Neighbours Choice: An interview with Ian Smith, May 24, 2008

Neighbours Choice 

An interview with Ian Smith who performs in Hobson’s Choice by Harold Brighouse

By Kate Herbert

Hobson’s Choice by Harold Brighouse is at Chapel off Chapel from May 29 to June 12, 2008

Ian Smith, the dignified and skilful actor who plays dotty, old Harold in Neighbours, describes the theatre as his first love. Many years ago he performed in theatre and musical comedy but now, because he was a smoker for many years, he laughs, “I sing with a vibrato you could drive a truck through.”

Many screen actors return to the stage and Smith is treading the boards playing He plays Dr. McFarlane, a dour Scot, in Hobson’s Choice.

“His entire life has been frustration with human beings who won’t do what he tells them to do,” says Smith. “He loves medicine. The only problem is, it involves human beings.”

Smith is retiring from Neighbours in August after his final six episodes are recorded. “I’ve been an actor for 50 years and the last 21 it’s been Harold. That’s a big slice of your life.”

Smith sees differences between television and stage acting. In theatre, he says, “You plot your character, you talk your character over with the director and, sometimes, the writer. After much discussion and much rehearsal, it’s set in cement.” However, he believes that, in theatre, one can be more adventurous and take more risks.

In the theatre, he says, “You have to lie well enough for those people sitting out the front to believe you. Because it’s all about lying, isn’t it?”  Perhaps theatre is simply advanced deception.

Peter McTighe works on Neighbours as a script editor and writer but leads a double life as an actor. In Hobson’s Choice he plays Willy, the illiterate bootmaker who builds a successful business. McTighe prefers screen acting to stage because he likes “the challenge of the stop-start and piecing together the sequence.” He is usually cast as a bad guy so he says he enjoys the journey of this dynamic character.

Director Richard Sarell, another Neighbours veteran, met Smith in the 1970s on the set of the popular ABC series, Bellbird. He admired Bellbird’s excellent actors who all came from live theatre and recalls that actors learned on the job in those days both in front of the camera and by watching their performances on videotape.

Sarell, who runs an acting studio, believes that the fundamentals of acting are the same for stage and screen. He says he looks for people who are listening and likes to work with actors who can “stay on the story; move the story forward.” Young actors, he says, want to focus on emotion in their character but Sarell wants actors to explore the difficulties that characters experience in the story.

This play was written in 1916 but is set in the late 1800s. Sarell says that he selected it, “Because it is a lovely story about a strong woman and a man who doesn’t trust himself.”  He thought it was an optimistic story and “we need a bit of optimism.”

By Kate Herbert

Richard III Unhinged, May 21, 2008 ***

Richard III Unhinged
By William Shakespeare, Australian Shakespeare Company

Athenaeum Theatre, May 21 to June 1, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Shakespeare’s representation of Richard III was designed to please Queen Elizabeth Tudor who had no love for Richard’s Plantagenet lineage that usurped the throne during the War of the Roses. 

Richard is depicted with a withered arm, a limp and a hunchback and is described caustically as “deformed, unfinished” and “a bunch-backed toad”.

Brendan O’Connor captures the manipulative charm of this bloodthirsty tyrant. His leg may be in a brace and his arm deformed, but this Richard is as nimble as a spider as he capers about his newly acquired kingdom. O’Connor’s portrayal allows us to understand the devastating seductiveness of this smiling villain. Richard is vicious and malicious but disguises his evil intent with flattery and dissembling.

This is certainly Richard’s play but some fine actors support O’Connor. Kevin Hopkins is a dignified Buckingham, Ross Williams a stalwart Stanley, Mike Bishop is stately as Hastings and Dennis Coard plays a sympathetic Clarence, the murdered brother of Richard.

Glenn Elston’s production focuses on Richard, as it should. However, other elements are less successful than this potent character at its centre. Queen Margaret (Lisa Angove), whose venomous curses are visited upon Richard and his cronies, is inappropriately portrayed as a crazy bag lady while Lady Anne (Hannah Norris) pushes to find the requisite strength and complexity when Richard seduces her. Glenn van Oosterom (OK) lacks the power required of Richmond and this weakens a normally powerful ending.

The pace and rhythm of the production are uncertain at times and the final battle has some peculiar, raggy costuming that makes it less than credible. It is the vivid and malevolent Richard that makes this production.

By Kate Herbert

My Fair Lady, May 17, 2008

My Fair Lady

By Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe, Opera Australia

State Theatre, May 17 to  May 31, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

One can’t go wrong with a musical as successful as My Fair Lady and Stuart Maunder’s extravagant, entertaining production for Opera Australia casts performers from both opera and music theatre to great effect. 

