Acts of Loneliness by Bridgette Burton and Christina Costigan, June 17, 2005

 Acts of Loneliness  

by Bridgette Burton and Christina Costigan 

Store Room, June 17 until July 3, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

These two short plays are both two-handers about two women who are invading each other's space and engaging in psychological games.

Not Forgotten, by Bridgette Burton, is a faintly menacing play in which Rebecca ( Tiffany Davis), having a quiet Friday night at  home awaiting take away Thai food, .is interrupted by Louise (Christina Costigan).

Louise purports to be a market researcher on unusual home visits. It transpires that the pair went to high school together but Rebecca has absolutely no recollection of Louise nor of much else of their common past.

What is peculiar and somehow dangerous, is that Louise recalls every detail of Rebecca, her achievements, her failings, school record, ambitions and even her talented and popular dead brother, Josh.

There is clearly a hidden history between the pair and we watch it unfold as Louise forces herself upon Rebecca, prodding and pressuring her to remember or admit that she bullied Louise at age 14 and 15.

Director, Kelly Somes, sets the play in a tiny, claustrophobic square of space with the women stepping inside each other's boundaries constantly.

Burton peels layers of their lives and secrets away to reveal that Louise is far more manipulative and controlling than we thought. She reveals she loved josh, followed him around and finally she declares that she knows the details of his apparent suicide.

 Shifts the pair's status and allows the role of intimidator to swap between the women as she unravels the plot.

In the second play, One on One written by Costigan,.Jane (Costigan) sits in a café reading, only to be interrupted by a stranger, Georgia, ( Davis) who sits at her table and proceeds to question her about her book, her drink, her family - everything.

This turns into a game with each of them women moving chairs and positions as in a board game. Roles swap, the interrogator changes, the status shifts as the game changes rules.

This play is the less successful of the two. The absurdist form works at times but the dialogue is often contrived and awkward with too much emphasis on word play and associative ideas.

Costigan and Davis are competent performers and Somes directs them tightly in the two plays.

The themes of solitude and invasion are common to both plays and each writer explores them in slightly differing styles.

By Kate Herbert

Dirty Dancing by Eleanor Bergstein, June 16, 2005

 Dirty Dancing by Eleanor Bergstein 

By Jacobsen Entertainment/Lion's Gate Films/Magic Hour Productions

Princess Theatre, Melbourne, from June 16 until November, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on June 16, 2005

The phenomenon of Dirty Dancing fandom escaped most of us until it recently hit the stage. Fans of the movie attended it repeatedly and are doing so with the stage show.

They speak the characters' dialogue, cheer particular lines such as, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner," and, if there were room, they'd be dancing in the aisles.

Frances "Baby" Houseman, played engagingly by Kym Valentine, is a naïve American teenager who is going through a Coming of Age experience.

 Baby is an honest, cheerful child  interested in Civil Rights and joining the Peace Corps. She supports Martin Luther King's civil rights movement.

While spending the summer of 1963 at Kellerman's resort hotel, Baby deceives and defies her father, (Tony Cogin) and mother (Helen Buday) by helping a hapless dancer (Nadia Coote) obtain a backyard abortion.

Baby becomes the secret dance partner of the Kellerman's most popular dance instructor, Johnny Castle, (Josef Brown) then falls in love with him. Johnny is a talented but poor young man with magnetic powers of attracting wealthy women.

The show is called a play with music but it is the sensual dancing that is its feature. However, it lacks the erotic quality of the original dancing between Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.

Valentine is a charming presence and Brown a magnificent, sensual dancer. What is missing is chemistry between them so the show lacks passion and palpable sensuality.

In unison with the flexible, contemporary design (Richard Roberts) and lighting (Nigel Levings), director, Mark Wing-Davey, uses transformational projected imagery to create an elaborate sense of location.

The music of the early 60s provides a vivid background but it is the songs, Hungry Eyes and I've Had the Time of My Life that send the audience wild.

The cast is strong. Leonie Page is compelling as the rapacious Vivian Pressman and Jeremiah Tickell is delightful as the geeky, relentlessly cheerful rich boy, Neil Kellerman.

