Rust and Bone, Nov 17, 2016 ***

THEATRE 

By Caleb Lewis, adapted from Craig Davidson’s stories, La Mama 

La Mama Courthouse, until Nov 27, 2016 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Thurs Nov 17, 2016

Stars: *** 
Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Fri Nov 18, 2016 & later in print. KH

 L-R  Glenn Maynard, Luke Mulquiney, Adam Ibrahim - image Daisy Noyes

 Three men confront violence and adversity in the short play, Rust and Bone, adapted by Caleb Lewis from three short stories by Canadian writer, Craig Davidson.

Lewis’s play, directed by Daniel Clarke and performed in the round, begins with each character telling his story in isolation, but the three stories become interwoven and the actors shift rapidly between roles in each other’s world.

James (Luke Mulquiney) has a respectable office job but, in his private life, he trains fighting dogs in a cruel training regime, his latest fighter being a snarling Pit-Bull called Matilda that is no match for the huge and seasoned Rottweiler she faces.

Eddie (Glenn Maynard), a punch-drunk, 40-year old boxer dealing with shattered bones in his hands and increasingly dangerous head injuries, is plagued by guilt about a long-past accident.

The third tale deals with Ben (Adam Ibrahim), a brash and athletic young man who trains, feeds and swims with a whale – until that same whale takes off Ben’s leg, leaving him an angry and despairing amputee.

Clarke’s direction is imaginative and muscular, maintaining a brisk pace as the men prowl around the edges of the square, clinical performance space (design by Jacob Battista), leaping on and off the platform as if it were a boxing ring.

Clarke punctuates the dialogue with choreographed shadowboxing and sudden, alarming grunts that accompany the punches, making the space feel dangerous and elevating the sense of risk facing these men in their violent worlds.

As each man’s situation becomes more desperate or more urgent, the pace quickens, the dialogue becomes more fragmented and their three stories hurtle towards their inevitable ends.

The actors address the audience directly much of the time, and their performances are committed, although not exceptional, each exploring the darkness of his character and plunging into the physicality of the role.

The weaknesses in the acting are more obvious when the actors play characters in each other’s stories and the performances are less than convincing.

Battista’s wood and opaque, perspex design provides a stark, icy platform for the action and Clarke uses its in-the-round design to give the audience intimate and sometimes disquieting proximity to the characters.

The three stories in Rust and Bone merge to create an effective whole that is emotive and disturbing in its portrayal of three men in a violent world.

By Kate Herbert

Jack Charles V the Crown, Nov 16,15, 2016 ***

THEATRE
By Jack Charles & John Romeril, ILBIJERRI Theatre Company
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne, until Nov 20, 2016
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars:*** 
Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Wed Nov 16, 2016. & later in print. KH

  Uncle Jack Charles

 Uncle Jack Charles, a Koori elder, indigenous activist and actor, openly admits that he has been a heroin addict and career burglar for much of his 70 years and that he spent 20 years of his life, on and off, in Victorian prisons.

You’d think it might be a stretch (excuse the pun) to sympathise with such a flawed character, a man who was relentlessly bent on destroying people’s peace of mind by burgling their houses, but Jack Charles reformed his ways late in life – and his charm and delight at being with an audience is infectious.

And he apologises – in a fictional appeal to the High Court of Australia, when he presents his case to have his criminal record expunged so his life can continue unhampered by the restrictions that apply to a convicted criminal. As he says himself, it is unlikely to happen.

In his show, Jack Charles V the Crown, Charles looks like a grey-woolly-haired pixie with a wide smile and a deep, resonant voice that sounds of rust and dust and hidden pain.

With impish delight under-laid with melancholy, Charles addresses the audience directly for much of the show, relating anecdotes of his happier, early life in care, then in foster care then, later, in a punishing Boys’ Home where abuse was rife.

The real-life Charles is dwarfed by enormous images of himself projected on a huge screen behind him, showing excerpts from Bastardy, the 2008 documentary about his life in which he bares all, revealing his heroin use, his list of crimes, arrests and court appearances.

In telling the unpalatable details of his life as a Stolen child, his subsequent trauma and his later addiction, crimes and incarceration, Charles’ dialogue, written with John Romeril, effectively merges poetic language with Charles’ disarming, amusing and conversational style and direct delivery.

Rachael Maza directs the show with a gentle hand that allows Charles’ mischievous character to shine as he works on a pottery wheel, talks about running ceramics workshops in prisons, about meeting his unknown siblings and mother, accepting his sexuality, dealing with past trauma, facing addiction and working as an actor on stage and screen.

He was prisoner 3944, and his life, he quips, consisted of, ‘Acting, drugs, burgs and jail time. Acting, drugs, burgs and jail time’ – and repeat.

Charles is not alone on stage, but three musicians join him (Nigel Maclean, Phil Collings, Malcolm Beveridge), underscoring his stories with evocative sound and accompanying Charles as he plays guitar and sings a few of the country music songs he loves.