This famous story of Eliza Doolittle’s transformation from street urchin to lady originated in Shaw’s Pygmalion then evolved into the stage musical with Julie Andrews and the Audrey Hepburn film.

Taryn Fiebig (OK) plays a pert Eliza. Although her Cockney accent sometimes has echoes of Australia, her bright voice gives warmth and energy to the character. Wouldn’t It Be Loverly establishes Eliza’s credentials as a London flower seller and the ensemble provides an excellent chorus of street peddlers.

Fiebig’s vivacity adds sparkle when she sings I Could Have Danced All Night and Eliza’s growing excitement at her achievements is palpable in The Rain In Spain. In her simple and stately silence, Fiebig is also able to capture Eliza’s melancholy during Pickering (Rhys McConnochie) and Higgins’ (Reg Livermore) celebratory song, You Did It.

Livermore is very funny as the cynical misogynist, Henry Higgins, playing him as an ageing brat of the first order. He sing-speaks many of his songs, as did Rex Harrison. Livermore’s rendition of Hymn to Him (“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”) is a tease while I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face gives more light and shade to Henry’s character.

Nancye Hayes, stalwart of the musical stage, is delightfully acerbic and elegant as Henry’s mother and she wears a gown with regal grace. McConnochie brings dignity, charm and credibility to Colonel Pickering and even gets away without a singing voice in You Did It!

Robert Grubb is simply delicious as Eliza’s ne’er-do-well dad, Alfred P. Doolittle. Supported by the fine chorus, he embodies Alfred’s mischievousness and good humour in both With A Little Bit of Luck and Get Me To The Church. Matthew Robinson is an appealing and lively as Freddy, singing On The Street Where You Live.

Richard Roberts’ sumptuous set design, incorporating refined Georgian architecture and realistic interiors, becomes a lead character and the lavish costumes by Roger Kirk are almost mouth-watering. The Ascot Gavotte provides a splendid parade of gorgeous gowns in peach, grey and white while the Ambassador’s Ball is so spectacularly luxurious it is difficult to breathe.

This is an exuberant production with fine performances and voices as well as opulent design.

By Kate Herbert

Hedda Gabler, May 15, 2008

Hedda Gabler

By Henrik Ibsen, PMD Productions

Chapel off Chapel,  May 15 to 31, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen is a seminal play for its time and boasts productions starring Cate Blanchett and, in years gone by, Diana Rigg.

To risk such comparisons, a new company should be confident that they got it right. Unfortunately, this PMD production gets too many things wrong.

Although director Paul Knox modernises the context and content of Ibsen’s 1890 play, this is not the main problem with the production. His editing of the script omits much needed detail that contributes to Hedda’s story and causes dramatic action to leap forward clumsily.

Hedda (Miranda McGee) returns from a six-month honeymoon in Florence with Jorgen Tesman (Tyson White), her rather dull but ambitious academic husband. She despairs of a future of boredom, living in a house she loathes with a husband she neither respects nor loves and an interfering aunt (Brenda McKinty). When Lovborg, her former lover, returns, Hedda’s irrational quest for a beautiful and romantic end spirals out of control.

What is missing in this lacklustre production is Hedda’s inner turmoil, the Freudian complexity of her psychological landscape that made this play controversial in its time and allows it to survive over a century of reinterpretation and criticism.

Miranda McGee captures only one side of this dark and complicated character.

Her Hedda is relentlessly angry, nasty and manipulative but any sense of motivation, confusion, despair or alienation is sadly lacking. Her persistent hand wringing and surliness do not provide sufficient detail to a woman who should be a magnificent thoroughbred.

The director and most of his cast are out of their depth. A significant exception is Matthew Kenny as the troubled but brilliant academic, Elliott (Ejlert) Lovborg. The moment Kenny walks on stage he brings energy, commitment and truth. The inner chaos of this recovering alcoholic who struggles with his demons is palpable. Unfortunately, he is unsupported by the rest of the cast apart from McKinty who brings some dignity to Aunt Julia.

Knox’s interpretation of Ibsen is simplistic and a clumsy set does not assist this production. Hedda and Jorgen’s grand home looks like a shabby flat filled with bad furniture. A more abstract and atmospheric set design, lighting and sound might create a more evocative environment and mood.

When a group of teenagers laugh at Hedda shooting herself off stage, it is evident that this tragedy has lost its way.

Cellblock Booty, Preview article, May 1, 2008

Cellblock Booty

by Ash Flanders & Declan Greene, Sisters Grimm

Collingwood Underground Arts Park, May 1 to May 11, 2008

Article by: Kate Herbert

Sisters Grimm co-creators, the bright-faced and deliciously boyish Ash Flanders and Declan Greene, are hell bent on reinventing theatre by genetically crossing it with trash cinema, drag acts and farce. The latest hybrid, Cellblock Booty, sees a French-Dominican nun incarcerated in a tough women’s prison with a sadistic lesbian matron. There is torture, murder, knife-fights, sexploitation and everything else gratuitous, cheesy and hilarious.