The story meanders in the second half but is rescued by the grand finale with the talented singing duet, Christina Tan and Ben Mingay. And massed dancing.

By Kate Herbert

Lucky by Toby Schmitz, June 9, 2005

Lucky by Toby Schmitz

La Mama  June 9 to 26, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Toby Schmitz's play, Lucky, is an anti-hero's journey. We travel through a day and a night with the luckless protagonist as he wrestles with his grand dilemma.

Lucky (Simon Kearney) stole $12,000 from his petty crim boss, Pauly (Pier Carthew) who runs a casino called Scalia.

We do no know why Lucky stole the money nor where it has gone but he has 24 hours to provide the cash or another of his limbs will be broken by Muzzo, (Glen Hancox) Pauly's muscle.

As Lucky scrambles to beg, borrow or steal the cash, he stumbles through the filthy underbelly of Sydney, through streets, parks, taxi ranks and trains, bars and clubs.

 He encounters drunks, addicts, madmen, criminals, whores, rock stars, joggers and even that annoying guy who does your windscreen at intersections.

Director, Emma Valente, uses a grotesque style to illuminate the down beat urban landscape and scruffy characters.

This is a difficult play to stage as it has multiple entrances and exits and costume changes. Valente attempts to solve this problem by placing the costume rack on stage so actors can grab outfits as they rush by it.

Schmitz's script feels like a play written by an observer of the criminal scene it portrays rather than a participant.

It seems over-written and, at times, indulgent.  The dialogue often rambles and characters' eccentricities are used for laughs rather than to reveal their psyches.

The nine performers work hard for two hours but the outcome has mixed success.

 One inspired element is Kate Davis's magical design comprising countless clock faces and mathematical symbols scrawled on tiny blackboards.

Another is the upstage glass door that creates a room outside the walls of La Mama.

As Lucky. Kearney is a low-key foil to the other loonies he encounters. He appropriately underplays Lucky's demented obsession with numbers and The Twist and his search for cash and his girlfriend (May Helen Pirola).

Syd Brisbane is a strong presence as the old man who introduces the play with a poetic prologue and each scene with a chalk board title.

The show is about 30 minutes too long. Chunks of dialogue need cutting and the scene changes and the pacing of some scenes need tightening. There is too much shouting in place of passion, by many of the actors.

By Kate Herbert

The Wall Project By Theatre@risk, June 2, 2005

The Wall Project 

written by  Ben Ellis, Tee O'Neill, Tom Wright  

By Theatre@risk

At fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, to Sun June 5, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on June 2, 2005

The process of creating The Wall Project, by theatre@risk, attempts to utilise rather than resist the brief rehearsal and rapid development time usually available in theatre.

Three playwrights, Ben Ellis, Tee O'Neill and Tom Wright, were invited by director, Chris Bendall to each write a short piece stimulated by the theme of "The Wall". The diverse pieces were then spliced together.

Each writer approached the concept from a different angle.

Wright's story is a poetic view of three female convicts (Anastasia Malinoff, Jesse Spence, Odette Joannidis) travelling to Australia in the hold of an English ship of the Second Fleet. They are preached at by a pious captain (Ernie Gray) and abused by a crazed sailor (Simon Kingsley Hall).

The Foundling (Spence) is raped and gives birth to a deformed child she believes to be Christ.

Wright creates a "prison with no walls", a world in which these women are trapped by virtue of their class, gender, status and poverty.

In O' Neill's play, a woman (Joannidis) awaiting her fiance in a park encounters a terrified, escaped sex slave (Spence). Meanwhile the woman speaks by phone to a corporate executive (Anastasia Malinoff) obsessed with market forces and profit.

A story built around the restrictive bureaucracy and suspicion in a mythical Democratic Republic is the focus of Ellis's play. We see a refugee, (Joannidis) a guest of the Republic (Spence) and a famous actor (Gray) all being treated with varying degrees of respect by the Interpreter. (Malinoff)

Meanwhile a disabled boy (Kingsley Hall) unwittingly wears a bomb for a radical group.

