Your Days Are Numbered, March 29, 2012 ***

Your Days Are Numbered – The Maths of Death

By Matt Parker and Timandra Harkness

Where and When: Portico Room, Melbourne Town Hall, March 28 to April 4, 2012

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:***

Strangely illuminating and unnerving collision of comedy, maths and death.

After 30 minutes of slightly disturbing mathematical jokes about death, my mouth was gaping, my brain was hurting, but I was still listening – and laughing.

Did you know that a ‘micromort’ is the name for a one in a million chance of death, or that by the end of 60 minutes on the Death Clock, the entire audience will be dead?

We learn there is a critical amount of alcohol that makes you cheerful before it all turns ugly and we study graphs indicating the odds of dying by autoerotic asphyxiation, shark attack or bees.

Your Days Are Numbered, performed by Matt, the good-looking maths nerd, and Timandra, the groovy, red-headed Brit, is nerdy humour for statistic-heads – there was even a real mathematician from Florida in the crowd.

The laughs are not riotous but it has novelty value and is strangely illuminating and unnerving.

By Kate Herbert

Funny line: “Canoeing looks the same as taking Ecstasy.”
Newsy tip: Sit up the front and you’ll get to use the calculator, like I did.

JIMEOIN - LOVELY, March 28 to April 15, 2012 ****

FIRST NIGHT COMEDY REVIEW
JIMEOIN - LOVELY
Athenaeum Theatre until April 15

Melbourne Comedy Festival
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on March 29, 2012

Stars:****

Deliciously whimsical, charming humour, like whiskey and a fireside chat.

JIMEOIN is one of my faves. With his impish grin, charming observational humour and delicious accent, this whimsical comic is as comforting as a tumbler of whiskey by the fire.

His new show, Lovely, is a bit of Irish craic (fun) with Jimeoin chattering about absurd things that take his fancy. His relaxed demeanour and gentle rhythm and pace are a welcome relief from the nervous energy of some rabid comics.

His delivery is treacle slow and his cheerful and rambling musings on everyday topics include the catastrophe that is his family life, hotel revolving doors, the faces we pull at bad smells, gay gangster rappers and the infinite variety of laughs.

Red by John Logan MTC, March 26, 2012 ***1/2

Melbourne Theatre Company

Sumner Theatre, MTC, March 26 to May 5, 2012
Kate Herbert on March 26, 2012
Stars: ***1/2

                                                             Colin Friels as Rothko in Red, by John Logan, MTC
 

COLIN FRIELS IS COMPELLING AS THE VOLATILE, SELF-ABSORBED AMERICAN PAINTER, MARK ROTHKO, capturing the passion, intellectualism and idiosyncratic blend of order and chaos that permeated Rothko’s work and life.

Red is the title of John Logan’s Tony Award winning play, and that imposing colour overwhelms the space and characters, bleeding from huge canvases onto floor, walls, clothing and hands.

The play is didactic and expository, like a Socratic dialogue between master and pupil or, in this case, Rothko and his beleaguered, young painter’s assistant, Ken, played with sensitivity by André de Vanny.

Logan concentrates the action in the working world inside Rothko’s darkened studio where natural light is the enemy and thought is as significant as paint during his two years working on his ambitious series for The Four Seasons restaurant.

Despite his resistance to beauty, commercialism and the bourgeoisie, Rothko accepted this huge commission to decorate this swish, new playground for rich New Yorkers only to withdraw after visiting the restaurant.

The performances of Friels and de Vanny are the great strength of Alkinos Tsilimidos’ production and they enliven the text, imbuing it with light and darkness.

Kate's Rant on Tweeting in the Theatre, March 25, 2012

TWEET AGAIN and I'll break your phone!!

YEAH, NOW I'M REALLY ANGRY! I cannot believe that, even in the theatre, we are now catering to people who cannot live their lives without being attached to their 'smart' phones or connected to their thousands of 'friends' or associated 'twits' by facebook or twitter.

This week, we hear that La Mama and Malthouse are allowing audience members to tweet during shows. La Mama has four FREE seats for tweeters during the RAT season, while Malthouse is planning to trial tweeting soon.