“We’ve been wanting to do a women-in-prison play for two years but we didn’t know how it would look,” says Flanders. When they saw B-grade movie director, Roger Corman’s Women in Cages, the style for their new show was born: sexy, sleazy, exploitative, ridiculous and high camp. The show is an homage to Corman, the creator of The Little Shop of Horrors and other trashy horror movies.

“Our aim is to bring liveness back into theatre,” says Flanders. “Gore, nudity, swearing - anything that engages the audience and brings the fun back. To see someone stab themselves and blood pour everywhere – it’s good in a movie but you’ve seen it a hundred times. On stage it’s amazing.”

Sisters Grimm choose archetypal stories: a prison breakout (Cellblock Booty), a revolution in a hobo village  (Bumtown) or children locked in a basement (Mommie and the Minister).

The style of performance – grotesque, vivid and stylised – is epitomised in the 8-foot drag queen prison matron played by Simon Morrison Baldwin.  “She’s huge. She’s terrifying. The sight of him as a woman is one of the best sight gags because he’s so tall and imposing,” says Flanders.

This big, bad, bold work appeals to a new audience that does not normally attend theatre. Sisters Grimm aim to provide “independent raw theatre” as an alternative to major theatre companies, in the same way that the music and movie industries provide choices ranging downward from Hollywood blockbusters and big-budget commercial music.

Their unconventional choice of venue – the Collingwood Underground Arts Park – has added appeal for their alternative, young, non-theatre-going audience. It is a scruffy, disused parking lot. “This space is a huge concrete block which is great for a cell block,” says Flanders.

Cellblock Booty promises to push the boundaries of good taste with its impudence and wicked sense of humour. You have been warned!

By Kate Herbert

Big Business by the Business, May 8, 2008

Big Business by the Business

Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre, May 8 to May 17, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If you don’t get to see clowns – good clowns – often, Big Business, directed by Ian Pidd, is the show for you. 

These four eccentrics come from the heritage of French clowns and The Marx Brothers. They create an entire, idiosyncratic world full of prat falls and sight gags. Ironically four women wearing bad suits, absurd wigs, caterpillar moustaches and spectacles play these four idiotic businessmen

As in any clown show, the narrative is minimal. The jokes arise from the status games between the four characters, their complex and silly rituals, failures and successes. The four live together. Each day they perform their breakfast ritual, prepare their thermos flasks and toddle off to work at their peculiar business. At work they engage in a bizarre production line of mad professor gadgets that produce – well, you’ll have to see the product.

At the top of this pecking order is Pierre (Clare Bartholomew). A plump gourmand (or glutton) who hogs space on the couch and in the bed they all share. Number Two seems to be Barry (Penny Baron) a nimble fellow and sharp dresser who cuts a caper and moons over his golden Sheriff’s badge.

Paul (Kate Kantor) is a cheerful sporty type who adores his gold Nike running shoe (one shoe only) and poor dowdy little Ray (Glynis Angell) who looks like a public servant from the 1950s is the submissive and bullied Number Four in this crazy troupe.

There are some delightful moments between the four clowns. Their manipulation of their contraptions makes some very funny routines. Their celebratory party is a grotesque and hilarious parody of high flyers who use cocaine, fly helicopters and dress to the nines. Their antics are enhanced by playful sound effects and live music (Madeleine Flynn, Tim Humphrey).

In this world madness rules instead of our social norms. It is the detail of the characters, their weird relationships and comic business that makes this show delectable. There are a few false endings and plenty of repetition (that’s clowns for you!) but it is a fabulous romp in the theatre.

By Kate Herbert

The Soldiers Tale, April 30 to May 10, 2008

 The Soldiers Tale 

by Igor Stravinsky & CF Ramuz, by Hayloft Project

Abbottsford Convent, 8pm Wed to Sat, April 30 to May 10, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Igor Stravinsky might not recognise his 1918 version of The Soldier’s Tale in Michael Robinson’s interpretation for The Hayloft Project.  

He stages this Faustian myth in a seedy bar constructed inside an abandoned church during World War One. Aptly, the venue is the disused Sacred Heart Chapel, Abbottsford Convent.

“The music is played exactly as it was written but the context is different,” says Robinson. He wanted a more visceral aesthetic than the original version of this Faustian tale. Composed by Stravinsky with verse by Swiss poet C.F. Ramuz, it was read, not performed, by actors standing at lecterns before a chamber orchestra.

