germany during 1948,  between a Rabbi  (Bruce Kerr ) and a young woman, Anna (Anastasia Malinoff. Anna comes to the Rabbi, who survived the Holocaust,  to learn Hebrew in order to immigrate to the embryonic state of Israel.

Kerr and Malinoff are a finely tuned duo. Their performances are passionate, sympathetic and beautifully timed. The relationship between them is dynamic and, after the revelations of their respective dark histories, their communication becomes volatile and unpredictable.

Hell is a Jew without a God, says the Rabbi, although he already experienced his own hell in Auschwitz  where he lost his faith. The Rabbi believes only in the present. He also questions Anna's shallow views of what makes a Jew and why Palestine should be partitioned.

Elisha's script is witty, poetic, informed and informative. We even learn to understand snippets of Hebrew  along the way. The play slowly peels back the layers on these two lives and the totally different horrors they have lived. They keep from each other dreadful secrets each nursing his or her private guilt.

Director, David Myles,  heightens the hidden stories and secrecy by having the actors play some moments with their very eloquent backs to the audience.

Two deals with race, prejudice, forgiveness and the politics of language. It a cleverly raises the issues surrounding Israel and Palestine  without preaching.

The play elaborates on the issues of peace, morality, truth, race and philosophy by dissecting the Hebrew language. Each word has a life of its own and informs the story in a distinctive and lyrical way.

The simple and effective design, by Peter Mumford, ) of rough wooden slats and old furniture, provides an almost claustrophobic space for the actors.

Bronwyn Pringle's  lighting design sends dramatic shafts of light through the slatted roof and the doorway and the sound design ( Jethro Woodward  provides an ominous atmosphere.

The tone of the piece shifts effortlessly from the witty repartee to emotional outpourings to semantic discussions of language.

Two is a challenging and skilful night in the theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Filler Up, Nov 7, 2003

Filler Up  
written by Deb Filler  and Lowry Marshall  

Fairfax Studio, Victorian Arts Centre Nov 7 to Nov 16, 2003

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Nov 7, 2003

Published in Herald Sun, Melbourne, Nov 2003

Deb Filler's solo comedy show, Filler Up, may not quite fill up the Fairfax Studio but it is a diverting and engaging performance..

Filler tells her personal story with charm and vigour. Her story taker us from her family home in New Zealand to her adopted home in Manhattan. This gentle ride begins in her Holocaust survivor father's Jewish bakery in New Zealand where he bakes challah,  the traditional Sabbath bread.

Her great gimmick is that she prepares and bakes a loaf of challah on stage as we watch and salivate at the aroma of baking bread. She even feeds it to us as a finale. She peoples the stage with a parade of eccentric characters. The most successful moments belong to the boldest and broadest characterisations.

Her Aunt Vippy in New York is hilarious. Vippy is big, smy-voiced and open-hearted and Filler portrays her with love. Her eating disorder therapy group is also a hit as she transforms from Mindy Feldman, her twitchy Manhattan therapist, into various idiosyncratic over -eaters.

She plays her well-meaning but critical mother, her dizzy sister, grandmother, father, all her ex-boyfriends and girlfriends and a Greek chef at a diet spa. She sings songs with acoustic guitar, tells of her obsession with her weight, her journey into discovery of her lesbianism, her joy and despair at her demanding family. And always Dad's baking is in the background tempting her - and us.

The show is funny and at moments poignant as she talks about her father's recent death and his baking of bread in the concentration camp during the war. There are scenes that need tightening and the show could be a little shorter. Filler rattles around in this to large space but becomes more comfortable as she and the audience warm up.

This is identification theatre in a way, for all those who worry about their weight, sexuality - or perhaps just for those who crave a trip to New York and a loaf of Challah.

By Kate Herbert

Ride by Jane Bodie, Nov 6, 2003

Ride by Jane Bodie  

at Beckett Theatre, Malthouse, Nov 6 to Dec 15, 2003

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Nov 6, 2003

The storyline of Jane Bodie's witty two-hander, Ride, might be outside of some people's experience altogether. We can only hope so.