The production is more interesting in concept than execution with varying degrees of success in the writing. Tom Wright's scenes are the most effective and affecting blending the lyrical, mythical and epic and stretching the boundaries of reality.

The other two stories become confused by intentional collisions of styles and sometimes banal social commentary.

Bendall cuts the pieces together so that the whole show moves swiftly. A brown paper sign torn from the wall titles each scene.

Isla Shaw's set design finds a marvellous solution to the awkward fortyfivedownstairs, space. Two fragments of wall frame the performance space and strips of brown paper mask the off stage areas.

Kelly Ryall's original sound is evocative and threatening while Adam J. Howe's lighting defines space and tone.

By Kate Herbert

Boulevard Delirium, Paul Capsis, June 1, 2005

Boulevard Delirium  
Concept by Barrie Kosky  Malthouse Theatre

Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse  June 1 to 26, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on June 1, 2005

Paul Capsis certainly wowed the opening night audience of Boulevard Delirium. They stomped and stood and called for two encores.

The show, first staged in 2001 at the Vienna Schauspeilhaus, bears the unmistakable stamp of director, Barrie Kosky.

Boulevard is a musical cabaret with Capsis, Australia's most unusual drag act, performing chanteuses of the 20^th century in front of a band of five versatile musicians.

Capsis's impersonations are not pure imitation, although his vocal skills replicate Judy Garland, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday and Marlene Dietrich impeccably. It is more the spirit of these damaged women that he captures.

Kosky has Capsis interrupt his characterisations with grotesqueries, local references and mad antics that make the show a marvellous soup of eccentric styles.

Costume changes are minimal. Capsis begins in top hat and tails. With each character he shifts his hair up or down, adds a headband for Marlene, hairpins for Garland. He puts a flower behind the ear rolls up sleeves for Holiday or tosses his white shirt rakishly off his shoulders to play Joplin.

The changes between characters are swift and inventive.

He begins with a few numbers as his own character, Queenie. Get Away, an 60s disco tune looks like the Hot Gossip pole dancers. Fat Daddy is probably the raunchiest tune of the night.

As Garland, he roves the stage in her later life signature drugged and drunken state and sings warped and despairing versions of Putting on the Ritz and Forget Your Troubles.

He drags his face into a grotesque parody of a bad face-lift as Marlene while he sings Boys in the Back Room.

There is a Soul Sister in the middle of the show who was not clear - perhaps Aretha. Then we saw the apex of the evening; Capsis as the doped and mesmerising Billie Holiday singing Don't Explain with poignant beauty.

As Joplin he tore up the stage and hit his rock and roll peak singing Don't Turn Your back on Love.

The band of five was exceptional, setting the tone for the songs and characters, squeezing sounds from not only the usual guitars, keyboard, bass and drums but from piano strings, singing saw, accordion and violin.

Musical Director, Roman Gottwald, leads Chris Bekker, Geri Shuller, Tom Fryer and Niko Schauble in a romp through contemporary styles with exceptional skill.

Boulevard Delirium is an exciting and energetic evening that showcases the talent of Capsis perfectly.

By Kate Herbert for 2 pages:

Decoupage Skin by Michelle Griffiths, May 25, 2005

Decoupage Skin  by Michael Griffith

La Mama, from May 25, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 25, 2005

Both writing and performing a solo play are enormous challenges. Decoupage Skin, written by Michael Griffith, is only partially successful on both counts.

Jennifer Andersen plays Helen, a woman married with two children. We see her anxiously awaiting the return of her husband and sons after a soccer game.

As she waits Helen addresses the audience directly, almost conversationally, as if she is peeling back the layers of her skin, revealing for us the underlying flaws or truth.

Helen's decoupage or cut out collage skin cover is not complete. It has cracks and peeling edges.

Griffith writes Helen as a woman living a veiled, even disguised existence, an uneventful life that she wishes to be more dramatic, even tragic.