Robinson’s concept, which had its first life in a Carlton bar, takes advantage of every arch and apse in the unconventional Chapel space. The characters become part of the action in this roughhouse bar.

The Devil is a collaborator, wartime scrounger and profiteer (David Whiteley) who established the cabaret bar in the church. “He buys sausage from the Germans, to trade for wine from the French, to buy bullets from the English, to sell back to the Germans.”

The Narrator (Frank Gallacher) is the barman and the Dancer (Bonnie Paskas), who originally appeared only at the end, is the barman’s moll. Even the seven-piece orchestra, usually separate from the drama, is integrated as the burlesque-cabaret band.

The unwitting Soldier, (Mark Winter) is under siege. This unholy trio launches a three-pronged attack, tempting him to gamble his soul in exchange for a book that can bring him wealth.

“He walks off the battlefield into this place but he doesn’t know what it is. It is a Purgatory. These people connive to take his soul away…lead the soldier into fantasies and use this to bend him to their will.”

Stravinsky’s music, played by The Orchestra Project, is eclectic and evocative of happier times, says Robinson, incorporating contentious contemporary music of 1918 including the salacious tango and popular ragtime. Stravinsky chose the haunting strains of the violin to represent the Soldier’s soul.

After the Great War, says Robinson, “They were without concert halls, without orchestras and money. (Stravinsky) could not do the shows that he did with Diaghelev - ballets with 110-piece orchestras.” So he wrote for seven instruments: double bass, violin, trumpet, trombone, bassoon, clarinet and percussion. 

Given Stravinsky’s progressiveness, he would be thrilled by this innovative contemporary interpretation of The Soldier’s Tale.

By Kate Herbert  

Venus in Furs, May 4, 2008

Venus in Furs 
by Neal Harvey, by Elbow Room

Theatreworks, May 4 to 18, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If you do not recognise the name Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, you will probably know the psychosexual condition that was coined for him: masochism. 

In his 1870 book, Venus in Furs, the character of Severin (Angus Grant) craves domination by his objet d’amour, Wanda (Karen Roberts), and his desires are eventually fulfilled.

Severin is initially in love with a statue of “Venus in Furs” but his attentions turn to the sophisticated and aloof Wanda, a real woman in furs to whom he pledges lifelong submission. Wanda is slow to participate in his sexual games but eventually she compels Severin, who she insists on calling Gregor, to sign a contract to be her slave. What follows should be dangerous and lusty but is more frequently tepid and sometimes ridiculous, as we can discern from the audience laughter.

Theatrical adaptations from literary sources almost invariably suffer from the too much problem: too much exposition, too much talk, too much prose that does not translate into dialogue. Neal Harvey’s adaptation suffers from this malady.

Director Marcel Dorney makes some peculiar choices, allowing too many long speeches and too little stage action – apart from some half-hearted flagellation.  He also mixes his theatrical conventions by using both mimed and real objects – invisible then real rope and a real easel used to hold mimed painting.

This is not to say that there is not some merit in the production. The simple but classical design by Lucie Sprague is evocative and the two actors clearly bring some skill to the performances. Grant has an engaging quality and Roberts is elegant although she plays Wanda within a narrow range, inexplicably avoiding the peaks of dominatrix behaviour. The two sometimes appear to want to swap roles.

However, the play is repetitive and, particularly for the first 30 minutes, very slow to progress. The script lacks a clear dramatic arc and the production is surprisingly lacking in sensuality or sexual titillation for a play about sadomasochism.

By Kate Herbert

Cinderella, May to October, 2008

 Cinderella 

by Gioachino Rossini, adapted by Elizabeth Hill & Christopher van Tuinen

by Oz Opera Schools Company

Touring Victorian Schools, May to October, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 1

Forty little children from two primary schools, one a school for hearing-impaired children, were enthralled by this abridged version by Oz Opera of Rossini’s Cinderella. 

This tasty morsel is forty-five minutes long, features four singers, two puppets, colourful costumes and a transformational set that packs into a van for school touring.

Rossini’s comic opera is still recognisable in this adaptation devised by director Elizabeth Hill and Christopher van Tuinen. Sue Goessling accompanies on piano and the capable, young cast sing excerpts from Rossini’s score while portraying the story in a more child-friendly form.

Cinderella is sung by pretty and vivacious soprano, Alexandra Hutton, who also deals exceptionally well with children’s incisive post-show questions. Emily Uhlrich not only sings with warmth and energy but she is hilarious playing both Ugly Stepsisters: the shrill, temperamental Clorinda and her gruff, puppet-sized sister Tisbe.

Some of the edited story is included in narration by Rupert the Mouse, a tubby puppet manipulated and voiced by Jon Bode. He also portrays Cinders’ Fairy Godfather (Yes, it was a Godfather in Rossini) and he incorporates some basic magic to demonstrate the Godfather’s conjuring skills. Chris Busietta steps into drag as the Wicked Stepmother then, more glamorously, returns to sing the role of the Prince with his bright tenor.

