Arcadia, PMD Productions, Feb 13, 2008

Arcadia 

by Tom Stoppard by PMD Productions

Chapel off Chapel, Feb 13 until March 1, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Et in Arcadia ego (And I am in Arcadia). The characters in Tom Stoppard’s play, Arcadia, seem to live in some earthly purgatory rather than in Arcadian bliss.

Stoppard weaves a gloriously complex tapestry from mathematics, gardening, literature and philosophy. His play takes place at the stately English manor house, Sidley Park of Lord Croom, but shifts in time between its residents of 1809 and those of the present.

Arcadia is a period mystery with echoes of Agatha Christie without the murder. Paul Knox’s production is conventional and competent, relying on character and relationship rather than glossy production values. It is contained in a small stage area very close to the audience, making it an intimate theatrical experience.

With a period play there is always the risk of sliding into melodrama and Jane Austenisms. There is some of this in the less experienced actors but there are several charming and capable performers.

Septimus Hodge (Matthew Kenny) is a promiscuous, classics educated Renaissance Man and tutor to the precocious and clever young Thomasina (Kellie Tori) in 1809. Kenny has great comic timing and is delightfully arch and loose-limbed as Hodge, playing him with a wry tone and louche demeanour. Tori has a golden glow as Thomasina, giving her a vivid playfulness to complement her intellect. Their relationship is central to the story, and they engage us at every turn.

 Brenda McGinty brings a suitably brusque determination to Hannah, the 20^th century researcher investigating the shadowy Hermit of Sidley Park. As Valentine, son of the current Lord Croom, Luke Lennox has an easy charm and finds emotional range in his character. Jennifer Innes captures the 19^th century period in Lady Croom.

Stoppard’s script is inventive and challenging, incorporating his signature wordplay, intellectualism and also draws on scientific theory: Newtonian physics, iterated equations and algorithms. It sets the brain in a whirl. Stoppard cunningly crafts notions of Romanticism and Byronic poetry, Rationalism and the thriving 19^th century business of designing gardens into a dense and compelling historical mystery.

By Kate Herbert

Keating! The Musical, Feb 13, 2008

 Keating! The Musical

music and lyrics by Casey Bennetto

Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, Feb 14 to March 8, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

 

Seeing Keating! The Musical for the third time is still an invigorating theatrical experience. 

For my guest, Casey Bennetto’s dazzlingly clever musical evocation of Keating’s (Mike McLeish) rise to the Prime Ministership was all new, glossy and surprising. Meanwhile, I was anticipating my favourite songs, laughing at caricatures and political references and singing along (embarrassingly) as if it were a Wiggles concert.

In the week of Rudd’s parliamentary apology, the songs about Mabo and Keating’s 1992 Redfern speech about historical injustices against aborigines, assume a celebratory quality.

Bennetto writes both a farce and a scathing political satire about the period from 1990 when Hawke (Terry Serio) won his fourth term, until Keating’s unwinnable victory in 1993. Bennetto writes songs in eclectic styles ranging from reggae to bossa nova, sultry blues to cool jazz, and the on-stage band, under musical director Enio Pozzebon, is deliciously versatile.

But it is Bennetto’s hilariously incisive lyrics and inventive rhymes that captivate us. On The Floor depicts the parliamentary face-off between Keating and John Hewson (Brendan Coustley). It is a rap littered with Keating’s infamous verbal gymnastics and vitriolic attacks on opponents. Hewson collapses under such inspired insults as “like being flogged with warm lettuce” and is decimated in the ensuing slow, suggestive love duet, I Want to Do You Slowly.

McLeish is almost edible as Keating: sleek, smug, stylish, snake-hipped and seductive. His reggae vanity song, I Am the Ruler of the Land (“Who Da Man? You da man, Yes I am.”), sends the crowd wild.

Terry Serio is super in several roles, capturing both Hawkie’s blokey appeal and Howard’s 100-pound weakling facade and cunning political manipulation. Howard’s song, The Mateship, is achingly funny as Serio dons the ex-PM’s gold and green tracksuit. New cast member, Coustley, in fishnets and corset, eats up the role of Alexander Downer singing, “I’m so freaky.”

Keating! is such a witty and rollicking ride that it deserves a fourth viewing.

By Kate Herbert

Coop by Black Hole Theatre, Feb 7, 2008

 Coop by Black Hole Theatre

 At fortyfivedownstairs,  Feb 7 to 17, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

 A demented old man living in a chicken-coop with his son and daughter sounds like a bleak scenario but Coop is both grim and comical. 

The collaborative production, devised by the ensemble of Black Hole Theatre, inventively incorporates actors, visual imagery and a range of puppetry forms.

Nancy Black (director) and Rod Primrose’s (actor/puppeteer) initial inspiration was Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights, depicting Adam and Eve, naked humans cavorting with giant birds and fruits and the descent into corruption and Hell.