A young man and woman wake up naked in a bed together. They have no idea who the other is, how they met, how they got home nor whether they - um - actually had sex.

Both are hung over and suffering a frustrating selective amnesia. The important parts of the night before are obliterated.

The woman is performed energetically by Fiona Macleod. She brings to the role a vibrating anxiety and playful uncertainty. As her lover or non-lover, Christopher Brown  is delightfully underplayed and subtle. The two dance around each other emotionally. She tries to leave but her shoe is missing, and her bra, and her handbag and phone and, well, her memory.

Bodie's dialogue is swift, often hilarious and cleverly wrought. She never wastes a word.  Thoughts fly in unexpectedly and we are constantly surprised. The characters are beautifully observed, inner-urban ('It's Northcote but some people call it North Fitzroy') contemporary 20 somethings. 

They try to maintain distance while inwardly panicking about their apparent intimacy. They try to separate but end up playing scrabble on the bed where they had - or didn't - have sex.

Bodie, who also directs the play deftly, keeps the pace cantering along. Three scenes are defined by the shift of the bed on stage so we view them from a new angle each time. The design (by Simon Terrill, Jane Fullerton ) for the Northcote bedroom is established sparingly by the outline of a window frame, a plant and pile of bos and a mirror.

Music by Carl Pannuzzo  and evocative and unobtrusive lighting by Michele Preshaw  enhance the mystery of the play.

The beauty of the piece is in the unfolding of their secret selves to a virtual stranger with whom they feel strangely safe and comfortable with intermittent bursts of insecurity and doubt.

It is fascinating to watch two characters trapped by their own devices in a room in a single day as we follow their developing relationship from strangers to almost strangers. They could be an axe-murderers for all they know.

This is a delightful play with two warm and committed performances from Macleod and brown.

By Kate Herbert

Flame by Joanna Murray-Smith / Still by Jane Bodie, Oct 30, 2003

 Flame by Joanna Murray-Smith / Still by Jane Bodie
 by Look Look  Theatre  and The Malthouse  

 Tower Room,  Malthouse,  Oct 30 to Nov 15, 2003 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Oct 30

Published in Herald Sun, Melbourne, Nov 2003

Joanna Murray-Smith's short play, Flame, directed by Joy Mitchell,  peers through the window at a widow's grief.

Louisa  (Michele Williams) summons her dead husband, Max  (Syd Brisbane) in moments of reminiscence, anguish, love, and guilt.

Flame is composed of fragmented dialogue and ruptured communication. The pair interrupt or complete each other's thoughts.

Initially, Louisa is the perfect widow, shattered then numbed by grief. She resorts to poetry to express her loss and decoupage  to fill empty hours.

She no longer receives invitations from those who cannot face her pain. Her grief is a dinner anecdote for others.

Max, although he has passed on, seems not cheerful but composed and without the pain of loss.

"Life lives death so much more keenly than death itself," says Louisa.

Flame is a series of revelations. It peels away skins to reveal the kernel of truth. We discover her grief masks many things including some relief and a past infidelity.

Williams, in widow's weeds, plays Louisa with a touch of the unfeelingness her husband describes. She seems bitter about his death, but her bitterness is about the more complex landscape of their relationship.

Brisbane portrays Max with a bright simplicity that makes Louisa's revelation more of a betrayal.

Jane Bodie's Still, directed by Bernadette Ryan, is a series of eight monologues about modern relationships. They deal with different aspects of love, sex, abandonment, attraction and seduction.

Four actors (Trent Baker, Michele Williams, Danielle Carter, Robert Jordan) play two characters each.

Baker is a young man desperate to make love to his latest conquest when his body betrays him. Then he is a voyeur who, nightly, observes through is window, his young female neighbour.

Carter plays both a woman admitting a drunken fling to her partner and a dizzy gal who prepares every detail of her date from conversation to contraception.