Although the show looks traditional, the dialogue incorporates modern references and dance moves that have the children giggling. The production has some bumpy timing and awkward set changes but the children forgive it all for a good story.

By Kate Herbert

One Man Star Wars, April 23, 2008

One Man Star Wars

by Charlie Ross

Forum Theatre, 7.30pm until April 23 to 26, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It’s almost impossible to do justice in words to Charlie Ross’s One Man Star Wars. 

He really does condense the entire Star Wars trilogy – six hours of it – into one astonishing hour of action, vocal sound and innumerable aliens. He does it alone, without props or set, without sound effects and definitely without the aid of George Lucas' technology.

Of course if you don’t know the movies you will be on your own little planet of confusion for the whole hour. Robots, star ships and Jedi knights will whiz by you at light speed.

Ross recreates John Williams epic and evocative music with only his voice as well as the whirr of a light sabre, the buzz of star fighter, the animal cry of furry Chewbacca, and the raspy breathing of Darth Vader.

With only his imagination, his physicality and voice, he conjures an entire Imperial Army, hoards of Rebel fighters, the Death Star, X-Wing Fighters, the Millennium Falcon and Star Fighters and even those giant Imperial Walkers that look like metal camels.

He peoples the stage with a parade of much loved characters and cheekily peppers the performance with occasional laconic comments on their idiosyncrasies. Luke Skywalker is a whining brat with bad hair, Princess Leia is Princess smarty-pants with bagels on her ears and Han Solo is a bit of a bogan. 3CPO, the tinny English robot, is just as smarmy and

supercilious as he is in the movies and R2D2 comes to life with his familiar whistling trill.

A highlight is Jabba the Hutt, the grotesque, monstrous fatty whose huge flapping mouth Ross creates with only his arms. The Master is a slightly camp Vincent Price style villain and Obi Wan is an acerbic Englishman. The final battle scene in Return of the Jedi features the unforgettable alien Admiral with the bug eyes and his incomprehensible offsider with the

squashed face.

The physical skill and vocal acrobatics of Ross are truly gob-smacking. If you’ve ever enjoyed playing with an invisible light sabre, this show will be a romp for you.

By Kate Herbert

Haneef: The Interrogation by Graham Pitts, April 16, 2008

Haneef: The Interrogation by Graham Pitts

La Mama, April 16 until May 3, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It is difficult to resist the overwhelming desire to shout, “He didn’t say that, he didn’t mean that!” during Haneef: The Interrogation. 

As one actor says, “The day after they come for me, they come for you.” The point is made clearly by writer Graham Pitts that any one of us could be detained and questioned indefinitely under Australian anti-terrorism laws.

Pitts is writer of numerous politically and socially challenging plays. In this script he incorporates the actual transcript of Indian doctor, Mohamed Haneef’s second interrogation by the Federal Police about his possible involvement with the London and Glasgow bombings in July 2007. It makes fascinating and though-provoking theatre.

However, Pitts writes more than simply a verbatim replay of the transcripts. The interrogation is interrupted sporadically when the two actors step out of role and argue about the morality and the legality of the new laws and about human rights issues that underscore this landmark case.

Director Gorkum Acaroglu focuses attention on the relationship between Haneef  (Adam McConvell) and his interrogator (Simon King). McConvell is exceptional as the young doctor Haneef, capturing impeccably his polite reserve, confusion and his anxious squint. McConvell’s intermittent outbursts when he steps out of the role of Haneef voice the outrage expressed by some and alert us to the inconsistencies and misinterpretations embedded in the interview.

King portrays with integrity the police interrogator’s diligence and adherence to protocol. King also steps out of role to argue the case from another perspective and we are acutely aware of the fear and urgency under which he is operating. This is not a police bashing play but rather a further interrogation of the process by which Dr. Haneef was detained.

The play is even more disturbing knowing that Haneef was questioned from 4.15pm until the following morning and he answered 6,000 questions. He was under suspicion because one bomber was his second cousin and Haneef not only socialised with the bomber’s brother but left his old phone SIM card with him. It was purported to be at the bombsite but was actually found 100 miles away.

The evidence seems sketchy and tenuous – but make up your own mind about the issues when you see this confronting play.

Kate Herbert

This is Not My Beautiful Life Book review, April 11, 2008

This is Not My Beautiful Life 

by Elly Varrenti

Book review: By Kate Herbert

For those of us who guard our personal lives with metaphorical Rottweilers, Elly Varrenti’s intimate revelations in This is Not My Beautiful Life make us gasp for air. It is the rollicking life and times of a 40-something single mum with hopes and despairs we cowards hide.