Coop focuses on mankind’s descent into sinfulness. The old man (Primrose) appears to be, or to believe that he is God and his children (Conor Fox, Tamara Rewse) represent Adam and Eve. Their rough humpy, constructed of old wood, canvas and hay bails, (Ben Cobham) houses his family and his chicken. Images of birds and eggs recur throughout, emphasising the notion of genesis, birth, evolution and corruption.

There is whimsy and humour but the sense of menace is pervasive. The old man is volatile and violent, unpredictable and merciless with his children, just like the God of the Old Testament. The children cower or furtively ravish one another with Bosch-like lust. Intermittently the family plays games. Father makes an egg disappear from an eggcup and the children make tiny fluffy chicks dance in a chorus line. Meanwhile Beulah the live chook ambles around pecking.

One truly inspired moment is when they convert a chicken carcass into an hilarious marionette. It wears tiny gumboots and its wings flap hopefully as it dances like a ballerina over the sleeping old man’s chest until eventually it flies. Another is the luminous and disturbingly disembodied babies’ heads that crawl menacingly over the children’s bodies.

Black allows the piece to develop an almost musical rhythm as the old man’s moods ebb and flow. There is little or no dialogue. The characters grunt and sigh, shout or groan expressively making words redundant.

The dim lighting (Cobham) accentuates the threatening mood with smoky atmosphere and occasional glaring blasts of light. Kelly Ryall’s complex and evocative sound design incorporates haunting bells and whistles with brighter sounds, music and distorted voices.

Coop is eccentric and unpredictable – and it gives poultry a new and inventive role in theatre.

By Kate Herbert

D.E.A.D: The Department of Existence and Death, Feb 6, 2008

 D.E.A.D: The Department of Existence and Death, by Company 13

Where and When: Carlton Courthouse, from Feb 6, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Clowns and death are an unlikely coupling but D.E.A.D.: The Department of Existence and Death effectively blends the two seemingly incompatible elements.

Six peculiarly rabbity characters are a motley bureaucratic mob with the unsavoury job of shepherding us into the afterlife. Their antics are chaotic, comical and incomprehensible as they assess the mode of death and apply due process to every human case.

All goes awry when one recently dead soul refuses to give up her darkest secret and is unable to cross into the next life. The band of nutty, after-life conductors are confounded. D.E.A.D. sounds grim but it incorporates classic clown moments and poignant scenes about death.

The show was devised with director James Pratt, and demonstrates the assets and some disadvantages of devising. It has energy and commitment, a strong ensemble feel, individual characters and quirky plot. It also has some unevenness in the level of performers’ skill, some bumpy transitions and missed opportunities for comic business.

What makes the actors look so demented is an elastic strap wrapped around their heads creating buck-toothed, plump-cheeked squirrelly critters. The beauty of clowns doing death is that they can do outrageous things to dead bodies, smack each other with large foam bats and make awful mistakes, but they look like confused children so we laugh and forgive them.

Comic routines are repeated, exaggerated and become more urgent and ridiculous as they contend with their recalcitrant dead person and fail to discover why she just won’t die properly. The God-like head bureaucrat – AKA Nanna – phones persistently, issuing instructions and admonitions to this motley bureaucratic crew.

Meanwhile, the poor lost soul (Kate Hunter) sits at her desk filling out a life questionnaire the size of two phone books. The bonkers bureaucrats mutter in groups, search for a solution or sing idiotic ditties to send her on her way.

No matter how much clown technique others may have, some people are just natural clowns. Kristzian Bagin

is magnetic. Even when doing very little his every glance, flinch and pose is inspired. Glynis Angell creates a poignant moment when she pummels the dead gal and John Forman booms and blusters with style.

There could be a little tweeking of this show but it is a deliciously silly clown’s eye view of the afterlife.

By Kate Herbert

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dec5-22, 2007

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

The Preferred Play Company

When & Where: Theatreworks, Dec 5-8, Dec 16-22 until Dec 22, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a perennial favourite with its fairies and love potions, rough clowns and aristocratic lovers. 

The roles of the Fairy King and Queen are in the capable hands of experienced actors, Andrew Blackman and Danielle Carter, but all other roles feature recent graduates of the Victorian College of the Arts. Director Glenda Linscott remounts her 2006 VCA student production here.

The play is most often performed in an edited version with actors playing multiple roles but this version is near full length. Blackman is magnetic and imposing as Oberon, his commanding presence, statuesque physicality and= resonant voice testament to his experience performing Shakespeare. Every image in Oberon’s lyrical dialogue is clear and he inhabits the character fully relishing the Fairy King’s power and passion, his wit and playfulness.

Danielle Carter is stately and elegant as his airy consort Titania, shifting effortlessly from regal to lovelorn and from raging to seductive. The rivalry and lust between this fairy couple is palpable.

