My Secret Marlene by Matthew Aberline, Nov 18, 2004

 My Secret Marlene  

by Matthew Aberline  

La Mama, Carlton Courthouse,  to November 27, 2004

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Anna Voronoff's one-woman show, My Secret Marlene, is an ambitious performance. However, it is only partially successful.

The play, written by Matthew Aberline and directed by Bruce Naylor, presents an oblique view of Marlene Dietrich through the eyes of a fictional German woman, Lola.

Lola, now elderly and bed-ridden, was a Berlin cabaret artist with Marlene during the 1930s, the Weimar period of German art.

Marlene is never seen as a character but each of the parade of personalities Voronoff plays on stage is somehow connected to her.

Lola performed in a dingy cabaret show with Marlene but Lola presumed she herself, not Marlene, her lover, would be the artist discovered and whisked away to Hollywood,

As Lola, decrepit and poor, lies under her blanket, she speaks to Doroman, a shifty old fellow who is a mutual friend of Marlene and Lola.

Doroman reveals to us the puppet Lola, a precocious and perhaps abused child. What follows is Lola's own cabaret act, a provocative routine by Voronoff in a black corset and stockings.

We meet the slick manager of the cabaret club, Schmidt and the transvestite cabaret singer who insists it is his act that Marlene used to model her own husky, sensual image for Hollywood.

Lola is persecuted by the Nazis while Marlene sings and makes movies.

There are plenty of Marlene's songs: The Laziest Girl in Town, Lili Marlene, Falling in Love Again and snatches of others.

The play is too long and, although Voronoff works very hard to recreate all characters, she does not inhabit them sufficiently for the show to be successful.

The characters are ill defined and sometimes it is difficult to recognise which she is playing. Costume changes are not sufficient to clarify this.

The play drags on past its natural ending, has too many songs, too many finales and Aberline's script is too long and reveals very little about Marlene.

The music itself is effective. Voronoff is accompanied by the Schwanzkokopf Trio, a talented jazz group (Robert Jackson, Tim Hilton, Tom Fryer) However, a play with so many songs by one woman needs a strong singer to perform them.

My Secret Marlene is a valiant effort with some good ideas, but it is, in the end unsatisfying.

LOOK FOR:  The band

By Kate Herbert

The Sapphires by Tony Briggs, MTC, Dec 17, 2004

 The  Sapphire  by Tony Briggs 
Melbourne Theatre Company

Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, from December 17, 2004

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on December 17, 2004

Tony Briggs play, The Sapphires, has an insubstantial story but it is charming and entertaining.

It is a play with plenty of music. An on stage, five -piece band, (musical direction, Peter Farnan) provides excellent funky soul accompaniment and atmospheric music.

Briggs uses a true story. In the 1960s, four young aboriginal women formed a quartet performing Soul and Motown tunes.

The group comprised members of Briggs family: mother, Laurel Robinson, and aunties, Lois Peeler, Beverley Briggs and Naomi Mayers,

In 1968, after the referendum including aboriginal people in the census, The Sapphires toured Vietnam, singing for US soldiers.

The play begins with a talent quest in a rural town Dave, (Stephen Lovatt) a singing manager with a slick line in self-promotion.

The singing sisters are still a trio. Gail (Rachael Maza) Kay (Lisa Flanagan) and Cynthia (Deborah Mailman) are mediocre until little sibling, Julie, (Ursula Yovich) surges on stage with a killer version of Aretha Franklin's  Respect.

Dave convinces the girls to tour Vietnam with promises of money, and accommodation. Conditions are not what Dave promised and they realise the war is too close for comfort.

Briggs' characters are not fully developed but they are well observed in their colloquial dialogue.

The four Sapphires are engaging and energetic. Yovich has a perfect voice for Motown and Maza belts tunes out with passion. Mailman can sell a song and Flanagan has a pretty tone.

They pump out pounding versions of Chain of Fools, Heard It Through The Grapevine, Higher and Higher, Stop In The Name of Love, with a fine medley of Soul classics as finale.

Director Wesley Enoch, drives the action, focuses on the music and maintains some dramatic tension in a story that has no significant dramatic through line.

Lovatt is convincing as the flashy manager, Wayne Blair is hilarious as Kay's AWOL fiance and the talent show host. Newcomer, Aljin Abella, (OK) is a compelling presence as Joe, the Vietnamese boy and Chris Kirby is delightfully underplayed as the US soldier.