Firstly, my own personal declaration: Elly is my friend. We spend countless hours on each other’s couches laughing and lamenting, whining about our lives and advising, or in her case, ignoring advice. (I wish people would listen to me!)

Her book emerged like a phoenix from her occasional musings on ABC Radio National program, Life Matters. If you recognise her honey-toned voice, it will resonate in your head as you read.  But the book is a different, albeit related, species.

Such candour is almost shocking to those of us who carry our secrets close. Elly spills her guts about, well, everything: lovers, marriage, divorce, family, co-parenting, food, art, work. You name it, she spills it. It scares me and I know her!

Of course there is great art in her writing. It is poetic, nuanced, colourful, carefully structured yet simultaneously a stream of consciousness. Despite her achingly honest revelations, peer between the lines and you’ll find secreted dozens of unspoken stories just asking to be told. Each acerbic aside masks another narrative. Listen carefully or you might miss them because she’s been heroically tactful in her evasions and eliminations. When one’s life intersects so dramatically with others, it can be a dangerous sport to out people.

Although I heard in person many of these tales of woe and joy– I was even present at the ill-fated wedding – I laughed and cried my way through the book. Each character in her vivid life leaps off the page. Her larger-than-life Italo-Australian family is lovingly drawn. Meet her marvellously blunt, fiercely intelligent and equally hilarious mother, her outrageous sister, her historian father who left when she was thirteen and the beautiful, dysfunctional Nonna from a village near Genova. At Christmas lunch there’s a Catholic, a Buddhist, a Sandinista pilot... “It’s sounding like one of those jokes,” she quips.

There are lovers with bad clothes and worse attitudes, errors of judgement, the dashed hopes of an actor and failed ambitions to be a broadcaster (Shame on ABC for not giving her a radio show). There’s an ex-husband (say no more) and a beautiful, tow-haired little boy who says hilarious five-year old things (“The alien’s name is Kevin and he has antennas”). I can feel his hugs and hear his pearly laughter now.

This unbeautiful life is often discomfiting, helpless and hapless but frequently achingly funny. I’ll leave the last word to Elly, “…it finally dawned on me that the gap between what I thought my life was going to be and how it was actually shaping up opened up like a huge and unforgiving chasm.” Get it now?

By Kate Herbert

Primrose Hill / Kissing For Australia , March 25, 2008

Primrose Hill / Kissing For Australia  
by Adam Zwar, La Mama

When & Where: Courthouse Theatre, 6.30pm Tues & Sun, 8pm Wed to Sat, 25 March until

April 12, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

If you’ve never heard of Patsy Kensit, know nothing about Britpop bad boys Liam and Noel Gallagher or their band Oasis, a few jokes in Adam Zwar’s Primrose Hill may elude you. 

However this one-man play fires on all rockets and really takes the Michael out of smug and very rich British pop celebs.

Paul Denny plays Miles, an ordinary Aussie bloke who is mugged outside the luxury home of pretty cockney Patsy and her dumb musician-thug husband, Liam Gallagher. Miles believes they want to help him with his injuries but the nutty pair virtually holds him captive as a sex slave so that Liam can film Miles’ sexual antics with Patsy.

Denny, directed skilfully by Russell Fletcher, peoples the empty stage with the pompous (Bono and Sting), the dim (Liam and Naomi Campbell) and the ridiculous (Terence Stamp with Posh Spice). His portrayal of a floppy-haired and ingenuous Hugh Grant is delicious.

The quest to escape the hotshots’ house party is genuinely hilarious and Denny is a delight even when he drops a few lines at the end.

The second play, another solo, is performed by Zwar and directed by Joy Mitchell. In it Zwar portrays another Aussie bloke, Lenny, the office geek who bemoans the fact that he is liked but never seduced by the office girls while his mate Bob blinks and those gals jump him.

Zwar’s performance is not as polished as Denny’s but he has a simple charm and knows his material well. We suspect he was that sweet geek before he got famous with an AFI award. The jokes come rapidly and are often self-deprecating observations about Lenny’s predicament both before and after he finds himself a nice girlfriend.

What makes Kissing for Australia different from Primrose Hill is its dark ending. It could easily be billed as a tragi-comedy when Lenny’s uninspired love life evolves into the wedding from hell.

Both plays are cleverly crafted by Zwar and take us on a fast and funny ride.

By Kate Herbert

The China Incident, March 19, 2008

The China Incident

by Peter Houghton, Malthouse Theatre

march 19 to April 12, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

There is something I have noticed when a show really grabs me: my mouth drops open and I don’t scribble any notes. 

Even during this, my second viewing of The China Incident, my mouth gaped, my eyes widened, I laughed out loud, grimaced and gasped as I witnessed this galloping, hilarious corporate workplace disaster.