Jordan plays both a serial seducer with a huge capacity for self-deception and a gay man bravely facing his ex-partner at a groovy party.

Williams appears as a comic-tragic woman hiding from her ex and his new lover behind the citrus shelf in Coles, then as a woman who feels suffocated by the perfect partner.

These two plays are interesting companions dealing with contemporary love and loss.

By Kate Herbert

The Rat Pack - Direct From Vegas, Oct 29, 2003

The Rat Pack - Direct From Vegas

 by Direct From Vegas Productions Inc.  

 Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne, Oct 29 to Nov 9, 2003

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Published in Herald Sun, Melbourne, Oct 2003

The Rat Pack is back and they are in fine form. Frank Sinatra,  Dean Martin  and Sammy Davis Jr.  make a posthumous comeback in Direct From Vegas.

The performers (Gary Corsello, Steve Apple, Lonnie Parlor) playing the trio are fair look-alikes for the originals but it is their voices that make the show extraordinary.

Close your eyes during Corsello's rendition of Lady Is A Tramp  or New York, New York,  and you would think Ol' Blue Eyes was in the room.

This tribute show is based on the six years of shows performed by the original Rat Pack in The Copa Room  at The Sands Hotel and Casino  in Las Vegas  from 1960.

They were friends by day and drinking and carousing mates by night. When they shot Ocean's Eleven  in the Copa Room in 1960, they started playing ad libbed shows at night. The combination was dynamite for an audience.

The original group also included comedian, Joey Bishop  and actor, Peter Lawford.  However, it is the voices and antics of Sinatra, Martin and Davis that make this show.

Corsello, Apple and Parlour studied the Rat Pack and much of the dialogue and interaction is lifted from their original shows. At times the patter feels a little stilted. It is almost impossible to reproduce improvised banter with the ease of its first moment.

Current artists would never get away with the jokes and jibes of these guys in the 60's. They are riddled with sexism, racism, alcoholism, anti-Semitism and sizeism.  Davis is constantly teased for being short, black and Jewish.

The political correct police would lock it down in thirty seconds. But their camaraderie and genuine love of each other made it all a positive experience. The Rat Pack adored and admired each other and it shows even in the reproduction.

Corsello does justice to tunes such as Come Fly With Me, My Way and I've Got You Under My Skin.

Apple recreates the easy wicked, faux drunkenness of Martin and croons with finesse his famous toons including That's Amore and Embraceable You.

He captures Dino's charm, charisma and style, delivering his gags and naughty lyrics with absolute accuracy and delight.

Parlour, as Davis, is a great fol for the Sinatra and Dino pair. Although he does not have the vaudeville dance skills of the original, his jazzy versions of Old Black Magic,  Mr. Bojangles and The Candy Man conjure up the dancing Davis.

There is also a classy twelve piece band on stage under the musical direction of pianist, John Peace.

This is a nostalgia show that invokes the spirits of the Rat Pack for our delectation.

By Kate Herbert

Lorilei, Tom Wright & Nicholas Harrington, Oct 28, 2003

Lorilei  by Tom Wright & Nicholas Harrington  

 La Mama, Carlton, Oct 29 to Nov 9, 2003 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

In Australia we no longer have the death penalty for murderers but, in the USA, the debate about capital punishment continues.

This short monodrama, Lorilei,  provides a glimpse into the horrific experience of Lorilei Guillory,  the mother of a murdered child whose killer, Ricky Langley,  is on Death Row.

The play was conceived by Tom Wright and Nicholas Harrington who also collaborated on This Is A True Story,  another story focussing on a Death Row inmate.

Myriad elements make this piece unique and important. Not the least of these is the consummate performance by Anna Galvin  as Lorilei.

Galvin delivers a compelling monologue based on a BBC interview with Lorilei. She sits at a plain table, addressing us, her audience, teling of the loss and grief.