The band (Farnan, Simon Burke, Piet Collins, John Favaro, Dean Hilson) make this a musical feast of Soul.

Set by Richard Roberts is flexible and evocative and costumes by Dale Ferguson are classic 60s.

The Sapphires is a play about fulfilling dreams and challenging stereotypes. It is a play about hope.

By Kate Herbert

Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose , Nov 16, 2004

 Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose   

Arts Projects Australia and Adrian Bohm

Athenaeum Theatre I,   November 16 to 30, 2004

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Nov 1, 2004

Justice and prejudice are thorny issues for contemporary Australia and Reginald Rose's play, Twelve Angry Men, although written in the 50s in America, taps into an emotional vein even forty years after its creation.

Guy Masterson He directs Rose's early version of the play that was first staged in London in 1964.

The script is based on the 1957 film version starring Henry Fonda and other luminaries. This followed an Emmy award winning original television play.

Masterson cast twelve excellent Australian actors and comedians to play the twelve men of the jury, including Marcus Graham in the Henry Fonda role.

The production transforms the stage of the Athenaeum into a stuffy, hot and claustrophobic New York jury room in 1957. The men are of the period, each with clearly defined and recognisable characteristics of 50s America.

The men sit on a jury to decide the fate of a 16 year old black boy who is accused of the knifing murder of his violent father.

 When a single juror (Marcus Graham) votes Not Guilty, frustration and tempers flare and the temperature rises even further in the jury room.

The script is intelligent, politically sophisticated, socially challenging particularly for the 1950 in the USA. Rose's characters are impeccably observed, each slowly revealing his social values and inner secrets.

Putting twelve opinionated men of diverse class, education and background into a locked room together provokes a gladiatorial atmosphere.

Rose contrives a cunning narrative. Juror number eight (Graham) suggests that he cannot, in good conscience, send a boy to the electric chair without talking a little about it first.

By tiny increments, he unfolds his concerns about the weapon, the time of the murder, the reliability of witnesses' statements and the ineffective defence attorney. Almost imperceptibly, the picture of reasonable doubt is drawn and other jurors change their votes.

Graham is rivetting as the mild but persistent architect. His vocal and physical presence is, as always, compelling. As his opposing voice, the stitched up stock broker, Peter Phelps is delightfully cool and rational.

 Henry Szeps as the older juror, is a still presence and Alex Menglet as the European matchmaker, is commanding while Aaron Blabey is hilarious as the voluble salesman and Richard Piper is convincing as the frighteningly racist juror ten.

Rob Meldrum, George Kapiniaris, Peter Flett, Nicholas Papademetriou, Shane Bourne and Russell Fletcher comprise the rest of a fine cast.

As Graham's character says, " Prejudice obscures the truth." Twelve Angry Men compels us to reconsider our own prejudices.

By Kate Herbert 

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, Nov 11, 2004

 The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

translated by David Lan by Pieces Of Work

 fortyfivedownstairs November 11 to 28, 2004

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on November 11 to 28, 2004

This production of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, is a happy surprise. The direction by Kate Wild is intelligent and sensitive to Chekhov's Russian comedy. She explores both pathos and laughter in the play.

The play was first performed in 1904, just one year before the first Russian Revolution and fifty years after the emancipation of the peasants.

The characters and ideologies of the period are clearly reflected in Chekhov's intimate little world of faded gentry, loyal servants, upstart peasants and radical students.

Virginia Denham is credible and compelling as Liubov Ranevskaya, (OK) matriarch of the Russian country estate that houses the titular cherry orchard.

Denham plays the role with charm and an effervescent cheer that frequently cannot mask Ranevskaya's grief over the loss of her husband, son and now her family's estate.

We are chillingly aware of her complete denial of the urgency of solving the estate's financial dilemma when she ignores Lopakhin's, (OK) (Paul Denny) warnings of the impending bank auction of the orchard.

Denny finds a suitable brusque kindliness as Lopakhin, the uneducated peasant, now self-made businessman, who advises Ranevskaya to subdivide the orchard.

Chekhov's play is riddled with dysfunctional personalities. Gaev (OK) (Phil Roberts) Liubov's brother, is a babbling, ageing gentleman obsessed with billiards and unable to accept his spiral into poverty.