Anne Browning as diplomatic PR consultant Bea Pontifec, stalks the stage like a crazed stick insect in a pin-striped suit and stilettos. From start to finish of this solo Grand Prix of performances, Bea prowls around her high-rise corporate office, juggling seven phones and even more social, political and family crises.

On the red phone Bea advises the US President – who displays a lecherous, drunken obsession with her undies – about his “Five Party Talks”. On the black phone she soothes the General, the brutal dictator of an insolvent, war torn African nation, trying to solve his international image problem while she listens to him slaughter his rebelling people wholesale.

Meanwhile her personal life is in chaos. Her son is arrested for drug trafficking and her new-age daughter plans an embarrassing wedding with a gay man as bridesmaid and appalling old china as table centrepieces. Bea’s married lover is on his way to the Bahamas with his wife and Bea’s assistant, Minty, is brainless. Her useless, hippy ex-husband is attached to the intercom downstairs, the groom and his boring parents are on the phones – and Bea offends all of them.

Peter Houghton’s script is cunningly written and very, very funny. He also directs Browning (his wife), maintaining a cracking pace that leaves Bea gasping for air by the time she makes a pig’s ear of everything.

Bea makes one fatal error after another but Browning and Houghton never put a foot wrong. This really is a marriage made in heaven – despite the fact that he makes her portray an arrogant, heartless, bigoted corporate monster.

We too are left breathless after this race to save the dictators of the world from image disaster. There is something satisfying knowing that the bad guys might all be found out.

By Kate Herbert

Our Country’s Good, March 18, 2008

Our Country’s Good 
by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Preferred Play Company

Theatreworks, March 18 to 29, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Peering myopically at our Australian history, we can miss the detail of individual lives and see only the bigger political picture. Based on Thomas Kenneally’s novel, The Playmaker, Our Country’s Good zooms in on a microcosm of Governor Phillip’s (Mick Lo Monaco) infant settlement in Sydney in 1789. It provides a vivid, personal and often brutal portrayal of a few English officers and hapless, abused convicts.

Timberlake Wertenbaker uses historical fact interwoven with fiction. To please Arthur Phillip, Lt. Ralph Clark (Brendan McCallum), a modest young Royal Marine, attempts to stage a play with a cast of convicts. The cruel landscape of the convict settlement continually intrudes on his rehearsals.

Officers are resistant or downright obstructive to such a liberal endeavour to engage the convicts who are constantly punished for petty or fabricated crimes. Clark cannot predict the problems he will face. The headstrong Lizzy (Katya Shevtsov OK) may be hanged before opening night, Arscott (Brett Christian) is flogged senseless, everybody hates Freeman (Michael Wahr) who is the hangman and Clark falls for Mary (Marissa Bennett), his leading lady.

Glenda Linscott directs an energetic ensemble of recent VCA graduates with an assured and imaginative hand. She creatively employs minimal props ­– rope, trunks, a ladder – physicalisation and vocal effects to create multiple locations in the Australian landscape.

There is an old-fashioned charm in Wertenbaker’s period dialogue but it raises themes and issues relevant to our contemporary lives and to the theatre.  “Intelligence has nothing to do with the state into which we are born”, says one character. In this new colony, bigotry and social abuse are rife.

“This is theatre. We believe you,” says another character. The oppressed convicts keep trying to escape their real chains but, in the democratic theatre, they escape into another life through a role and pay each other respect as actors.

Our Country’s Good is a thought-provoking and skilfully staged production that deserves an audience.

By Kate Herbert

Moving Target, March 13, 2008

 Moving Target

by Marius von Mayenburg, Malthouse Theatre

Beckett Theatre,  March 13 to 29, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Moving Target, by Marius von Mayenburg, is funny and chaotic at the beginning but disturbing and tragic by its end. 

Two years ago, director Benedict Andrews explored ideas with Mayenburg who then wrote this play about a community of parents who are afraid that their children are dangerous – in fact that they are violent terrorists.

This compelling story is overlaid with the chaos of children’s games. The ensemble  (Julie Forsyth, Robert Menzies, Hamish Michael, Rita Kalnejais, Alison Bell, Matthew Whittet) spends an inordinate amount of time playing wild, often hilarious games of Hide and Seek. Repeatedly one of them counts to a hundred while five scramble to find the perfect hiding place. They secrete themselves under the couch or the table, inside a sleeping bag or cushion covers, until their choices become absurd, insane or simply childlike.

The game distracts the adults from the terror they feel when they look at the poor little girl who is under suspicion. Slowly their panic rises as they attempt to avoid detection by the ever-present “Advice Centre”. Did the child really hide a green parcel in a street bin? Is it a bomb? Should they report it, or ignore it and hope it goes away?