The younger performers, although they are energetic and committed, are less secure in the classical text. There is a little too much shouting and running about and too little connection to the meaning and imagery of Shakespeare’s poetry.

Nonetheless the cast hurls itself with vigour into the playful roles of the fairies. Two actors share the role of Puck (Stuart Bowden, Katherine Harris) thus allowing the sprite to appear in two places at once and to thrown his

voice magically.

Several performers double as the Mechanicals and their final amateur tragedy performed for the Duke (Benedict Hardie) and Hippolyta his bride (Meredith Penman) has some funny slapstick moments.

One issue is that there seems to be little distinction between some of the characters. The male lovers Demetrius (Carl Nilsson-Polias) and Lysander (Tim Ross) are indistinguishable from each other except by their dialogue and, apart from their physical characteristics, Hermia (Anne-Louise Sarks) and Helena (Celia Mitchell) could be interchangeable.

The fairies purposely mirror each other as a chorus but this does not allow for any distinctive characterisation and all of the tradesmen except the swaggering Bottom (Gerard Lane) are timid and terrified.

Perhaps the extremely short rehearsal period has not allowed the cast to explore greater subtlety and variety that could give more range and colour to the production.

Kate Herbert

Vagina Decliner, Jan 19, 2008

Vagina Decliner  by Anthony Menchetti

Midsumma Festival

Dantes Fitzroy, Jan 19 to Feb 3, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Anthony Menchetti jokes that he prefers to be called a “vagina decliner” rather than simply “gay”.

It certainly supplies a high visibility title for his new stand-up comedy show that incorporates some untried material with some good older jokes.

One of his funniest sight gags is his origami chickens fashioned from bar towels. Every time a new gag falls flat he conjures another uncannily real-looking towelling chook. There are four by the end of the show. A few jokes flop but he recovers with a self-deprecating remark - or a chicken.

Menchetti’s comic delivery and material lack polish and he is certainly not a belly laugh comic but he is cheerful and boyish which makes him engaging. He opens with a full-size cut-out of himself – a pirated copy – then proceeds to mourn the passing of a friend who took up pyramid Tupperware selling. It’s a funny routine presented on film with echoes of White Lady Funerals adverts.

As he achieves his comic goals, he ticks them off on a wall chart: “be original”, “relate to audience”, “flawlessly move from topic to topic”. His use of suspense involves smacking an egg with a golf club – right at me.

He is the only comic to use a fuzzy felt chart as a visual aid to explain dating and ways of escaping the next morning.  He has plenty of material about coming out, being sent by his parents to a Christian gay conversion camp, failed romances and crazy gay clubs. His description of Captain Cliché, his disastrous date who wore his white fishnets and cape, is a hoot.

His experiences working in a Call Centre selling unsellable goods to unwilling customers provide some laughs and the lunatics who work there with him also receive some jibes, including the socially inappropriate woman with her sexual innuendo.

Menchetti has a cute song to explain gay relationships to children. It begins with, “Dad’s like dads and mums like mums,” and includes some acerbic commentary on social prejudices.

All that said one of the funniest sight gags in the show is Menchetti’s new haircut. It’s like a confused cockatoo crest. Was his hairdresser having him on?

By Kate Herbert

Vaudeville X, Jan 17, 2008

Vaudeville X 

by Michael Dalley, High Performance Company

Black Box, Arts Centre, Jan 17until Feb 2, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Fluff  up your feather boa, don your fishnet stockings and a sultry pout and prepare to have a cracking good time at Vaudeville X.  The sixteen original songs are by Michael Dalley who is a wizard with wicked satirical lyrics.

Three haughty bourgeois characters (Dalley, Daniel Fletcher, Grant Cartwright) wearing dinner suits - and an occasional pink boa - perform the collection of songs incorporating intelligent and well-observed lyrics, barbed social commentary and acerbic wit.

From their middle-class ivory tower, these characters pine for the glorious Keating-inspired years and mourn the death of elitism. Each tune is another biting comment on the comfortable middle-class urban set that despairs of the upward mobility of unsophisticated suburbanites in Things Aren’t Going Well When Girls Called Narelle Drink Café Latte – and boys called Troy and Kyle.

Every aspiration of the middle classes is a target. In Backpacking, smug young travellers blithely ignore poverty while trekking through the Third World. Middle Class Welfare celebrates tax avoidance, share portfolios and negative gearing and the choral Spirit Song praises supporting “art approved by bureaucrats”.

The modern phenomenon of educated, corporate, artsy women hooking up with rough trade is analysed in Upmarket Woman, Downmarket Man. Men who marry and hide their homosexuality are exposed in Double Life and those appalling pseudo-feminist seducers and charlatans of the New Age are damned in He’s A Masseur. I Love Reading Freud With My Mother is about – well ­­– a troubling relationship between mother and son.