He is uncle to her pretty, selfish and much adored daughter, Anya, (OK) played sweetly by Simone Ray, is perhaps the only realist in the family.

 Anya's adopted sister, Varya, is the plain, practical and oft ignored daughter of Liubov.  Melissa Chambers gives her a comic edge but plays her with sympathy, maintaining Varya's great passion.

The set design by Glendon Fletcher, (OK) is evocative, decking the long space with translucent stencilled white fabric that is torn down to represent the demise of the estate.

Music by a quartet of strings and a soundscape by Roger Alsop, enhance the atmosphere and evoke the period.

There are delightful comic performances from John Flaus as the muttering old, loyal and very deaf servant, Firs (OK) and Reg Evans as the voluble Simeonov-Pischik. (OK)

Thomas Milton is delightful as Yepikhodov, (K) the accountant with poor luck and Angus Grant plays the radical and idealistic student, Trofimov. (OK)

If you have not seen the Cherry Orchard, Wild's production is a good place to begin.

LOOK FOR: The excruciating moment when Lopakhin almost proposes to Varya.

By Kate Herbert

An Evening With Queen Victoria by Prunella Scales, Nov 6, 2004

An Evening With Queen Victoria
By Prunella Scales  

Fairfax Studio, Victorian Arts Centre, Nov 6 - 7, 2004. Ford Theatre Geelong, Nov 7, 2004

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Nov 6, 2004

It is exhilarating to witness a fine actor transform on stage. Prunella Scales is Queen Victoria. 

Her capacity to metamorphose into this short stout woman who reigned over England longer than any previous monarch is astonishing.

Scales begins as Victoria in her last years but shifts suddenly and thoroughly to her youthful years. The transformation in Scales is striking as she tosses off the heavy blanket of Victoria's age, leaps from her chair and becomes a spritely, light-voiced girl.

We observe Scales visibly age both physically and vocally as she journeys through the years from Victoria's accession to the crown, her marriage to her beloved Albert, the birth of nine children, to Albert's death and her ensuing grief.

It is a masterly performance by a skilful actor. The play is much more than readings from a diary because of Scales' wry delivery and impeccable timing.

Every word in the show is Victoria's own from her letters and diaries. She was a prolific, dramatic and imaginative writer and revealed much of her inner life through her journals.

We see a passionate and intelligent woman who revelled in her duties as Queen, relied totally on her husband's love and support and fell into a dark depression for ten years after his death.

Director, Katrina Hendrey, creates an elegant and concise script with a clever structure that shifts in time and focuses on selected periods of Victoria's life.

The construction of a dramatic story from an enormously long life can be problematic because a biography rarely has a neat dramatic construction.  Hendrey avoids over-filling the narrative.

The inclusion of versatile pianist, Richard Burnett, and the thrilling tones of tenor, Ian Partridge, enhance the play. Burnett underscores scenes and plays music from Victoria's life.

 Partridge sings tunes reflecting Victoria's life, including Shumann, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Gilbert and Sullivan and even two written by her husband, Albert: Schmerz der Liebe and Der Ungeliebte.

To highlight Victoria's period of isolation in Scotland served by her faithful Mr. Brown after her husband's untimely death, Partridge sings The Sun he is sunk in the West, with words by Robbie Burns.

The Evening is elegant, delightful, soothing, charming and witty and Prunella Scales' performance is intelligent, wry and compelling.

By Kate Herbert

A Moment on the Lips by Jonathan Gavin, Nov 4, 2004

A Moment on the Lips by Jonathan Gavin

Maelstrom Productions Old Council Chambers, Trades Hall, Carlton, November4 to 27, 2004

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Jonathan Gavin's play, A Moment on the Lips, weaves a compelling and complex pattern of lives and characters, all of them women.

The acting from all seven women is impeccable. Our astonishment at never having seen any of them on stage in Melbourne is explained by this being a Sydney production and most being graduates of WAAPA in Perth..

Although there is no protagonist, the play has a central narrator, Victoria, (Nicole Winkler) who comments upon the action, moves us through different time frames and is the link between all the characters lives.

Victoria is a self-indulgent painter who lacks commitment and fresh ideas. Her barrister sister, Jenny, (Caroline Brazier) and is driven, overworked and supports financially both her own life partner, an academic called Rowena, (Alison van Reeken) and Victoria.