Galvin is luminous in her anguish as she unveils the noble, fragile heart of Lorilei. She touches us with Lorilei's unadorned description of her journey from the initial shock of Jeremy's  disappearance, through the discovery of his body and the subsequent walking coma she experienced.

In almost a Brechtian  style, Galvin reaches us emotionally but compels us to think, educating us about the human rights issues while telling her personal story.

Lorilei reveals her astonishing desire to save her child's killer from the death penalty. She does not forgive him, nor does she doubt his guilt. She simply does not believe we have the right to kill him.

Some forty minutes into the monologue, Lorilei describes visiting Ricky Langley on Death Row. At this moment he appears.

Tom Wright plays Ricky as an innocuous little man, manacled hand and foot, bespectacled and slack-mouthed.

He utters not a syllable throughout the remainder of the play as Lorilei describes her visit to him and his journey to his second trial and reprieve. It is an inspired and controlled performance of a tragic simpleton.

What appals us finally is how Lorilei is treated after she announces publicly that she wants Ricky's sentence commuted. She is castigated, manipulated and abused at the hands of the public who supported her, the attorneys on both sides and even by her family.

The simplicity of this production and its pure theatricality make it a rivetting piece of theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Push Up, Red Stitch, Oct 23, 2003

 Push Up by Roland Schimmelpfennig
Red Stitch Actors Theatre  

 Rear 2 Chapel St., St. Kilda, Oct (?) to Nov 9, 2003

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The corporate world is a dangerous, dog eat dog environment.

Roland Schimmelpfennig's  play, Push Up, peers in through the double-glazed windows of a corporation to view the ruthless ambition and lack of humanity that rules that high rise world. Schimmelpfennig is a German writer whose plays have successful seasons in the UK.

Director, Kaarin Fairfax,  keeps the staging simple - just a large desk and chairs. This sparseness allows the focus to remain on the characters and their competitive sparring.

The piece falls into three scenes of about thirty minutes. In each, two characters from the company vie for control and in each, one loses his or her job. It is cut- throat.

Schimmelpfennig highlights how similar these people are by giving them fragments of common dialogue. Their thoughts and dreams, fears and passions are often identical. The outcomes are not.

The first scene see Sabine,  (Ella Caldwell) a young, smart, upwardly mobile executive, confronting the Managing Director, Angelika  (Kate Cole) and demanding a major management position.

She loses that battle of wits and status.

Part two is a sexually charged scene in which another equally ambitions woman, Patrizia (Kat Stewart) presents her new company promotional ad to the boss's right hand man, Robert  (Vincent Miller)

This time, he loses.

The final scene is perhaps the most poignant. A sixty-something executive, Hans, (Peter Hosking)  believes he will win the plum job of running the Delhi office.  his competitor is his younger subordinate, Heinrich.  (David Whiteley)

You guessed it. The older man loses.

It is gladiatorial battles fought in the glittering offices of a corporate world that does not value honesty, temperance, humility or love.

The performances are all very strong with particularly compelling work from Kat Stewart as the anxious and sexy Patrizia and Hosking as the over-confident older executive, Hans.

Red Stitch continue to produce interesting new plays with a constantly developing cast of local actors. Push Up is worth seeing.

By Kate Herbert

Beasty Girl - The Secret Life of Errol Flynn, Oct 19, 2003

Beasty Girl  - The Secret Life of Errol Flynn
by Scott Rankin  

St. Martin's Youth Arts Centre, Oct 19 to 26, 2003

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Errol Flynn made fifty-three movies in twenty-six years and was not only Australia's most famous movie star but the most recognisable face of his generation.

Beasty Girl is not a study of Flynn's life. It is a lateral look at how his irresponsible behaviour affected the lives of an unacknowledged illegitimate daughter and her mother.

Actor, Leah Purcell, and writer-director, Scott Rankin, last collaborated on Purcell's very successful solo show, Box the Pony. Purcell is a warm and engaging presence and Rankin makes these qualities part of the style of the show. She speaks directly to the audience as herself, as Flynn's Jamaican daughter Carly,  and as Carly's mother.