If you’ve ever stumbled unwittingly upon the drivel on morning FM radio, Morons on Breakfast Radio will tickle you. If you love Kurt Weill The Sewers of Berlin is a scream. If you loath indulgent post-modernism you’ll love The Ghost of The Post-Modern Dancer and Your Queer Performance Art and music theatre lovies gets a slapping in I’ve Got Something To Say.

The trio is slick, funny and playful and is accompanied on piano by the unobtrusive but sterling pianist, John Thorn. Vaudeville X is a deliciously naughty and provocative cabaret.

By Kate Herbert

Shout! The Legend of the Wild One, Jan 10, 2008

 Shout! The Legend of the Wild One

by John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell & Melvyn Morrow

State Theatre, Jan 10 until Feb 10, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If you were a fan of Australian rocker Johnny O’Keefe, The Wild One, you’ll be rocking along in Shout, a biographical musical about his short life. His life was peaks and troughs, the peaks being in his earliest years before his shocking injuries in a car accident.

JO’K was an ambitious, self-absorbed show-off when he touted himself to American concert promoter Lee Gordon (Mark Holden) in1959. His behaviour rapidly deteriorated into substance addiction, manic-depression and schizophrenia.

In biographical shows the facts are massaged to create a dramatic structure. Three writers (John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell & Melvyn Morrow) take highlights of JO’K’s life and glue them together with songs from his repertoire.

The show, directed by Stuart Maunder,  opens with an awkward scene portraying O’Keefe in the 1970s reminiscing at the Stadium where he wowed the audience. What follows is a narrative constructed from selected episodes in his life.

We see his rebellious school days at a Catholic college, his obsessive bid for the Stadium gig, his hounding of Gordon, live gigs, the tragic car accident that interrupted his career, his television shows, reckless lifestyle and careless treatment of his wife Marianne (Alexis Fishman) and his disastrous quest for fame in America and England.

The songs are the heart of the show because the dialogue is often trite and the structure of the narrative clumsy. You’d have to be tone deaf to think Johnny O’Keefe was a great singer but, in his early days, he was a terrific showman who sold a rock song hard.

The return season of Shout! has a change of cast with Tim Campbell as O’Keefe. He is certainly not a look-alike for JO’K (lucky for him) but his voice is definitely better so the songs do not have that rough, slightly tuneless quality of O’Keefe. The crowd were delighted with his versions of Wild One, What’d I Say, Move Baby Move, Six O’Clock Rock, She’s My Baby and Shout!

Colleen Hewett is a feature as Johnny’s Mum and her duet of On A Slow Boat to China with Glenn Shorrock and the family singing Mockingbird were a treat. Fishman is moving as Marianne and Holden is brazen as Gordon. The Delltones (Steve Judkins, Nicholas McMahon, Paul Ross, Kurt Sneddon) Get a Job was a delicious vocal blend. The beatnik scene, Shimmy Shimmy Koko Pop, was a highlight with sultry choreography by Ross Coleman.

Shout! is a crowd pleaser because of its songs and O’Keefe’s place in our rock history but it lacks the dramatic coherence needed for great music theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Romeo and Juliet, Jan 9, 2008

Romeo and Juliet 

by William Shakespeare, Australian Shakespeare Company

Where and When: Botanical Gardens, Melbourne, Jan 9 until March 15, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The most significant element of Glenn Elston’s Shakespeare in the Gardens is that hundreds of people, many of whom never see Shakespeare inside a theatre, enjoy a night under the stars with Shakespeare, wine and crackers and a picnic blanket.

In such a vast, uncontrolled environment (birds, bats, passing traffic) it is impossible to stage a traditional production. The interaction with audience, amplified voices and casual seating make Shakespeare’s comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, the most effective choices. The lounging crowd is willing to accept the licence taken by the actors who add modern references, additional dialogue and roam amongst the picnickers.

Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies about two warring families, Capulets (Juliet) and Montagues (Romeo). In this environment the intimate romance and deep tragedy cannot be communicated so Elston concentrates mostly on engaging the audience with comedy, fight scenes and characters. The intense moments, such as the death scenes of the young lovers, are dealt with swiftly.

The casting of indigenous actors brings a new dimension to the play but perhaps the entire Capulet clan needs to be indigenous to make this interpretation of warring tribes work.

This production is not as successful as previous shows partly because it is a tragedy but mostly because young or inexperienced actors perform the lead roles. Performing Shakespeare requires a significant amount of skill and outdoor theatre is always a challenge.

Glenn van Oosterom is a boyish Romeo. He is most effective in the playful scenes when Romeo rollicks with his mates or in the lighter scenes with Juliet but he is less successful with the more complex and poetic dialogues. Farmer could be delightful in a contemporary work but struggles with Shakespeare’s language, never penetrating text or character.

The more experienced actors inhabit their characters and bring the text to life. Adrian Dart is a mischievous Mercutio and Anthony Rive is a dignified Prince. Shakespeare veteran, Ross Williams, is commanding as Lord Montague but appears too briefly while Greg Ulfan is sympathetic as the obliging Friar.