She secretly hopes that her entire family is killed in a car crash on the way home from soccer. She reveals that, in spite of her inability to grieve over her youthful abortion, she faked grief, tears and even her subsequent mental breakdown.

As a seemingly harmless and trustworthy teenager, she was secretly a thief and a compulsive liar. As an adult she fantasises about leaving polaroids of her genitals secreted amongst the frozen foods in the supermarket.

Helen is clearly troubled but manages to live a superficially normal life shielded by her capacity for lying.

Barbara Ciszewska, directs Andersen's performance in and around a contraption shaped like the inner framework of a huge crinoline.

 Those sections placed inside the frame are the most effective. When she runs or stands outside it the space is cramped and Andersen's movement awkward and constrained.

Griffith's writing has some witty observations and interesting moments but the dialogue is often uncomfortable and the through line of the narrative incoherent. The character becomes muddled and the intention unclear.

Andersen engages the audience often but there is a disconcerting shrillness to the performance that keeps reminding us that is an actor, not a character we are witnessing. There is little emotional connection with Helen. In fact, Griffith paints her as a rather dislikeable person.

 Decoupage Skin is not without merit but the various components of the piece does not quite make an effective whole.

By Kate Herbert

The Room by Raimondo Cortese, May 24, 2005

The Room by Raimondo Cortese

The Store Room, May 24 to  June 12, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 24, 2005

In The Room by Raimondo Cortese, Greg Ulfan plays a man alone in a claustrophobic room. He struggles to understand the world outside his room and the increasingly confusing world inside his own head.

The script and Ulfan's performance are both disturbing and comical. The man's erratic behaviour and rapid shifts between unrelated topics are clearly the signatures of a fractured mental state.

However, they are often so absurd and sudden that we laugh as we might catch ourselves laughing inappropriately at the antics of a drunk on the street.

The man's predicament and obsessions are both grim and absurd. He awaits the postman, surrounded by scattered sheets of paper he has, perhaps, previously filled with his own scribblings.

He expects a letter or a visit from a mythical "General" whose invitation he will refuse.

He reminisces about times when he did leave his jail-like room and walk the litter strewn streets, drinking in bars, entering shops, compulsively collecting useless objects.

He pines for "The Angel," the woman he lived with and battled with for years.

The play references, to some degree, Samuel Beckett's play, Krapp's Last Tapes: an isolated man contends with his past and himself.

Cortese's writing is poetic and dense and the Man's speech is formalised and colourful rather than conversational.

Ulfan is compelling in the role. His dark, brooding intensity suits this quirky and volatile figure. He plays with the dialogue, using the voice to heighten the fractious and fractured thought patterns of the man.

Ulfan with director, Ben Harkin, developed this version of The Room. In the tiny enclosed space of The Store Room one feels the claustrophobic state of the Man's mind.

The design (Luke Pithar) is sparse and effective, creating with a few boxes, papers and frames a sense of a hollow oppressive space. Almost inaudible and distant sound (Kelly Ryall) adds an eerie quality.

Efterpi Soropos' lighting is dramatic and isolates areas of the stage that, in turn, isolate the man.

Although this is not one of Cortese's major works, it is definitely an interesting exploration of the machinations of mental illness.

By Kate Herbert 

The Room by Raimondo Cortese, May 24, 2005

The Store Room, May 24 to  June 12, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 24, 2005

In The Room by Raimondo Cortese, Greg Ulfan plays a man alone in a claustrophobic room. He struggles to understand the world outside his room and the increasingly confusing world inside his own head.

The script and Ulfan's performance are both disturbing and comical. The man's erratic behaviour and rapid shifts between unrelated topics are clearly the signatures of a fractured mental state.

However, they are often so absurd and sudden that we laugh as we might catch ourselves laughing inappropriately at the antics of a drunk on the street.

The man's predicament and obsessions are both grim and absurd. He awaits the postman, surrounded by scattered sheets of paper he has, perhaps, previously filled with his own scribblings.

He expects a letter or a visit from a mythical "General" whose invitation he will refuse.

He reminisces about times when he did leave his jail-like room and walk the litter strewn streets, drinking in bars, entering shops, compulsively collecting useless objects.