Rowena's adopted sister, Bridget, (Ansuya Nathan) is Indian by birth, a devout Catholic and confused about her sister's lesbianism and her own Indian heritage. Bridget meets waitress, Dominique, (Jesse Spence) who has a spooky, intrusive, genuinely psychic way of knowing people's deepest thoughts and fears.

Emma, (Susie Godfrey) is a glossy commercial news presenter plagued by threats from a crazy viewer. Her ex-lover, Anne, (Julia Davis) is the only married member of the group and it becomes clear she is a manic- depressive.

We see these complicated, intense, troubled,, exhilarating women over a period of time. They argue, lose friends, patch things up, meet for dinners and coffee. There is a pregnancy, a death, a journey, a breakdown and many reunions. As the characters say, "It is the little things."

Gavin gives us a sense of real women in ordinary and extraordinary situations. His dialogue is witty, credible and passionate. Director, Kim Hardwick, sets a lightning pace and keeps the rhythms varied throughout the play.

Godfrey is delightfully wry as Emma finding a balance between her brittle exterior and vulnerable centre. Spence is charming as Dom and manages to make her New Age, psychic insights and benign advice seem normal.

Nathan and van Reeken capture the troubled relationship of sisters and Davis brings warmth and energy to Anne's fragile personality. Brazier is grounded and sympathetic as Jenny while Winkler allows us to like even the volatile and self-interested Victoria.

This is a captivating production with exceptional skill. We hope Maelstrom visits Melbourne more often.

By Kate Herbert

VCA Post Graduate Directors' Season 2004, Nov 1, 2004

VCA Post Graduate Directors' Season 2004  

Family Running For Mr Whippy by Catherine Zimdahl   

Have I None by Edward Bond  

VCA School of Drama, Dodds St Southbank (OK)November 1 to 16, 2004

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The VCA Post-Graduate Directors' Season comprises five scripted plays. Here is a taste of two.

Director, Kelly Somes, chose by Catherine Zimdahl 's Family Running for Mr. Whippy. The play is an abstract, comical view of a suburban, Australian family viewed through the bemused eyes of a teenage daughter. (Emily Taylor)

Somes contracts the cavernous VCA theatre with a witty, deceptively simple design. (Paulina Avellendeda-Ramirez) The design heightens the ordinariness and fragility of the family and defines its home with child-like chalk drawings on the floor.

A chalk picket fence surrounds them, a screen door is sketched on the floor, teacups are outlined on a table and the letters B. B. Q. scribbled on a blackboard are Dad's 's pride and joy. (Michael Frencham)

The Girl struggles to understand her parents' mixed messages and confusing behaviour. The Mum (Holly Myers) and Dad alternately adore or attack their son (Ben Franzen) and daughter. They revel in their tea ritual, cleaning, the new barbecue and Dad's mowing.

Somes cunningly uses a Chorus as various outsiders trying to invade the home: annoying Doorknockers, complaining Neighbours, a buzzing blowfly and The Worries that haunt the Girl's troubled sleep.

Gorkem Acaroglu directs Edward Bond's short play, Have I None. The play is futuristic, sharp-edged and eccentric. Sara (Amanda Falson) and Jams (Thomas Milton) are a young couple dressed identically in prison-issue orange suits.

Their lives are regimented. The authorities control the food they eat, the work they do, all social activities and even their allocation of stark white furniture. They are allowed no personal papers or photos and the past is abolished. People suicide en masse in this world.

They bicker like children over trivialities and when Grits, (Sean Barker) a scruffy traveller, arrives on their doorstep declaring he is Sara's brother, their ordered lives spiral out of control.

Acaroglu, like Somes, defines the house space. Jacqueline Lee's design is a cage-like framework. The shadows of a table and two are painted onto the floor. In this rigid home, even the reflections of objects are fixed.

The play is funny, sometimes compelling, shifting from social satire to a darker, more threatening tone as we watch Grits imprisoned, Jams panicking about his job and Sara joining the ranks of the many suicides.

LOOK FOR: Three more plays 9-16 November: Tattoo  by Dea Loher, Miss Julie by August Strindberg, Stone by Edward Bond.

By Kate Herbert

Outside In by Graham Pitts, Oct 15, 2004

Outside In by Graham Pitts
MPAC Arts Inc.