This move seems to be based on the revolutionary efforts of Ken Davenport, producer of the Broadway revival of Godspell, to increase his show’s public profile amongst the audience of tweeters who are, on average in USA, 21 years old, he says. (I am advised by  Howard Sherman, that this discussion started in 2011 in the US.)

So is it not enough that audience members can tweet the moment they switch their phones back on after a show or even in the interval, they must be allowed, like children with their new Chrissie toy, to send idiotic, truncated messages to their pals and the rest of the world?

Davenport suggests that it is a way of bringing the theatre into the 21^st century, but it is mainly a cheap way for companies to market their shows or get fast publicity.

Did anyone notice that the tweeters (in Ken's Godspell audience) are looking at their phones and not at the stage when they are tweeting? They are ignoring your show in order to tweet about the show that they are not watching.

G3 Concert 2012, PREVIEW, Palais Theatre, March 31, 2012

PREVIEW

(See REVIEW by Joe Calleri on this blog, dated April 1, 2012) 
 
G3 2012 : Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Steve Lukather 
Presented by Michael Coppel
Palais Theatre, St. Kilda, Sat March 31 & Sun April 1, 2012
National dates: Canberra, March 27; Newcastle, March 29; Sydney, March 30; Adelaide April 3; Brisbane April 5;  Byron Bay Blues Fest, April 6

 Joe Satriani

G3 IS HERE! FORGET ROCK OF AGES and go see the real rock legends!

Three of the hottest rock guitarists, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Steve Lukather, are in Australia next week and are doing two concerts at The Palais in Melbourne next week.

G3 was founded by Satriani in 1996 and, almost every year since, he has toured with two other rock gods of guitar including: Steve Vai, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Yngwie Malmsteen, Robert Fripp, Adrian Legg and Eric Johnson.

Satriani is a celebrated guitarist who has rock-heads prostrating themselves in his path. His 1987 album, Surfing With The Alien, was the first instrumental guitar album to reach the Top 40 in the USA. He boasts 14 Grammy nominations and released recently his 14th studio album, Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards.

Vai is a Grammy-award winner with solo albums including Passion and Warfare (1990) and the  recently live album, Where The Wild Things Are. He is also renowned for playing with Frank Zappa, David Lee Roth and Whitesnake,

Lukather is a five-­time Grammy award winning guitarist and a founding member of Toto and has also released eight solo albums including the most recent, All's Well That Ends Well.

You'll see their individual guitar acrobatics with their bands then be treated to their combined G3 jam.

By Kate Herbert

(See REVIEW by Joe Calleri on this blog, dated April 1, 2012) 

Steve Vai

  Steve Lukather

Beyond The Neck, March 18, 2012 ****1/2

Beyond The Neck: a quartet on loss and violence
By Tom Holloway
Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre

Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, St. Kilda, March 16 to April 14, 2012

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on March 18, 2012

Stars: **** 1/2

Roger Oakley, Philippa Spicer, Emmaline Carroll, Marcus McKenzie in Beyond the Neck

Port Arthur witnessed much human misery, first as a hellish convict settlement and, more recently, during the 1996 massacre of 35 innocents by Martin Bryant.

Tom Holloway’s play, Beyond the Neck, sensitively directed by Suzanne Chaundy with Dayna Morrissey’s simple, evocative design, is subtitled ‘a quartet on loss and violence’ for good reason.

Through the heart-wrenching stories of four characters whose paths intersect at Port Arthur a decade after the massacre, it compels us to contemplate the life-altering impact of losing loved ones to senseless acts of violence.

All four performers are compelling, with Philippa Spicer as a teenage girl who mourns her beloved father but subscribes to a conspiracy theory that the government orchestrated the massacre at Port Arthur.