The group of playfellows inhabit a scruffy white box (Robert Cousins) from which there is no escape. Between games, they reveal snippets of the story about their fear of psychopathic changes in their children. Blaring music and amplified voices echo the escalating chaos. Stark white light becomes more dramatic and vivid with violent, crimson and green (Paul Jackson).

The ensemble is vigorous and unified, shifting from childlike play to distressed and frightened adults. Each actor brings his or her own quirkiness and energy to the story.

The Hide and Seek becomes repetitive and is reminiscent of a drama class and the hands-over-your-ears noise level is intermittently intolerable. But Moving Target investigates contemporary performance with verve and Mayenburg’s script makes interesting statements about societal hysteria and fear.

By Kate Herbert

Beware of the Dogma, March 7, 2008

Beware of the Dogma
by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe, Phillip Scott, Sydney Theatre Company

Whitehorse Centre Nunawading, March 7-12

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

We rarely see political comedy in Melbourne despite our pretensions to be social critics and our Comedy Festival with hoards of shows. Beware of the Dogma not only has the wittiest title, but it is intelligent, hilarious, incisive political cabaret – and it’s from Sydney. Not only that, it is produced not by some lefty fringe cooperative but by Sydney Theatre Company. Be ashamed Melbourne.

Writer-performers (from Sydney – let’s rub it in) Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott with Valerie Bader, present scathing musical and comic wit targeting dogmatists past and present. They lampoon self-help gurus, scientology, Papists, academics, politicians, Russia, China and New Zealand.

The title song cunningly warns against “mad dogma”. A deliciously clever Papal conference of 16th century dogmatists features the supercilious Cardinal Pell of Umbrage, the rambling Lord Barry Jones of Oxford and the self-righteous Sister Greer of St. Germain and is moderated by monkish Tom Kenneally.

New Zealand’s Helen Clark and her NZ “fush and chups” accent take a smacking in a cool parody of jazz classic, Take Five. Biggins, as a stunningly accurate Paul Keating, presents the John Howard Memorial Lecture to “fellow irrelevant Australians”, snipes at the “performing midget” (Rudd and Howard) and fires barbs at both parties.

Speaking of irrelevant, the Democrats get a serve and Barnaby Joyce laments having a girl’s name and sings, I’ll Toe the Line.

The Russians celebrate their new world singing, “Russia was the pits” to Puttin’ on the Ritz and the Chinese forecast world domination as they poison us with lead paint and pollution.

Catholic Guilt wins the morality stakes ahead of Tony Abbott on Moral Outrage. Kevin Rudd goes camping with Labour Party Boy Scouts and we witness The Last Days in Howard’s Bunker as the Liberals face annihilation – at Howard’s hands.

The final epic musical, Fable of Prosperity’s Child, in the pretentious style of international festivals, attacks Gen X and its delight in spending money it does not have. It’s All About Me, sings 35 year-old adolescent while her Baby Boomer dad informs her that her inheritance is gone in, I Spent It All On Me.

Funny show. Catch it if you can.

By Kate Herbert

Disjointed Story, March 6, 2008

Disjointed Story 

by Sean Hanson, Cast & Crew Productions

Chapel off Chapel, March  6 to 16, 2008

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Disjointed Story, written and directed by Sean Hanson, is just as the title suggests: a disjointed story. 

The concept owes something to Schnitzler’s La Ronde or David Hare’s The Blue Room in which numerous lives intersect in an episodic format. However Hanson’s script and production lack such sophistication. This being his first play and first time directing, he has perhaps bitten off more than he can chew.

There are certainly some scenes that are more successful than others and Hanson peppers the script with some playful, swift and funny dialogue. The pace and rhythm of chatter between friends is captured in scenes featuring a group of girlfriends and another with guy-friends.

Although some individual scenes are entertaining, the structure of the 90-minute play is clunky and the story is confused. It requires enormous skill to write for sixteen characters and direct as many actors. The production is more like a showcase for an acting class than a play.

The narrative threads are multiple. A young woman ­– a police officer we discover later – has doubts about her impending wedding. Another engages a hit man to kill the violent boyfriend of a character never seen on stage. A young man attempts, then succeeds, in killing himself after a hit and run accident. Several characters are dumped by partners, four go on a blind date, two rob a mansion, one confesses to beating his girlfriend.

There are two completely bonkers scenarios. One involves a man and woman who are, in fact, a dark angel and a good angel. The second is an anachronistic scene about a manipulative butler and his weak master. The butler is also responsible for some interminable and totally unnecessary scene changes.

If Hanson scales down his next play to a manageable size, his capacity for writing entertaining dialogue could be more effectively employed.

By Kate Herbert