She also addresses us as a humanised version of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger,  or Thylacine. Flynn, a Tasmanian, is purported to have kept one as a pet. The focus of this metaphor is the parallel between the faded movie idol, the ignored daughter and the invisible, extinct animal.

Flynn himself is part of an extinct generation of pre-war screen heroes. As his lifestyle became more dissolute and his reputation less savoury, his fame faded and he drank himself to death at forty-nine.

Purcell shifts effortlessly between characters, her body and voice doing all the work for us. Although her performance is based in purely physical transformation, Rankin fills the piece with visual and aural representations of Flynn.

Video design (Kirsten Bradley) includes footage of Flynn's films and abstract forests and images of the Tiger are accompanied by an evocative sound design. Composed by Robert Iolini  and operated by Damian Mason.

Dan Witton  assists Purcell on stage with some simple shadow puppetry and other imagery.

The writing is intelligent, the performance compelling and the visual and sound are interesting. What seems to be missing is the emotional level of the story. The work keeps us at arm's length leaving us with a sense that we have missed something in the story of both Carly and her father the movie hero.

By Kate Herbert

Road to Heaven, Young@Heart & No Theater, Oct 13, 2003

Road to Heaven  
 by Young@Heart and No Theater

Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne,  until October 13, 2003 only  

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

You will be kicking yourself for not seeing Young@Heart in Road to Heaven. All I can say is you missed something warm, funny, moving, theatrical and musically challenging.

The company, led by dynamic director, Bob Cilman,  comprises over twenty singers who are all of pensionable age - that is if America pays pensions these days. The group hails from Northampton,  Massachusetts  but has performed to great acclaim in festivals all over Europe.

These are not many professional performers or singers in the group but there are some marvellous voices and an enormous amount of energy and delight in their work.

The show, directed by Roy Faudree of No Theater,  places the chorus in a strange hospital environment like the infamous Bedlam Mental Institute. They all wear white with frills, mob caps or hospital gowns. A row of white cots lines the upstage wall.

 By playing up to prejudices about age and senility, forgetfulness and weakness, it pokes fun at us and at aging. Several of the chorus are dressed as doctors and nurses who shepherd cast members around between musical numbers. It is all tongue in cheek.

The six piece live band  is a gift. The music includes the old and new, chorus and solos, poignant and hilarious songs.

Three Elvis impersonators do Hound Dog and I'm All Shook Up, A drag queen plays Carole Channing  singing Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend

The song that sounds like their anthem is Forever Young. They sing We'll Meet Again  from the 40's as well as 70's and 80's songs. They feature Devo's Whip It  Talking Heads  The Beatles' song,  She's Leaving Home  Stairway to Heaven  and disco hit, Staying Alive.

Lyrics take on new meaning when sung by ageing singers. The line, "Somebody help me" in Staying Alive and the feminist anthem I Will Survive  become funny and a little too close to home when out of the mouths of frail elderly.

Boundaries are torn down with this kind of show. Everybody, including the 16 year olds in the back row loved it.

I am now in the throes of planning to sing through my twilight years. It looks like more fun than anything younger people are doing.

By Kate Herbert

Certified Male, Sept 10, 2003

Certified Male
by Scott Rankin  and Glynn Nicholas  

 Her Majesty's Theatre, From Sept 10 to October(?), 2003

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Certified Male, written by Scott Rankin and Glynn Nicholas and directed by Terence O'Connell, is still hilarious four years after its inception.

It is a galloping, goofy comedy show about four corporate guys who go for a weekend retreat to a tropical resort in order to restructure the company. The boss, Jarrad,  (Frankie J Holden) is going through a life changing crisis.

The threat of his restructure strikes the fear of God into his three over-worked executives, McBride  (Peter Rowsthorn) Alex  (Glynn Nicholas) and Howard  (Berynn Schwerdt). Fearing for their jobs the men confront their insecurities.