Brendan O’Connor and Syd Brisbane are experienced, engaging performers who play small roles in the story but entertain the audience as Masters of Ceremonies and it is this component of the outdoor shows that makes them such a successful annual event.

By Kate Herbert

Don Juan in Soho , Jan 9/ 2008

Don Juan in Soho 

by Patrick Marber, Melbourne Theatre Company

Where and When: Fairfax Studio, Jan 9 until Feb 10, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Updating the legendary libertine Don Juan is difficult because of the prevalence of promiscuity in our modern world. 

Historically Don Juan is represented as a totally heartless, immoral, lying womaniser or, alternatively, as a man who genuinely sees beauty in and loves every woman. Patrick Marber’s Don Juan (Dan Wyllie) is the former nasty type.

Marber’s Don Juan is based on Moliere’s version, Dom Juan or The Feast With the Statue. Don Juan is a dissolute son of an English earl (Bob Hornery). We meet him just after his abandonment of his wife of two weeks, Elvira (Katie-Jane Harding), a virginal aid worker with two hot-blooded brothers (Angus Cerini, Craig Annis) who want vengeance on Don Juan for his abuse of their sister.

Central to the story is the Don’s relationship with his servant Stan, the moral compass that is ignored by the ruthless Don. Daniel Frederiksen almost steals the show playing Stan with gentle, understated wit. Stan is the only character that touches us and his confusion and distress at his boss’s cruelty are palpable.

Wyllie is a quirky actor who explores some hilarious elements in the character of the Don but seems miscast as the captivating rogue. He is genuinely funny in such outrageous scenes as seducing two women simultaneously in a hospital waiting room. But he is uncomfortable playing the stylish elegance and grace that must sit effortlessly on Don Juan and he pushes vocally to find the toff’s speech patterns.

Harding brings to Elvira a delicate beauty, a classical style and a great sense of comic melodrama. Hornery is dignified and impassioned as Don Juan’s outraged father and Christen O’Leary is compelling and funny as the brassy girl in the hospital and as a bunny-suited, Slavic hooker. The remaining cast (Cerini, Annis, Bert Labonte, Kate Jenkinson, James Saunders) provide strong supporting roles.

Marber’s comic and melodramatic script, directed by Peter Evans, is wildly funny in parts but patchy in others. The supernatural scenes dealing with the statue of Charles II that pursues Don Juan to Hell are not as successful as the comic business because the statue bears no relationship to the characters. In other versions, the statue is of a father murdered by Don Juan in pursuit of his seductions. However, Don Juan in Soho is outrageous and funny despite its flaws.

By Kate Herbert

Theatre Wrap Up, 2007

 Theatre Wrap up 2007

By Theatre reviewer, Kate Herbert

Published in Herald Sun, Dec 2007

Well I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit tired after a big year of theatre. Although some highlights were expensive musicals and esoteric international productions, a swag of miniatures produced on the smell of an oily rag grabbed my eye.

Strangely, the play that keeps resonating with me was intimate and small budget as well as internationally acclaimed. Sizwe Banzi Is Dead featured two exceptional African actors in Athol Fugard’s 1972 play about apartheid in South African. It was poignant, funny and pertinent in today’s political climate – and directed by the god of theatre, Peter Brook.

Some other incomers thrilled me. Seeing Ian McKellan as a tyrannical but vulnerable old King Lear was a gift and his Sorin in The Seagull was equally distinguished and deliciously cheeky while in the mesmerising Butoh production Kagemi even the curtain call was captivating. The hilarious and versatile Darren Gilshenan and William Zappa inhabited a parade of grotesque characters in The Government Inspector.

Large-scale musicals are back to stay. Spamalot is so funny it hurts while Priscilla is as camp as Rosebud in January. We finally saw Miss Saigon to be impressed by the performers but disappointed by the show. On a smaller scale, the locally grown Keating The Musical was vivacious and the tiny cabaret Intimate Apparel satirised contemporary theatre with acerbic songs.

My year would be incomplete without a scathing and comical political diatribe by Rod Quantock - and this year we had two. John Howard’s Farewell Party was prophetic and Court in the Act was an inventive mock court case that put avid audience members in major roles.

I swooned over Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai, laughed out loud at La Soiree and at Ying Tong, the play that revived Spike Milligan and the Goons. The two major companies, MTC and Malthouse, did not have much to light my fire but neither were they too disappointing except perhaps for The Glass Soldier.

There were plenty of teensy gems in small venues. Red Stitch had a strong program all year and Theatre@Risk gave us the cunningly written and performed Check List for an Armed Robber. Fully Committed demonstrated the formidable talents of Spencer McLaren and Holiday by Ranters Theatre showed us how doing nothing makes novel entertainment.