Atherton Gardens Housing Estate, Every 30 mins from 6pm-8.30pm,  Oct 15 to 23, 2004

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Director of Outside In, Graham Pitts, creates an inspired and moving community theatre project inside a public housing estate in Fitzroy.

Outside In is part of a community development project in the Atherton Gardens Housing Estate. The previous project, Inside Out, involved residents of the flats and professional artists in a show at Fitzroy Town Hall.

This project invites non-residents inside four flats in two of the 20 storey high rise blocks. We experience a potted historical version of the evolution of the population since the building of the blocks by Henry Bolte in the 1960s.

Security is the most pressing issue for residents. Providing doormen and encouraging a sense of community are effective ways to create security.

Our small group is guided up lifts, through security doors, down stairwells, past views that trigger vertigo, past building renovations and across the darkened grounds between buildings.

We begin in the 1960s at a mock replication of an immigrants' induction meeting which is run by a John Howard look alike (Stig Wemyss OK) with conservative views of cultures other than Anglo-Aussie. He makes the Chinese women sing Road to Gundagai.

Each flat is designed (Simon Doe) in the style of its period. Our first visit is to a flat representing the 1960s. The walls are plastered with copies of newspapers of the period.

European immigrants lived alongside Australians. An Estonian singer (Ann Kirss OK) is interrupted by the next door Aussie (John Connolly) who complains he can't hear his radio over her singing.

In this flat we are served vodka, view Estonian books and feel the bleakness of these small, cold rooms.

Flat Two is the 1970's when many Vietnamese and Timorese refugees arrived.

Vietnamese singer, Liz Thanh Cao (OK) and The Vietnamese Mothes's Group, sing two poignant songs: My Poor Village and Longing. Others serve chicken soup, spring rolls and bubble tea.

The 1980s saw an influx of refugees from the Middle East and China. A shy and charming Chinese family serves Chinese tea,  displays family photos and sings.

In another room, a Kurdistani musician (Fadil Sunar) sings and plays the Saz.

Flat Four houses an installation of taped interviews and is an homage to those who have been denied accommodation or asylum. In partial darkness, a community choir sings, Anything Can Happen to Anyone Anytime. (Musical Director, Jennie Swain)

Outside In is a moving reminder of the need for community and that anything can happen to anyone - anytime.

LOOK FOR:  The stairwell singers.

By Kate Herbert

Melbourne Festival shows seen in Oct 2004

Via Dolorosa, David Hare, Oct 11, 2004 (engaging without any actorly style at all)
Men in Tribulation, Oct 11, 2004
Return of Ulysses, Playhouse, Oct 13, 2004
A Quarrelling Pair, Oct 13, 2004
Sandakan Threnody, Oct 14, 2004
The Call, Playbox, Oct 16, 2004
Buskers' Opera, Robert Le Page, Oct 20, 2004 (Disappointing and muddled, incorporating too many styles)

The Diary Project, IRAA Theatre, Oct 15, 2004

The Diary Project, IRAA Theatre

By Renato Cuocolo & Roberta Bossetti   

Melbourne Festival of Arts
George Adams Gallery, Arts Centre October 13 to 23, 2004
 Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Oct 15, 2004

The Diary Project, directed by Renato Cuocolo, performed by Roberta Bossetti, casts us as voyeurs. Both director and actor are living for two weeks inside the fishbowl of the George Adams Gallery.

They moved their entire house - bed, table and chairs, sofa, lamps, books, stereo - into the gallery and are visible day and night through a window.

This project continues on from The Interior Sites Project in which a tiny audience was invited into their home for an intimate dinner, a sleepover and personal disclosures from Bossetti.

The Diary Project is based on a diary written by Bossetti and Cuocolo beginning on 1 January, 2004. It tracks their daily lives, decisions to leave Melbourne, travel to Los Angeles and Italy.

Part One concentrates on January-February when they left Melbourne. Entries are mostly impersonal, casual observations with occasional more intimate references. Bossetti muses on homelessness, travel, a funeral home, the death of her uncle and notions of memory.

The piece is enlivened and most effective when the action is emotional or when Bossetti employs her considerable acting skills rather than simply reading.

The greatest attraction is Bossetti's easy, sensual charm. She wears a long sleeved white leather dress with revealing and distracting side slits.