La Cage aux Folles, March 16, 2012 ***

Book by Harvey Fierstein, Lyrics & Music by Jerry Herman

Produced by Quirky Productions

National Theatre, St.Kilda, March 16 to 24, 2012

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Fri March 16, 2012

Stars: ***

 John O'May & David Rogers-Smith_La Cage aux Folles

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES IS THE ULTIMATE CAMP MUSICAL, taking ‘camp’ to its extreme with its drag show chorus line of dancing boys in spangles, its featured older homosexual couple and the leading lady being a decorative, besequined drag queen.

This 1983 Broadway show, based on Jean Poiret’s 1973 French play, boasts a warm, funny and sensitive love story by Harvey Fierstein, with Jerry Herman lyrics and rousing music, played here by the capable Melbourne Theatre Orchestra.

This Melbourne version captures the excesses of campery in its characters, choreography (Tamara Finch, James Rooney) and glitzy costuming (Isaac Lummis), but loses some of the glamour, sensitivity and comedy.

John O’May is dignified, elegant and amiable as Georges, the owner of a Saint Tropez nightclub with its dazzling but risqué drag show that stars his life partner, the celebrated drag queen, Albin/ZaZa, played by the rich-voiced David Rogers-Smith.

Odyssey by Andreas Litras, March 15, 2012, ***1/2

Odyssey by Andreas Litras
Identity Theatre

The Open Stage, Parkville,  March 15 to 31, 2012

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: ***1/2

 Andreas Litras in Odyssey

IN HIS SOLO SHOW, ODYSSEY, ANDREAS LITRAS uses Homer’s Ancient Greek, epic poem about the fraught voyages of Odysseus to illuminate his own family’s journey from Greece to Australia.

The play, directed skilfully by John Bolton, began its own journey in the 1990s and now returns for those who missed it before it went on its international travels.

Litras creates an intimate relationship with us, addressing the audience directly as both himself and an older, Greek bloke who prepares the stage for the performance.

In the style of ‘Poor Theatre’, the stage is sparsely decorated with three hinged frames that establish locations in Greece and Australia, aboard ship, a chip shop, the walls of Troy, Cyclops’ cave and Circe’s island.

Using both tragedy and comedy, Litras peoples the stage with a parade of characters from his family and from the ancient the legendary hero’s 20-year voyage.

Zombatland, Suitcase Royale, March 14, 2012 ***

Zombatland

By Suitcase Royale

Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall,  March 14 to 18, 2012

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on March 14, 2012

Stars: ***

Glen Walton, Miles O'Neil, Joseph O'Farrell - Zombatland, Suitcase Royale

ZOMBATLAND BY SUITCASE ROYALE is like a crazy combination of B-Grade, rogue animal movie, Aussie yarn spinning, country ballads and absurd comedy.

The company calls their style Junkyard Theatre that is reflected in their ingenious stage landscape – a caravan park in the Australian Outback – constructed from roadside junk.

Local, placid wombats become murderous Zombats (Zombie Wombats) and terrorise the remaining three residents of the Blue Lagoon Caravan Park.

Their original, live music is mostly modern country folk that echoes American cowboy balladry and incorporates drums, guitar and banjo and double bass with the occasional electric guitar interlude.

Their oafish, Aussie caricatures, broad comedy, cheesy puns and intentionally clumsy style and form provide some genuinely hilarious moments,

However, the show looks a lot like a university revue sketch or even a PG-rated children’s show, and the style and comedy lose some impact after 30 minutes.

How To Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular, March 8, 2012 ****

By RZO Dragon Productions, Global Creatures & DreamWorks Animation
Hisense Arena, March 8 to 11, 2012
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars:****

 Toothless and Hiccup fly away from Red Death

FORGET DINOSAURS! IT IS FIRE-BREATHING DRAGONS that now rule the earth, and they were alive and flying, terrorising and charming the 5000 audience at the premiere of How To Train Your Dragon.

This arena spectacular, directed ambitiously and deftly by Nigel Jamieson, began its global tour in Melbourne last night, to the unbridled glee and open-mouthed astonishment of the enormous crowd at Hisense arena.

This is really a show for the child of the 21^st century as it is a digital technology dream that parallels video games and 3D movies and relies on form over content. 