The Rap Canterbury Tales was a clever pleasure and Sarah Juli’s Money Conversation challenged our view not only of money of but of performance. I save a special accolade for the simply outrageous Mommie and the Minister by Sisters Grimm and for bold and sexy Jane Nolan in Othello Retold.

There were a few nights I would rather have spent in front of the TV. The Perfume Garden might have been better if the writer/lead actor had focussed more on Bollywood and Eagles Nest’s Hamlet was an arduous three hours.

I asked Santa for a riveting 2008 in theatre and am hoping he and Rudolph will deliver.

By Kate Herbert

Influenced, by Rowan Ellis, Dec 16, 2007

Influenced 
by Rowan Ellis

La Mama, until Dec 16, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

There is a good idea behind Rowan Ellis’s dark comic play, Influenced, but it has not fulfilled its potential. The balance of verbal gags and exploration of the grim underbelly of sexual deviance is uncomfortable.

Ellis plays Nick, a nervous punter who visits Sasha, a funky, young prostitute played by Megan Alston. Nick, the son of a stand-up comic from the north of England, has an annoying habit of making lame jokes out of every confronting situation and visiting a hooker for the first time seems to be top of his list of uncomfortable moments.

The problem is that every time the dramatic tension in the play begins to rise, Nick’s gags undermine the drama and the relationship temperature plummets to zero. Alston drapes herself seductively across the bed pouting and wriggling like a Persian cat wanting strokes but there is really no sexual tension in the room.

The ups and downs of their communication become repetitive and Nick’s gags become irritating – particularly because they are not funny. Of course Nick is supposed to be a socially incompetent ninny but, as an audience, we still need to have some sympathy for his predicament and to have a laugh.

The two actors, directed by Clayton Buffoni, never really connect with the characters and the frequently trite dialogue feels forced and lacks truth. They both look awkward, not with the material with which they are dealing, but rather with the acting process. Ellis’s comic timing needs work and his dialogue is often incomprehensible.

There is some attempt to cross the boundaries of taste and make the audience feel uncomfortable which is always a good way to make an impact. Nick and Sasha’s first interaction is when he discovers she has a condom lodged where the sun don’t shine and they eventually use kitchen tongs to solve the problem.

It is interesting that both the characters have secret sexual obsessions although the details of these are never clarified.  Nick reveals a preoccupation with his parents’ relationship and we assume he wants Sasha to role-play his mother. He also lets slip a history of violence so perhaps he might hurt Sasha. Rather disappointingly, neither of these scenarios comes to fruition.

Sasha has a sexual history with her stepfather and has fantasies of him siting in her “magic chair” watching her with clients.

In the end Influenced is an unsatisfying play that plants a few dramatic options but does not give us the pay off.

By Kate Herbert

The Pitch, by Peter Houghton, Dec 11, 2007

The Pitch
by Peter Houghton, Malthouse Theatre

Where and When: Beckett Theatre, Malthouse until Dec 16, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If you have seen a Hollywood blockbuster you will recognise the movie cliches satirised by Peter Houghton in The Pitch. 

If you have ever pitched a screenplay to a producer you might feel faint, so carry smelling salts or just close your eyes and think of England – or Hong Kong, Afghanistan or Paris. Houghton’s fictional movie travels to all these exotic locations.

Houghton, directed by Anne Browning, creates a parade of characters beginning with as the wannabe screenwriter, Walter Weinermann. Walter is desperate to complete his script and prepare for his story pitch to three movie producers with absurdly diverse tastes, politics and backgrounds. Simon is a wealthy English dilettante, Syd is a corporate US film distributor and the third is a feminist critical theorist. He can’t please ‘em all.

The Pitch is a frenetic gallop through place and time in Walter’s movie and Houghton switches between characters at will.  As Walter, he paints a vivid screen picture of the English army in the Hindu Kush in 1936 or of a smoky Parisian nightclub. He vocalises an entire soundtrack including an evocative Afghani chant, an Asian musical theme for Hong Kong and sexy blues for Paris.

He hilariously reproduces sound effects: bombs, gunfire, aeroplane, street fights. Watching Walter’s mind in a panic as he struggles to find the perfect story presentation is like witnessing a man fighting an internal war. He looks as if his head will explode any minute.

The panoramic journey is a spy story about Jones, an assassin portrayed by a cool Clint Eastwood (or it might be a bolshie Russell Crowe). Jones is sent by his spy boss, the oily Anthony Hopkins, to meet the seductive Catherine Zeta Jones and must kill Michael Douglas.

Walter attempts to incorporate every formulaic Hollywood element into his character’s journey: be more than you are; overcome a disadvantage (Clint is illiterate); find love; and seek revenge.

Between plot points we see Walter contending with his own demons about his cool as a cucumber ex-girlfriend, also called Catherine, and her Jesus-freak, recovering alcoholic boyfriend who Walter murders in the guise of Michael Douglas. Revenge is sweet – even if it is fictional.