Jack Charles V the Crown is not perfect theatre, but it has heart and, despite his obvious flaws, Uncle Jack Charles may win over even the hardest critic – perhaps even the High Court?

By Kate Herbert

Seminar: A Comedy, Nov 10, 2016 ***1/2

THEATRE 
By Theresa Rebeck, by Artifact Theatre Company
Chapel off Chapel, The Loft, until Nov 26, 2016 
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: *** ½

Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Mon Nov 14, 2016 & later in print. KH

Ra Chapman, Mark Yeates, Cazz Bainbridge, pic Theresa Harrison

Fiction writers can be a sensitive and jaded bunch, but emerging writers may still be steeped in hope and blind ambition that can easily be dismantled by a ‘mentor’ such as the noted literary identity in Theresa Rebeck’s witty play, Seminar: A Comedy.

Four evidently gifted but competitive, young fiction writers each pay (or is that ‘squander’?) US$5,000 to glean pearls of wisdom – and some useful contacts – from their writing guru in ten, weekly sessions.

However, Leonard (Dion Mills) is no warm and fuzzy, modern teacher who proffers constructive criticism, but rather a pretentious, drug- and alcohol-damaged, resentful veteran of the literati whose criticism verges on the venomous and soul-destroying and whose seduction techniques are puzzlingly successful.

Who wouldn’t want their money back? But how do you learn and improve your work if you won’t take criticism?

In Kate’s (Cazz Bainbridge) affluent, rent-controlled, New York apartment, Leonard rants about his thrill-seeking trips to Africa and his views on writing, then systematically dissects the young hopefuls’ proffered works of fiction.

Week one sees his savage dismissal of Kate’s writing, in week two he suggests Douglas (Darcy Kent) is a writing ‘whore’, in week three he admires Izzy’s (Ra Chapman) lusty and provocative writing, and, all the while, he labels Martin (Mark Yeates), who has avoided revealing any of his work to anyone, a ‘pussy’.

Rebeck’s play is language and character driven, with the stage ‘action’ being psychological and emotional rather than physical.

Matthew Cox’s direction focuses effectively on the pace and intelligence of the dialogue, the detail of characters’ emotional sensitivities and idiosyncrasies, and on their increasingly volatile relationships.

The performances from the entire cast are strong and our alliances shift between the five characters as each reveals his or her inner self so that we like or loathe each at some point.

Mills is compelling as the mean and sleazy writer, Leonard, playing him as larger-than-life, with his arrogance, vanity and insensitivity wrapped firmly around a fine, creative mind and a genuinely skilful critic, and he gains our sympathy with Leonard’s revealing monologue.

Bainbridge, as Kate, effectively grows from shrinking violet, rich girl to confident and canny young woman, while Kent’s portrayal of Douglas’s smug, overblown literary dialogue provides plenty of laughs.

Yeates shifts Martin from smart, secretive, intellectual snob to jubilant then jealous lover, and talented but resentful young buck, while Chapman’s Izzy is sultry and confident in her seductiveness but the character is underwritten compared with others.

The clever wordiness of Rebeck’s dialogue is initially startling and interesting, but the relentless negativity of the characters wears thin in the later scenes when, although the power relationships turn and characters change, the production needs a dynamic variation.

The final scene change is far too slow and complicated and interrupts the flow of the story.

If you love words, reading fiction or have ever been a student of creative writing, the wit and rhythm of this play will tickle your fancy.

By Kate Herbert

Dusty The Musical, Nov 12, 2016 ****

MUSICAL THEATRE 

Written by John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell and Melvyn Morrow, presented by EY and The Production Company 

Playhouse, Art Centre Melbourne, until Dec 4, 2016  

Reviewer: Kate Herbert 

Stars:**** 

Review also published in Herald Sun online on Mon Nov 14, 2016 and later in print. KH

 Cast with Amy Lehpamer, Elenoa Rokobaro, Todd McKenney, Virginia Gay– pic Jeff Busby

1960’s pop idol, Dusty Springfield’s unique, sensual and soulful singing is the core of Dusty The Musical, a show that follows her career from shy, Irish Catholic schoolgirl until her death in 1999.

Accomplished singer, actor and dancer, Amy Lehpamer, channels Dusty without impersonating her, capturing Dusty’s rich, dusky tone that straddled Pop and Soul styles, and echoing her idiosyncratic bright timbre and resonant vibrato.

Dusty aficionados and novices alike will thrill to Lehpamer’s moving renditions of Dusty’s startling repertoire of hit songs, including: I Only Want To Be With You, Wishin’ And Hopin’, The Look Of Love and You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me.

Lehpamer is charismatic as Dusty, replicating not only her vocal stylings but also her elegance and signature gestures as she expresses the melancholy in I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself and the soulful passion of Son Of A Preacher Man, Dusty’s US hit.

Born Mary O’Brien in London in 1939, Dusty was a red-haired, short-sighted, tubby tom-boy with an unusual voice that became her passport to freedom and fame in the 1960’s, as well as to despair and substance abuse later in her career.