She addresses us directly, prowls the space or sits on the bed, reads under a lamp, kicks off her shoes, lies on the bed in which they will sleep.
 

Cuocolo prompts her with questions, like a journalist. "Tell us about January 21." or "What do you remember about the funeral home?"

It is difficult to judge The Diary Project as a whole from one 50 minute performance. There are four components as well as shorter daily readings. What we cannot assess is the impact of the entire live-in event.

Part Two is written in Vercelli, Part Three in Rome and Part Four is a composite of the LA, Melbourne and Italy diary entries up to Sept 22. The tone and form of the performance might change for these three parts.

We have expectations that the leather diary will illuminate her experiences and make the personal dramatic. However, Part One lacks passion and a dramatic through line.

Compared with the intense insights, personal revelations and poetic form of The Secret Room, Part One of The Diary Project seems superficial.

By Kate Herbert 

uBUNG by Josse De Pauw & Koen Gisen, Oct 12, 2004

uBUNG by Josse De Pauw & Koen Gisen  

By Victoria (Belgium)

Melbourne Festival of Arts

Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse, October 12 to 17, 2004 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

UBUNG, by Belgian company, Victoria, is unlike any other show. It tickles, disturbs and yet is deceptively simple. Many shows incorporate film, but uBUNG does it differently.

Director and writer, Josse De Pauw, is also on of six adult actors who appear on screen. Three men and two women are captured on film during a very dysfunctional, very middle class dinner party in a comfortable home in a leafy region.

For most of the 75 minutes, their voices are muted while, on stage, young teenagers dub the adult voices with uncanny and often comical accuracy.

UBUNG works on several levels. Firstly, it is delightfully entertaining to hear the childish voices replicating the drunken babblings of adults and see them lip sync the dialogue so perfectly.

Secondly, we experience a peculiar reality shift as we witness the children dressing up in replicas of the adults costumes.

At a deeper level, because of the overlaying of child and adult, we are jolted into acknowledging that these adults are not grown ups at all, but children who have access to more intoxicants and experience greater social and personal problems.

We recognise that these children will become these adults in 20 years. uBUNG means ' practice' and this is what the children are doing; practising to be grown ups. uBUNG asks question about what we are teaching our children and how they interpret it.

The heightened performances on screen are rivetting. De Pauw plays Robert, the frisky host who is bored with his melancholy wife, Rolanda, (Carly Wys) and attracted to Ria, (Lies Pauwels) the dizzy, young, blonde wife of his philistine friend, Ivo. (Dirk Roofthooft)

The fifth wheel at the party is Olivier, (Bernard Van Eeghem) an eccentric, middle aged mother's boy who recites poetry with childish actions.

The sixth adult on screen is Georgy (George Van Dam) a Russian concert violinist with whom Rolanda is infatuated and who is bemused by the entire group.

Although the children lip sync to the large screen and on-stage monitors, there is no attempt to make them engage in all the ridiculous sexual antics, confused bickerings or ungainly violence of the adults. They engage and disengage with their characters with ease as taking on and off their costume.

UBUNG is performed predominantly in Flemish but the themes and characters are universal.

LOOK FOR:  Olivier's absurd rendition of a poem with actions.

By Kate Herbert

Alladeen, motiroti, Melbourne Festival, Oct 10, 2004

Alladeen 

The Builders Association  & motiroti

Melbourne Arts Festival

Playhouse, Arts Centre, October 10, 2004

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

There are two striking elements in Alladeen: the digital set design and the schizophrenic cultural identities of workers in an Indian call centre.

Two companies from two nations collaborate on the Alladeen project: The Builders Association, from New York, and motiroti, from London. Both focus their work on new technologies, visual design, sound and performance.

The show is in three parts. It begins on a street in New York, moves to a call centre in Bangalore, India, that services American companies, and ends in a karaoke bar in London.

In New York we see a multi-lingual woman booking flights to London by phone. Her phone conversations are peculiar because her salesperson is an Indian thousands of cultural miles away.

The digital images (Keith Khan, Ali Zaidi, Christopher Kondek) create an astonishingly, real and vivid stage design of New York and London. Silhouetted actors walking through projected images delight the audience.

It is Bangalore that gives the production its heart. As we watch live actors, (Rizwan Mirza, Heaven Phillips, Tanya Selvaratnam, Jasmine Simhalan, Jeff Webster) we see their real, Indian call centre counterparts on screen.