After three seasons, The Pitch is still a very funny ride – even if it does look a little exhausted.

By Kate Herbert

Apples and Ladders, Dec 5, 2007

Apples and Ladders 
created by Sarah Kriegler and Jacob Williams, by Lemony S 
Carlton Courthouse, Dec 5 to Dec 22, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert, on Dec 5 2007

Apples and Ladders, created and performed by Sarah Kriegler and Jacob Williams, is a charming and emotive story that depicts a world in miniature. 

Three diminutive puppets the height of your forearm inhabit a world of tiny houses constructed atop four packing cases. Both puppeteers manipulate them in the style of the Japanese Bun Raku puppets.

Ludvik is a cheerful, round-faced old fella who, each day, collects his mail from the letterbox at his front gate. He strolls creakily down his street to sit playing his accordion. On his return walk, he nods a silent greeting to George, the jaded, lonely old drag queen who swigs booze from the bottle as he waits for the postcard that never arrives.

Each day Ludvik picks an apple from the lush apple tree and delivers it with love to his ailing wife Gertruda who languishes on the sofa.

These frail, old characters are haunted and taunted by a skeletal death figure (called the Knave of Hearts in the program). The menacing skeleton threatens them repeatedly, rattling its nasty, pointing fingers through their windows or leaping upon them without warning from behind the apple tree. He wants to steal not only their lives but also their human warmth, their love, represented in tiny red hearts.

The pint-sized characters come vividly to life with the smallest gestures: a wave of the hand, a tilt of a head, a shiver through the body as Death passes. There is palpable warmth and love in the home of Ludvik and Gertruda that contrasts with the melancholy chill that seeps through the windows of George’s home.

We witness their creeping decrepitude: Ludvik’s stiff and aching back, Gertruda’s lethargy and George’s bitter nostalgia for his days as a chanteuse wrapped in a red boa.

Another whole world appears in shadow puppets inside the boxes on which they stand. When Gertruda dies, taken by the cold hard hands of the Knave, she disappears into this shadowy nether world.

But it is a random act of kindness that chases away the Knave. From his window, George watches Ludvik’s sadness, picks a basket of apples, chases off the Knave’s dangerous advances and delivers the apples to Ludvik.

The evocative music of The Tiger Lilies and atmospheric lighting by Richard Vabre complete this memorable and moving production.

By Kate Herbert

Monty Python's Spamalot, Dec 2, 2007

 Monty Python’s Spamalot
Book and lyrics by Eric Idle, music by Eric Idle & John Du Prez

Her Majesty’s Theatre, Dec 2, 2007 until Feb 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Spamalot is achingly funny. The first half is so gut-wrenchingly hilarious it makes your face hurt.

Of course, if you were a Monty Python tragic in your youth (me too) you will be daggily delighted to revisit the mad gags from Monty Python and the Holy Grail from which Spamalot was “lovingly ripped off” by Eric Idle.

We even forgive the second half for rambling around like a lunatic, trying to find its narrative. The show reprises The Knights of Ni (“Bring us a shrubbery”), the taunting Frenchmen (“I fart in your general direction”) and Not Dead Fred (“I’m feeling much better”). But it also blows a raspberry at big music theatre - particularly Phantom – and mocks its earnest predictability.

Bille Brown may not be much of a singer but his demented and grinning King Arthur, the epitome of upper-class twit, is delirious with his divine right to rule and oblivious to the hilarity around him. As in the movie, Arthur gallops horseless across 10^th century Britain to the clop of coconut shells played by his mud-spattered servant, Patsy (Derek Metzger).

Idle and John Du Prez’s songs are inspired, Mike Nichols direction is inventive, the orchestra is tight, Tim Hatley’s design is vivid and Casey Nicholaw’s choreography is just plain silly. The show is narrated by a smug Historian (Mark Conaghan) and, after a false start in Finland with the Fisch Schlapping Song, Arthur embarks on his hero’s journey seeking Holy Grail. But first he recruits Knights for his Round Table.

The ensemble is impressive. Jason Langley is impish as the cowardly Brave Sir Robin who soils his pants at any hint of danger. Ben Lewis is a riot as Dennis, the revolutionary Communist villager who scrubs up to become the dashing Sir Galahad, golden-haired Brad Pitt of the Britons. David Whitney, after a Pythonesque drag act as Dennis’s Mother, is the portly Sir Bevedere and Stephen Hall is absurdly butch as Homicidally Brave - and latently homosexual - Sir Lancelot.

Conaghan revels in the girlish damsel in distress, Prince Herbert, while Metzger’s exceptional musical comedy technique makes Patsy a highlight. The vivacious and talented Lucinda Shaw, as the Lady in the Lake, grabs the role with both hands. With Lewis, she sings The Song That Goes Like This and returns with The Diva’s Lament, a comical pot shot at big-voiced musical stars. Oh - and John Cleese is God.