Cutting edge, animatronic technology marries with puppetry, projections, pyrotechnics, aerial and ground acrobatics, martial arts and hip hop, as these mythical creatures battle their human foes.

Toothless and Hiccup

The tons of equipment suspended overhead are soon forgotten as these fantastical creatures come to life, develop individual personalities, engage with their human friends and enemies who battle with them and even fly on their backs over our heads.

Romeo and Juliet, March 7, 2012 ***1/2

The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

Adapted from William Shakespeare 

By The Zoey Louise Moonbeam Dawson Shakespeare Company
This production is in repertory with Henry IV

At fortyfivedownstairs, Feb 29 to 11 March, 2012
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on March 7, 2012
Stars: ***&1/2
A shorter review of R & J was published in Herald Sun on Friday, March 9, 2012

 The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO AND JULIET, a classic tragedy of thwarted young love amidst two warring Veronese families gains fresh life in this all-female production, is ambitiously and imaginatively directed by Zoey Dawson.

Five exuberant, young women (Nikki Shiels, Naomi Rukavina, Devon Lang Wilton, Laura Maitland, Carolyn Butler), take turns as Romeo, the role change being deftly executed by the exchange of a blue, checked shirt.

Brigid Gallacher’s Juliet is compelling as we trace her trajectory from virginal innocence to budding womanhood as she confronts the adult world that offers only hatred and violence and ends in the most affecting moment of her painful, lonely death.

There is much to enjoy in this memorable, inventive production, from the simple set design (Zoe Rouse) which is restricted to Juliet’s childish, pink and white bedroom, to Dawson’s wise decision to judiciously adapt and edit, but not re-write Shakespeare’s original text.

Fat Swan with Trevor Ashley, March 6, 2012 ***

Fat Swan 

with Trevor Ashley

written by Phil Scott, Showqueen Productions

The Famous Spiegeltent, Arts Centre Melbourne, March 6 to 11, 2012

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on March 6, 2012

Stars:***

A short version of my review was published in Herald Sun on Fri March 9, 2012.  KH

Trevor Ashley in Fat Swan

Let’s face it, blokes in drag always get a laugh and, when you put the rotund Trevor Ashley  into a tutu and tiara, the crowd shouldn’t expect meaningful content from such campery.

Fat Swan, written by Phil Scott, is an over-the-top dance and musical parody of the movie, Black Swan, with Ashley playing Natalie Portman’s grotesque, chubby but anorexic doppelganger called Natalie Portly.

If you have delicate sensibilities, are looking for art or have refined tastes, then this raunchy cabaret that gives itself an R rating is not your cup of cha.

It is less a psychological drama than a pantomime for adults, a miscellany of bad taste, crass jokes, sexual innuendo, colourful expletives, simulated sex, satirical rewrites of musical theatre songs and gay gags.

Although the show could be slashed to an hour, its highlights are mostly its musical numbers and a few crazy character moments.

Ashley is riotously high camp as the ingenuous Portly, a virginal, anorexic ballerina who auditions for the lead in Swine Lake and must play both the black and white pigs.

Alliance Francaise French Film Festival 2012

Alliance Francaise French Film Festival 2012

March 7 to 21, 2012

Palace Cinema Como, Palace Balwyn, Palace Westgarth, Palace Brighton Bay & Kino Cinemas

By Kate Herbert

Image from De Bon Matin

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE FINE WINE AND GAULOISE because it’s March, and time again for the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival.

Cinema goers will see a rich parade of French and international acting talent including Daniel Autieul, Juliette Binoche, Gerard Depardieu and Anouk Aimée, although Jean Dujardin who recently won the Oscar for The Artist, does not appear this year.

The French execute comedy as impeccably as they do tragedy, and this festival boasts 45 movies including dramas, comedies, romances and documentaries.

When I Fall in Love: The Nat King Cole Story, March 8-10

You may be interested in the return of When I Fall in Love: The Nat King Cole Story, starring Bert Labonte.  3 nights only at the Chapel off Chapel from March 8 to 10, 2012

Bert LaBonte in When I Fall In Love: The Nat King Cole Story

Excerpt from my review of the first Melbourne season, December 14, 2011 

BERT LABONTE launches a charm offensive on us with this homage to legendary, black singer, Nat King Cole, who attributed his silky tones to the three packs of Kool cigarettes a day that eventually killed him.