He pines for "The Angel," the woman he lived with and battled with for years.

The play references, to some degree, Samuel Beckett's play, Krapp's Last Tapes: an isolated man contends with his past and himself.

Cortese's writing is poetic and dense and the Man's speech is formalised and colourful rather than conversational.

Ulfan is compelling in the role. His dark, brooding intensity suits this quirky and volatile figure. He plays with the dialogue, using the voice to heighten the fractious and fractured thought patterns of the man.

Ulfan with director, Ben Harkin, developed this version of The Room. In the tiny enclosed space of The Store Room one feels the claustrophobic state of the Man's mind.

The design (Luke Pithar) is sparse and effective, creating with a few boxes, papers and frames a sense of a hollow oppressive space. Almost inaudible and distant sound (Kelly Ryall) adds an eerie quality.

Efterpi Soropos' lighting is dramatic and isolates areas of the stage that, in turn, isolate the man.

Although this is not one of Cortese's major works, it is definitely an interesting exploration of the machinations of mental illness.

By Kate Herbert 

Naming Rights (family matters), May 19, 2005

Naming Rights (family matters)
 By Meg Courtney, Chris Howlett & Xan Colman Dancing with Strangers

150-156 Dante's, Gertrude St, Fitzroy, May 19 to May 28, , 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on may 19, 2005

Small theatre company, Dancing with Strangers, presents three new, short plays in its season, Naming Rights (family matters). They have varying degrees of success.

The most effective is Plum, written by Xan Colman (OK) and directed by Rochelle Whyte. The style is abstracted and formalistic with the entire ten-minute dialogue being repeated in every detail.

The effect is to heighten the dilemma of this young couple, Jack (Sam Davison OK) and Kate (Mikaela Martin OK), who we surmise are anxiously awaiting an appointment for a pregnancy termination.

The repetition also clarifies the situations of their off-stage friends, one lesbian couple having a baby and the male gay couple who has assisted them in the conception.

There is little emotional engagement in the piece but the actors are competent and the direction exploratory. There is an effective sense of urgency in the dialogue and a restrained panic in the characters.

Turn, written by Meg Courtney and directed by Bruce Hughes, tackles the delicate subject of an adult daughter (Sharon Kershaw) managing her changing relationship with her mother (Marie-Therese Byrne) who has a debilitating stroke.

Although the issues are important, the play has too many short scenes and too little dramatic or character development of character.

The daughter acts as narrator which disallows any real communication between characters, the mother is shrill and unengaging and the father (Ian Rooney) is almost invisible.

The final play is the least successful. Lucy Devil Has Wealth Syndrome, written by Chris Howlett and directed by Justin Murray, is a parody of a soap opera but without the acerbic quality or cunning detail of Desperate Housewives.

Lucy Devil (Nicola Alexopoulos) is a fading starlet suffering Wealth Syndrome, a mythical illness caused by too much wealth. Her agent (Michael Cooney) and her assistant (Sophie Good) are conspiring to rip her off but Lucy prefers their dubious attentions to that of her sister (Liza Kennedy).

This piece feels like an undergraduate review with limited acting skill, clunky dialogue and unimaginative direction.

One of the highlights of the productions is the inventive lighting by Richard Vabre. Who uses a few lamps and colours to create atmosphere.

By Kate Herbert

Savage Grace, May 18, 2005

Savage Grace by Alana Valentine 

Steamworks Arts Productions & La Mama

La Mama  May 18 until June 5, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The argument over euthanasia is heated, emotional and exhausting. In the hothouse environment of Alana Valentine's play, Savage Grace, the issues are personalised in an unexpected way.

The argument between the two characters in the play is about the right of a young AIDS victim to choose when he will die and the responsibility of his doctor to assist him.

We never meet the young man, Jeremy, but his case is represented by his doctor, Tex, (Gibson Nolte) a youthful American medico who is under suspicion of assisting deaths in his hospital.

Tex is compelled to attend a series of sessions with a medical ethicist, Robert Bavarro (Humphrey Bower).