Spamalot is a really bonkers, laugh-out-loud romp.

By Kate Herbert

Not What I Am- Othello Retold, 11th Hour, Nov 27, 2007

 Not What I Am- Othello Retold 
 adapted from William Shakespeare, by The Eleventh Hour

11th Hour, 170 Leicester St, Fitzroy, Nov 27 to  Dec 6, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

This interpretation of Othello by The Eleventh Hour is a radical reworking and editing of Shakespeare’s play. Although Iago  (David Tredinnick) remains the primary source of Othello’s (Rodney Afif) escalating doubt and jealousy about his young bride Desdemona (Shelly Lauman), other voices share Iago’s dialogue.

A chorus of cloaked and faceless characters based on the mediaeval charavari (a noisy public humiliation of newly weds), chant and echo, represent a disapproving Venetian community that wants to destabilise the powerful outsider, Othello the Moor. This chorus effectively shares Iago’s destructive and insidious dialogue about lust, revenge, pride and hate.

This retelling is in the most part effective and resonant. The production is atmospheric, intimate and soaked in danger and intrigue. The chorus assists Iago to engineer Othello’s downfall. They creep like a Venetian fog, insinuating their way into Othello’s addled mind and his bedchamber.

This is a sexually charged interpretation of the play. Iago and Amelia (Jane Nolan) writhe and moan in lurid sexual poses, Cassio (Stuart Orr) and Roderigo (Greg Ulfan) wrestle and claw each other while Othello and Desdemona are entwined in lovemaking.

Afif gives his Middle Eastern Moor strength and arrogance. However the dynamic development of his Othello’s fraught emotional journey seems unbalanced, reaching a pitch too early with nowhere to go. Tredinnick simpering, fawning and leering Iago will make your flesh crawl and Nolan’s Amelia is a powerhouse of menacing lust. Her delivery of Shakespeare’s dialogue is particularly potent.

Orr’s Cassio is a raffish fop an Ulfan plays the lovelorn Roderigo with whining histrionics. Lauman’s Desdemona feels like a modern teenager, which clashes at times with the ominous and mediaeval tone of the production.

A dim, golden light (Nik Pajanti) penetrates the delicate, Moorish patterns of the wooden-framed set design (Julie Renton) and bathes the marriage bed, the site of love and murder in filtered morning light. Chanting and an evocative soundscape (Wally Gunn) accentuate the haunting atmosphere.

Anne Thompson’s production isolates Othello, highlighting his “otherness” in a mono-cultural Venice and making him as much a victim of circumstances and politics as Desdemona. The physicality of the performances gives the play a visceral quality not usually present in productions that focus on the words alone.

By Kate Herbert

John Howard’s Farewell Party, Rod Quantock, Nov 6, 2007

John Howard’s Farewell Party 

by Rod Quantock

Trades Hall, until Nov 10, 2007

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Nov 6, 2007

Rod Quantock is getting in early before the federal election results with his new political comedy show, John Howard’s Farewell Party. 

The show is a roast, perhaps even a vivisection, of our possibly outgoing Prime Minister. Quantock might be hoping for a change of government but he regrets the loss of the ceaseless comic potential of the man who power walks like a wombat on two legs.

Quantock greets us individually at the door and invites us to sign a giant farewell card for John Howard. Everybody writes cheerful, cynical messages.

With supreme irony, the party takes place in the Trades Hall, the bastion of the Victoria union movement. The genuinely ugly Old Council Chambers has a shabby, embarrassed retirement party look to it with tinselly farewell banners, strings of cheap party lights and a wall of sensationalist front page headlines arrayed behind Quantock on the stage.

Quantock rambles around hilariously inside his own mind, quipping that perhaps he should have a plan, (all too predictable for him), jotting down reminders for later, scribbling lists of Howard’s sins on a white board and venting his rage at Howard’s government.

Even if you are a Howard supporter, his material is very funny. Political satire plays no favourites. Kevin Rudd gets a serve (“No world leader has ever been called Kevin”), Kim Beasley is dismissed (“Only North Koreans would vote for a man called Kim”) and Mark Latham – well, we all remember his special breed of political madness. But Quantock vents most of his spleen on the little man himself. He conjures all sorts of fates for him including beating him with Alexander Downer.

Quantock creates ridiculous and funny arguments from unrelated topics. He convinces us that Big Brother really is watching and that the information age will eventually control our lives right down to our fridges and toilets. He questions the notions of free market and democracy and reminds us about the government’s absurd cardboard fridge magnet about terrorism.

The topics of satirical observation are far ranging but some of the greatest jokes come from actual letter to the editor from the Adelaide Advertiser. There’s nothing like a genuinely confused argument from a bigot for a laugh.

So if you are hoping for an election defeat but presume the polls are just wrong again, celebrate early with Rod – and commiserate later.

By Kate Herbert