When I Fall In Love is a musical journey through Cole’s life from his humble, Alabama childhood as the son of a preacher, to playing jazz piano and singing in bars, his television show and rise stardom, his womanising and failed marriages....

Continued on Blog: December 14, 2011

The Seed, by Kate Mulvany, MTC, Feb 23, 2012 ***

The Seed By Kate Mulvany

Melbourne Theatre Company

Fairfax Studio, Melbourne Arts Centre, Feb 23 to April 4, 2012

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: 3 

Tony Martin, Max Gillies, Sara Gleeson in The Seed, MTC. Photo by Jeff Busby

There is theatrical potential in The Seed, Kate Mulvany’s play about her investigation into her Irish-English-Australian father’s experiences as a Vietnam veteran and her rabid Irish grandfather’s anti-English, pro-IRA sentiments.

There is some very funny dialogue in the first half, particularly from Gillies as Grand-Da, and we are interested in the family’s secret history, fraught relationships, personal wounds and Danny’s PTSD.

However, there are significant problems with both Mulvany’s script and Anne-Louise Sarks’ production. 

This self-referential play constantly reminds us that it contains details from Mulvany’s life, but it is unclear whose story it is: Rose (Sara Gleeson), her father, Danny (Tony Martin) or her Grand-Da, Brian (Max Gillies).

The structure of the play is awkward, the through-line is unclear and Rose’s ‘step-out’ narration, inserted uncomfortably between the scenes featuring all three characters, does not advance the story or illuminate issues in any significant way.

The Wild Duck, Belvoir/Malthouse Feb 22, 2012 ****

After Henrik Ibsen by Simon Stone & Chris Ryan

Belvoir Production, presented by Malthouse

Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse, Feb 22 to March 17, 2012

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on opening night Feb 22, 2012,

Stars:****

 Anthony Phelan, John Gaden, Anita Hegh in The Wild Duck, Malthouse 

The great strength of this adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s five-act play, The Wild Duck, is the exquisitely balanced, sensitively wrought performances.

The script (Simon Stone, Chris Ryan) condenses the action, sets it in the contemporary world, reduces the number of characters and uses colloquial, accessible dialogue.

It is about the damage wrought by a long-held secret being revealed to a family that cannot handle its repercussions.

Gregers (Toby Schmitz) returns to his father, Werle (John Gaden) to find that his old friend, Hjalmar (Ewen Leslie), is married to Gregers’ father’s former lover. Gregers believes that by exposing this secret he will set everyone free. Wrong!

The multiple short scenes are cinematic and the extreme naturalism of dialogue and acting is heightened by the stark emptiness of the set (Ralph Myers).

Stone’s abstract staging removes specific locations, dropping actors into an austere, carpeted room surrounded by walls of glass through which we peer like voyeurs.

The direction is slick with a balanced pace and, although the audience may initially feel alienated from the action, we are slowly drawn through the glass walls as the characters’ tragedy unfolds.

This is a family drama of the kind we see on television, with intimate relationships exposed. However, short scenes and idiomatic quips interrupt the dramatic tension of Ibsen’s escalating tragedy so that, although we are touched by the final catastrophe, the drama is less affecting.

This tragedy lacks that desperate juggernaut of inevitability inherent in a story about a poor choice that sets uncontrollable events in motion.

The adaptation loses the elegance and intensity of Ibsen’s language and replaces it with more mundane, middle class banter.

A Fallen Tree By Christine Croyden, Feb 15, 2012 **1/2

La Mama, Feb 15 to March 4, 2012

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Feb 15

Stars: **1\2

We all recognise the devastation wrought by Black Saturday but in Christine Croyden’s play, A Fallen Tree, that cruel blaze could not burn away the secret horror hidden by young Hannah’s (Libby Gott) family.