The plot leads us into the murky territory of religion and faith, humanism and choice, death and hope.

Valentine's story takes some surprising turns that intensify the tangle of issues to be dealt with by these two men from such differing ethical and social perspectives.

Robert is a cool debater, a philosopher who tries to remain detached and professional in his sessions with Tex but who finds himself being antagonised and baited by the hostile young doctor who is on a quest.

What complicates their professional meetings is that Tex starts flirting with Robert. Both men are single and gay and, despite being polar opposites, they are attracted to each other.

Once sex and intimacy interfere in their heated but rational debate, al bets are off and each seems driven to corral the other into his own belief structure.

Robert sees Tex as "casually assisting death" and defying God's own plan. Tex vies Robert as a ivory tower intellectual and snob who uses his version of faith to justify ignoring the pain of the victims of grave illness.

Bower manages to find charm in the supercilious and almost dislikeable Robert.

Is maddening rationality is credible for such an academic.

As Tex, Gilmore vibrates with a barely contained anxiety and energy, his passion for his patients equalling his delight in flirting with Robert and causing him  discomfort.

The spare light and set design (Andrew Lake) and economical and intelligent direction by Sally Richardson make this a compelling piece of theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Through the Wire by Ros Horin, May 11, 2005

Through the Wire by Ros Horin 

Performing Lines & Melbourne Theatre Company

Grant Street Theatre  May 11 to  22, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on   May 11, 2005

Through the Wire, written and directed imaginatively by Ros Horin, is the next in a growing list of plays about asylum seekers in Australia - and perhaps the best so far.

The play is composed from verbatim transcripts of interviews with refugees from Iran and Iraq. One of these refugees, Shahin Shafaei,  an Iranian playwright and actor, plays himself on stage.

This production is compelling because of the richness and authenticity of the stories it tells. Like other plays on this topic, it puts a face to the refugee and enables even sceptics to feel a connection to the victims of our detention centres.

This is nto to suggest that Through the Wire is emotionally manipulative. The play is quite restrained in its style.

The frequent direct address to audience and viewing of the horrors with hindsight, provides some Brechtian distance. This allows us to view the stories compassionately, but rationally.

The focus is on four men in detention and three women who befriend them.

Shahin, we hear, was banned from writing plays or performing in theatre but, when Iranian authorities discovered that one of his plays was being performed in a university show, his life was at risk.

He fell in love with, and still lives with, Gaby, (Eloise Oxer) a young detention centre guard.

Farshid, (Wadih Dona) discovered a plot to poison a prominent a young Iranian and his life was at risk. His mistake was to believe that being honest and telling authorities in Australia that his New Zealand passport was false would work in his favour.

Mohsen (Ali Ammouchi OK) was a whistleblower on judicial corruption in a court case regarding an intelligence officer and therefore under threat. He was befriended and supported by Suzanne, (Rhondda Findleton OK) a psychotherapist who took his desperate phne calls day and night.

The fourth man, Rami, (Hazem Shamas OK) was not even politically active. While doing work experience as a concierge in a five-star hotel, he went against authorities' directives by giving directions to a restaurant to a Westerner during the period of UN weapons inspection. 

Rami's comrade was a woman of Jewish-South African background. His panic and despair was assuaged to some extent by her concern and love.

Heide Riederer's design provides a marvellously spare and abstract set of metal bars and cyclone wire cages. Live music by Jamal Alrakabi not only evokes the Middle East but provides a vivid soundscape to these remarkable tales.

By Kate Herbert

Fool for Love by Sam Shepard, May 4, 2005

Fool for Love by Sam Shepard

 Trades Hall, Council Chambers  May4 to 2, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Fool for Love is a superbly crafted short play. The narrative unfolds seamlessly, the characters are compelling and the denouement shocking.

Sam Shepard's play is set in a Southern US desert state. In an isolated motel, May, (Karen Day) a young woman working as a cook, is reunited with Eddie, (Joe Clements) a rodeo cowboy she knows form high school.

There past and the nature of their relationship is mysterious but obviously fraught with rage and intimate secrets.