Holden plays the straight guy to the three goofballs who work for him. Each represents a different sector of the high achieving corporate raider.

Nicholas is exceptional and charming, as always, as the insipid family man, Alex, who is afraid of the wrath of his upwardly mobile wife.

As the frazzled, rage-filled and thrice divorced McBride, Rowsthorn is achingly funny as he blusters and guffaws, looking as if he is about blow a fuse.

Schwerdt plays Howard, the confident, smarmy, perpetually single womaniser with great wit and manages to make him likeable despite his smugness.

The beauty of the show is its simplicity and unpretentiousness. The stage is almost empty apart from several gorgeously painted backdrops, a few chairs and a table. In pride of place on stage also is a versatile duo of musicians: Greg Riddell  on grand piano and Zoe Knighton  on cello.

The play intersperses witty, sometimes moving monologues with hysterically funny physical comedy, episodes between the four men and some lively and seven entertaining songs by the likes of Paul Kelly and Mark Seymour. The title song, Certified Male, and the finale, John Wayne, epitomise the issues in the show.

It is all funny, but some of the highlights include Nicholas's rivetting and precise mime, Alex and McBride getting lost in the jungle, the attack of a rabid monkey and a rescue at sea while the group is marlin fishing. But the gut buster is probably when the three execs get blotto and face off with their director.

The inspiration for the show was Steve Biddulph's book, Manhood. The men talk about broken marriages, affairs, bravado, pornography, sex, children, work and their overwhelming fear of failure.

This is identification theatre at its best. The two and a half hours zip by like lightning.

By Kate Herbert

Humble Boy by Charlotte Jones, MTC, Sept 3, 2003

Humble Boy by Charlotte Jones   
Melbourne Theatre Company

 Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, Sept 3 to October 4, 2003

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Humble Boy, written by Charlotte Jones, is like an older style drawing room comedy written in contemporary England.

It boasts a collection of eccentric characters in a village in the Cotswolds.  and peels back the curtains on their only very slightly murky and ordinary lives.

There is Felix,  a stammering astrophysicist,  his vain and supercilious mother, Flora,  (Julia Blake) her jovial, working class lover, George,  (Linal Haft) and Flora's daffy and devoted spinster companion, Mercy.  (Beverley Dunn)

Jones' concession to the modern world, apart from Flora's nose job, is George's daughter, Rosie,  (Rebekah Stone) who is a cynical, robust single mother. The play is an inoffensive light comedy with exceptionally good performances from the ensemble.

Director, Kate Cherry,  has staged it in a beautifully realistic English garden designed by the late Tony Tripp  and lit evocatively by David Murray  with original composition by David Chesworth.

Felix comes home from Cambridge  for his father, James' funeral. He finds not only that his childhood stammer returns but that his mother is to marry George, the local bus company owner. His grief is focussed on James' beehives that Flora eliminated. His only consolation is that the mysterious gardener (Terry Norris) says that one hive escaped.

Jones' script is entertaining but never challenging. There are jokes and character quirks with minor twists in the plot but it is rarely surprising.

Significant issues of grief, abandonment, disillusionment and mental disorder arise but are investigated superficially. Only in the last scenes do we feel moved or do the issues reach greater depths. Jones could be writing for a BBC light comedy.

The central relationship is that of Flora and Felix. It is a classic dysfunctional English mother-son relationship. Blake manages to make us love and hate the elegant and conceited Flora. Her comic delivery is impeccable as she parades through the landscape of her husband's scented garden. Her final emotional speech is beautifully rendered.

Haft captures the broad comic qualities of lovelorn George with gusto and Bower is suitably whining and weak as Felix. Dunn is a magnificent second fiddle as Mercy and received applause for her wonderful delivery of Mercy's pre-lunch prayer.

Humble Boy is a comfortable and amusing night in the theatre. Its greatest asset is its cast.

By Kate Herbert