Croyden approaches the aftermath of the fires from an acute angle by not exploring the actual bushfire, but revealing the emotional fragility of Hannah and her younger sister, Lily, who is a constant presence despite  never being seen on stage.

The revelation of the shocking truth of family abuse provides dramatic tension in the latter half but Croyden’s dialogue in the first half is sometimes rambling or banal.

Director, Wayne Pearn, effectively concentrates on the fraught relationships of the characters of Hannah, her sleazy stepfather John (Jonathon Dyer) and her concerned neighbour Claire (Bridgette Burton).

The acting, however, is uneven. Dyer looks uncomfortable as John, Gott plays on one emotional note throughout but Burton gives a more nuanced performance.

Tribes by Nina Raine, MTC Feb 9, 2012 ***1/2

Tribes by Nina Raine

by Melbourne Theatre Company

MTC Sumner Theatre, Feb 4 to March 14, 2012, Opening night Feb 9

Reviewer: Kate Herbert in Feb 9, 2012

Stars: 3 &1/2

(L-R) Brian Lipson (Christopher), Alison Bell (Sylvia) David Paterson (Daniel), Julia Grace (Ruth) Photo credit: Jeff Busby
 

THE DEAF COMMUNITY MAY BE VIEWED as a separate, sometimes ostracised tribe in the broader community but, in Tribes, Nina Raine also explores the hierarchical, discriminatory internal relationships inside the Deaf tribe.

Raine’s play, directed capably by Julian Meyrick, features dynamic, hilarious or moving scenes and cunningly written, witty dialogue but the play in its entirety is unbalanced, various narrative threads do not converge coherently and the incessant conflict is exhausting.

 Raine underscores rather too heavily her point that our world is riddled with multiple, valid languages – speech, books, digital media, radio, opera, signing, semiotics – and with the endless repetition of this notion, she seems to be shouting, ‘The Deaf have a valid language too!’ 

The play is about a dysfunctional family that spends its time in verbal warfare, defending opinions, hurling criticism, firing insults and protecting intellectual positions and individual life choices.

Silent amongst this seething pot of family conflict is youngest son, Billy (Luke Watts), the deaf boy who is left out of conversations despite, lip-reading, speaking and wear hearing aids.

When Billy meets Sylvia (Alison Bell) who is slowly losing her hearing but is fluent in sign language because her entire family is all deaf, he not only falls in love with her, but with the Deaf community.

The repercussions are overwhelming for the family, who are confronted by Billy’s new independence and his rejection of their unintentional treatment of him as an outsider.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Feb 8, 2012 ***

Adapted from D.H. Lawrence by Glenn Elston
Australian Shakespeare Company

Rippon Lea Estate, Jan 31 to March 8, 2012 (opening night Feb 9)

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:***

Jamieson Caldwell & Claire Nicholls in Lady Chatterley's Lover, 2012

D.H. LAWRENCE'S NOVEL LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER, was scandalous in its time and Glenn Elston’s adaptation captures its boldness, sensuality and dense, passionate prose in this outdoor romp staged in the grounds of our grand Rippon Lea mansion.

This 2012 production has more comedy than last year’s, with more cheeky winks at the audience, broad characterisations and playful interactions between characters that work well in the outdoors.

Connie (Claire Nicholls), fading to a shadow in a sexless marriage to the wheelchair-bound, impotent Sir Clifford Chatterley (Soren Jensen), hurls herself headlong into a clandestine, erotic affair with the surly, rough-handed gamekeeper, Mellors (Jamieson Caldwell).

I would argue that there is still too much of Lawrence’s prose used as narration between scenes and that some of it could be converted to dialogue. The long, opening scenes that provide narrative background for Connie and Clifford could move more quickly to Connie and Mellors affair, the core of the play.

Caldwell’s Mellors is youthful and muscular, played with a fine balance of sullen, Derbyshire workingman, playful, seductive lover and mischievous taunter of the ruling class.

Nicholls, starting as the sexually unfulfilled Connie, shifts from prudish and cool to full-blooded, confident sensuality and rebelliousness.