Into this tightly wound situation between Eddie and May comes poor, gormless Martin, (Peter Heward) May's doting date for the evening. The progressively drunker and wilder Eddie taunts Martin with outrageous stories  of Eddie's past with May.

This is witnessed by an old man (Bruce Kerr) seated in a rocking chair on the verandah and swigging whisky. At first he appears to be unseen and later he is a ghost from the past.

Fool for Love is a passionate, menacing play built around a dysfunctional relationship.

Clements is a potent presence, making Eddie primitive and threatening, a raw, violent cowboy with no hidden heart of gold. He gives Eddie an animal energy, both repellent and sexual.

As the overwhelmed and desperate May, Day moves between powerless victim one minute and screaming harpy the next.

The balance of power between the pair shifts constantly and the stage is a dangerous and sexy place.

As the hapless Martin, Heward is absolutely credible and Kerr is a potent counterpoint and commentator as the old man.

Gorken Acaroglu (OK) directs the play with a firm hand, keeping the pace rapid, the energy high and the passion turned up to full.

At times, in the first half, there is too much shouting and the performance is too much on one note, but the second half find a more balanced level of impassioned performance.

Shepard is relentless, grim, rich in imagery of the dusty heat of the remote desert and this production a fine example of his style.

By Kate Herbert

Playing the Victim, by The Presnyakov Brothers, April 29, 2005

Playing the Victim 

By The Presnyakov Brothers translated by Sasha Dugdale 

Red Stitch Actors Theatre

Red Stitch, Rear 2 Chapel St, St. Kilda, April 29 until May 21, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on April 29 , 2005

Playing the Victim, by The Russian Presnyakov Brothers, is like a satirical version of current Crime Scene Investigation television shows.

A laconic young man called Valya, (Angus Sampson) has a job playing the role of victims in the reconstruction of violent crimes. Running the investigations is the disillusioned Inspector Shnurov (Jim Daly) assisted by his doting Constable, Lyuda, (Olga Makeeva) and lackadaisical Sergeant, Seva (Anthony Rive).

The TV show parallel is obvious. The play begins with a screenwriter (Glenn Perry) meeting his director (Rive) to discuss the very same scenario of a man playing the victim. The series of bizarre crime reconstructions follow.

Director, Alex Menglet, accentuates the absurdity of the writers' style and the grim comical elements. This has the edge of a contemporary Chekhov play without the poignant characters and tragic inflections.

There are some really delightful scenes such as Valya's father and mother (Daly, Makeeva) giggling in their bed.

Sampson revels in Valya's cheeky diversionary antics and rambling monologues such as the rave about urine and Russian toilets. His distinctive rhythm and delivery blends well with this quirky character whose main objective is to avoid doing things he does not like such as dishes or swimming.

There are times when the ensemble seems uncertain or uncomfortable in the style but the play is definitely entertaining with its mad, grim humour.

Daly, as the Police Inspector, diverges hilariously from his task to solve the crime to bemoan the behaviour of the younger generation and the ailing performance of his football team.

A mysterious waitress in Japanese restaurant (Verity Charlton) dances and sings a peculiar version of Madam Butterfly story.

A criminal (Tomek Koman) struggles to explain how he stayed underwater to drown his victim. Another (Perry) escapes when the coppers forget he is in the toilet.

The little Red Stitch space is cunningly designed by Tomek Koman with a few simple items to locate scenes: two wooden chairs, a strip of lino as a swimming pool, a barn door as a café kitchen and an orange blanket as a bed.

The Presnyakovs' script is strange and funny but leaves us unmoved. The most entertainment comes from Sampson's shambling and ironical observations as Valya.

By Kate Herbert

Monologues by Asa Gim Palomera, April 28, 2005

Monologues  by Asa Gim Palomera 

Women of Asia

 Chapel off Chapel, April 28 to May 7, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on April 28, 2005

It is heartening to see a stage filled with so many Asian women in Monologues, by Asa Gim Palomera.