Five Indians train to erase their cultural identity and mother tongue accent, acquire an American twang and assimilate geographical and cultural information that will convince a caller from Arizona that they are from some US city.

Such cultural schizophrenia, cultural appropriation and massive deception are an outrage to anyone that values truth or believes a global village produces grotesque homogeneity.

These young people are only successful if their personality is subsumed by some amorphous, US television personality.

New York highlights the multiple voices of our world. London has a less clear intention, perhaps to parallel, in the bar, the anonymity of our world. 'Joey', from Bangalore, sits alone, en route to a phone sales conference, the New York woman phones home, people dance or sing, ignoring each other.

The references and images from the Aladdin story and its various manifestations in film are stretched too far. New technology being a genie, making our every dream come true, has a rather tenuous connection in Alladeen.

We are confronted by a collision of cultures, the global economy and American commercial imperialism. But we are left craving more connection with these five people in Bangalore.

LOOK FOR:  The replication of a New York street.

By Kate Herbert

Eureka! (The Musical) October 8, 2004

Eureka! 

 Music by Michael Maurice Harvey, Book by Gale Edwards & John Senczuk, Lyrics by Maggie May Gordon, John Senczuk and Gale Edwards  

  produced by Simon Gallaher and Michael Harvey

Where and When: Her Majesty's Theatre  October 8 to 22, 2004    

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on October 8 to 22, 2004 

 Devil's Mistress Gold, the opening number of Eureka, augurs well for a vibrant, new musical production. The first half produces the goods, although the second is too long with too many reprises.

The colourful score (Michael Maurice Harvey) follows the major musical styles and provides a couple of memorable songs although none stick in the mind overnight. Lyrics (Maggie May Gordon, John Senczuk, Gale Edwards) are witty and engaging. 

The Eureka story is one of Australia's few rebellions. Although small, it lends itself to an epic narrative, grand musical form and has echoes of Les Miserables.

The hero of the Eureka Stockade was Irish engineer, Peter Lalor (Ian Stenlake). In this musical, although he is essential to the rebellion, the focus of the story is is on his colleague, Sean Flynn, (Simon Gleeson) and Flynn's romance with Bridie O'Malley. (Trisha Crowe)

The book (Gale Edwards, John Senczuk) establishes the background of the goldfields, the troupers' stranglehold on miners and mining licences, and Governor Hotham's (Peter Carroll) appointment.

We see miners fighting to survive on meagre gold finds and brutal and corrupt treatment by the English under Commissioner Grey. (Michael Cormick)

Lalor's cronies epitomise the multi-racial goldfields.  Rafaello Carboni (Christopher Tomkinson) is an Italian poet, Frederic Vern (James Millar) a German, Long Tu (Yang Li) Chinese and Paddy O'Malley (Barry Crocker) Irish.

Strength of Unity is a rousing anthem for the rebellious quartet of Lalor, Carboni, Flynn and Vern. The same energy was needed in the Stockade battle which is a disappointment. The battle action happens off stage, leaving the show without a climax.

The most emotive song is A Vision Splendid, sung with great tenderness and sensitivity by Gleeson. His duet, It's a Long Way From Where You're Standing, with the vibrant Crowe as Bridie, is charming and funny.

Stenlake is in fine voice singing a delightful duet, The One For Me For Life, with Rachael Beck. Beck's solo, The Words to Say Goodbye, is warm and melancholy while Cormick sings the villainous Grey's solos with passion.

Three scintillating dance numbers are lead by feisty, outrageous Amanda Muggleton as brothel owner, Mercedes Cortes, who is revealed to be as Irish as potatoes. What Women Do is an affecting chorus sung as the women stitch the Southern Cross flag.

The Aboriginal narrator, Kardinia, (Pauline Whyman) is a courageous inclusion but is gratuitously and inappropriately grafted onto the Eureka story.

The show is an entertaining night in the theatre but I suspect it is not the Great Australian Musical.

LOOK FOR:  Gleeson singing A Vision Splendid

By Kate Herber

Provenance by Ronnie Burkett, October 7, 2004

Provenance  by Ronnie Burkett  

Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes

Fairfax Studio, Victorian Arts Centre, October 7 to 23, 2004  

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on October 7, 2004  

To paraphrase one of his characters, puppeteer, Ronnie Burkett, breathes life into static forms. Alone on stage, he physically and vocally animates a parade of miniature people.