Six women of diverse Asian backgrounds, plus two from Mediterranean cultures, perform a series of vignettes about the various predicaments of women from Asia.

All are based on true stories an were originally part of a larger project called Women in Asia.

The women are all versatile and skilful performers, both physically and vocally. Director, Asa Gim Palomera, underlines the emotional dialogue with abstract and evocative choreography.

Some of the characters are comic while others are grim and disturbing. Many depict the women in their role as sexual objects or as abused by or subservient to men or to other women.

Strangely, the stereotypes of Asian women are reinforced in many stories, although the reasons for such stereotypes are investigated to some degree.

In Virgin Sale, (Shireen Morris, Kaori Hamamoto, Janette Hoe)  an 11 year old girl is sold into prostitution by her parents and lives a life of sordid sexual exploitation.

S.S.S. - Retired Prostitute (Janette Hoe, Shireen Morris) depicts a young woman who uses sexual wiles to manipulate the 2,000 men she "loves'.

A more disturbing tale is The Dowry, (Mandi Sebasio-Ong, Shireen Morris, Daniela Lucchetti about an Indian bride who is abused and starved by her mother-in-law.

Milking Madam Butterfly (Yet Again) features an opera diva (Shireen Morris) commenting ironically upon the tragedy of Puccini's Madam Butterfly, a victim of her own dreams.

An overtly tragic story is Japanese Medea, (Miki Oikawa, Diane Stathis OK).

A young Japanese mother, isolated, humiliated and finally abandoned by her husband, drowns her children.

Woman on Top changes the pace. The wife of an Asian Prime Minister (Kathleen Baguio OK) revels in the wealth and power she has bought with her marriage.

Two comedies involve food and marriage. An Italian woman, (Stathis) married to a Japanese, bemoans the meagre portions of food in Japan. Then a Japanese wife (Oikawa) of an Aussie bloke, appears docile but uses commando-like tactics to compel her man to eat seaweed and rice.

There is a little too much emphasis on Asian women as victims and the finale of naked women grasping at kimonos in the half-darkness, was confusing and awkward.

However, Monologues is lush, entertaining, challenging and passionately performed and directed.

By Kate Herbert

Smashed by Lally Katz , April 27, 2005

Smashed  by Lally Katz 

Store Room, April 27 to May 15, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on April 27, 2005

Two enchanting features of the production of Smashed are the magnetic performances (Katherine Tonkin, Suzannah McDonald) and the magical set design (Rainbow Sweeney).

Lally Katz's play revolves around two teenage girls and begins with Hazel (McDonald) lying prone in Ruby's arms (Tonkin).

Something horrid, they tell us, has just happened but they postpone their inevitable confrontation of this awful experience.

The pair retreat into their common past: their childhood, adolescence and budding maturity. They even tilt time to drift into 'memories' of their unlived futures.

Katz's script bends time as the girls comment upon or relive their experiences.

The two young women play out this entire series of fantasies and memories amongst a miniature set built of dolls' houses.

They tower over the buildings like giant angels walking through an unwitting city.

They relive their intimate childhood games, dancing to pop songs, discovering Hazel's mother is ill, their first kiss and sitting bored in Hazel's bedroom.

They creep back to the demolition yard where they make up stories about the redneck owners. They walk through the countryside, remembering a hill or a lake then they go for a drive in hazel's mother's car, singing at the top of their lungs.

Many elements of the text are successful. The notions of time and matter, love and friendship, memory and reality, loss and grief, create some interesting material, particularly in the first half.

However, the ideas, form and language run out of steam in the second half. The dialogue becomes overly poetic and the themes are repeated.

What makes the show work well is the lyrical direction of Clare Watson and the particularly compelling performances of Tonkin and McDonald. The pair are as unalike as black and white.

Tonkin is dark, statuesque and smouldering while McDonald is tiny, pert and blond and absolutely luminous.

The two accomplished young actors have enormous range and skill both vocally and physically.

Although it is not spoken in the play, it is obvious to us from the outset that hazel has died and Ruby is grieving. What we do not know until the end is how this horror occurred.

By Kate Herbert