Provenance is the second Burkett production at the Melbourne Festival. Its methods echo the previous show, Tinka's New Dress, but it is tougher, more violent and bawdier.

Burkett is no shrinking violet puppeteer, hiding behind a curtain or black hood. He is front and centre with his marionettes and his charm and presence are essential to the story, style and characters.

He plays every character, manipulating with strings or manually. Burkett's form is fascinating because he physically and vocally blends with the creatures he creates.

On an elaborate and vivid stage, he pulls marionettes out of cupboards and animates them. Sometimes he speaks as the character without the puppet, at others he straps a puppet head to his forehead and his body completes the character. It is a compelling form.

The narrative follows Pity, a waspish, bold and very plain art history student who leaves her stodgy, Canadian university to research a painting that obsesses her.

The search for its provenance - the history of artist and ownership - leads her to a brothel in Vienna, peopled with eccentric whores, an acerbic madam and Herschell, an old American Jew who owns the painting.

Pity's obsession with the canvas stems from her childhood and her own lack of physical beauty.

The painting takes pride of place on stage and depicts a lean, pale boy, lashed to a tree and naked apart from a pair of green stockings.  A swan either attacks or enwraps his body.  This boy is Pity's only love and her search for the painting is also a quest to touch beauty and love.

She tells the ageing hooker and ex-chanteuse, Leda, of her gay father and his lover, who she calls Uncle Boyfriend. Leda, in turn, shares her tragic life story. It is Leda who reveals the horrific and true provenance of the boy in the painting.

Burkett's expertise, his circuitous train of thought, his rapid-fire dialogue and high camp humour make Provenance a fine theatrical experience. The denouement of the provenance of the canvas is an emotionally charged, electrifying poetic charge through a World War One battlefield.

LOOK FOR: A singing, roller skating monkey called Plato and Pity on ice skates.

By Kate Herbert

The Zanni Troupe-Masquerade, Oct 2, 2004

 The Zanni Troupe - Masquerade  

by Kite Theatre Productions

 Melbourne Fringe Festival
 North Melbourne Town Hall, Oct 2 to 10, 2004

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The Commedia del'Arte is a masked, improvised comedy that was prevalent in Europe for many centuries.

From it comes much of our contemporary comedy, slapstick and specific, recognisable characters such as Harlequin and Punch.

The Zanni Troupe show, called Masquerade, takes some elements of the Commedia and places three characters in a contemporary Melbourne locale. Two actors play Arlecchino (Steven Fioretti) and his sexy partner and fellow servant, Colombina. (Maggie Miles)

This show uses the elements of the Commedia: mask, stock characters, bawdiness and some physical comedy.

Colombina is the poorly paid but sexy servant of the old Miser, Pantelone (Fioretti) The foolish Arlecchino lets slip to Colombina, that Pantelone wants to marry her. She fantasises about the wealth, status and comfort of such a marriage - which upsets her doting lover, Arlecchino.

Masquerade is a valiant effort to recreate the Commedia in a modern context. Miles and Fioretti are playful enough at times. They relive Arlecchino and Colombina's past love trysts, naughty tricks at Pantelone's expense and wild rides on a motor bike through St Kilda.

However, there are significant problems with this show. The narrative lacks clarity. It relies too heavily on several verbose solo scenes and too much expository and unfunny dialogue.

Because the characters are alone on stage often, the relationship between Arlecchino and Colombina is underdeveloped.

Having Fioretti play both Arlecchino and Pantelone means that we never see Pantelone with any other character. This could allow further development of relationships, elevate the dramatic tension and provide fuel for comedy.

All the masks, but particularly that of Colombina, are overwrought and loudly coloured so that the character is unclear and the actors' eyes and expression are obscured.

Director, Tammie Kite could edit the show, vary the rhythm and increase the visual gags.  The pace is too slow for physical comedy, there are long pauses between scenes and much of the dialogue lacks spark.

With some sharper structuring of the narrative, clearer mime action, more focus on the relationships between characters, clearer masks and application of the principles of physical comedy, The Zanni Troupe could find itself closer to the intention of Commedia Del'Arte.

LOOK FOR: The motorbike ride

By Kate Herbert