In Jason Langley’s deftly directed production of this updated, improved script (John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell, Melvyn Morrow), Dusty is always accompanied by her child-self, Mary, played warmly by Baylie Carson, whose dreams of being a singer are fulfilled but whose self-doubt always underlies Dusty’s success.

The shy Dusty disguised the fear, guilt and loneliness behind her public persona with black eye make-up, platinum wigs, lamè gowns and elegant, exaggerated gestures.

Dusty tried to keep her lesbian personal life a secret but, in this show, black US singer, Reno (Elenoa Rokobaro), is a conflation of all Dusty’s female lovers, and the song, Wishin’ and Hopin’, becomes their gentle seduction, while The Look of Love expresses Dusty’s secret yearning for Reno.

The adjustments to the original, 2006 script effectively streamline the story, weaving young Mary throughout the narrative, stripping some unnecessary scenes and dialogue, although, other than Dusty herself, most characters remain two-dimensional.

Virginia Gay and Todd McKenney, as Dusty’s friends Peg and Rodney, provide light-hearted, comic relief as well as giving some perspective on Dusty’s private life, but Rodney still delivers too many cheesy, gay gags.

The talented ensemble, dressed in Isaac Lummis’s vivid, 60’s costumes, performs Michael Ralph’s perky choreography that is a blend of modern sass with 60’s pop and psychedelia, and the tight on-stage band, under Michael Tyack, captures the depth and beat of the toe-tapping music.

Despite the sadness of much of Dusty’s life and death, this tribute to her music and her life will lift the spirits of even the most jaded audience.

By Kate Herbert

The Odd Couple, MTC, Nov 10, 2016 ***

THEATRE (COMEDY)
By Neil Simon, Melbourne Theatre Company
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner, until Dec 17, 2016
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Thurs Nov 10, 2016
Stars: *** 
Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Fri Nov 11, 2016

Francis Greenslade, Shaun Micallef, Michala Banas, Christie Whelan Brown - photo Jeff Busby

Neil Simon is a genius of comic stage and screen writing and his biting one-liners in The Odd Couple are still as funny and whip-smart as they were when he wrote the play in 1965.

If you don’t know the story, it’s about Oscar Madison (Francis Greenslade), a divorced, grouchy and slovenly sports writer who invites his old pal, Felix Ungar (Shaun Micallef), a finicky, hypochondriacal news writer, to stay with him in Oscar’s New York apartment after Felix’s wife tosses him out of home. Chaos ensues.

You may remember the mismatched pair from the Walter Mathau and Jack Lemmon 1968 movie written by Simon, or recognise similar, incompatible types from TV show, Frasier, when fussy Frasier Crane’s scruffy dad comes to stay.

Peter Houghton’s production best captures Simon’s rapid-fire banter in Oscar’s blokey poker games that open Acts One and Two with Oscar’s smart-mouthed, New York pals taunting and teasing each other in a battle of wits that echoes Simon’s writing – and that of others comic geniuses such as Mel Brooks  – for the Sid Caesar TV show.

Greenslade finds the comedy in the unkempt Oscar’s grouchy personality and sloppy domestic habits, driving Oscar to the edge of distraction by the final scenes.

Micallef’s eccentric charm and comic spirit make Felix engaging and funny, and he is most successful when he allows his own physical idiosyncrasies and comic sensibilities to colour Felix’s peculiar behaviour.

Micallef and Greenslade get plenty of laughs, particularly during the slapstick scene chasing in and out of doors, during Felix’s manic cleaning, cooking and ear-clearing, and his prissy criticism of Oscar’s habits.

However, Micallef misses some of the detail and extremity of Felix’s dapperness and obsessive-compulsive behaviour (e.g. he rolls suit pants when Felix would fold them along the crease) and he never appears, as Oscar describes Felix, to be so uptight that he has ‘clenched hair’.

The pair also lacks the searing comic timing and delivery that should send Simon’s play into the comedy stratosphere.

There was a scary moment when Micallef’s Felix, driven to distraction, smashes a cup that lands on a man in the front row. Check the insurance or change the throw, boys!

The talented supporting cast provides a parade of quirky, hilarious characters, with some of the funniest scenes involving Michala Banas and Christie Whelan Browne as the twittering and twitty Pigeon sisters, two English gals who tantalise Oscar and mollycoddle Felix – to Oscar’s chagrin.

David Ross Paterson, Grant Piro, Hayden Spencer and Drew Tingwell
bring to comic life Oscar and Felix’s poker pals as they compete for not only the gambling winnings, but also for the most acerbic and witty lines.

Christina Smith’s realistic set design of an apricot and cream 60s apartment provides the ideal setting for the play.

The Go-Go dancing scene change was a cute interlude but the vacuum cleaner silhouette choreography was an odd choice for an early scene transition.

Although this production of Simon’s famous comedy does not hit all the necessary high points, Greenslade and Micallef trade on their natural, comic instincts to make it an entertaining night in the theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Blessed, Nov 9, 2016 ***

THEATRE 

By Fleur Kilpatrick, by Attic Erratic, Poppy Seed Theatre Festival 

The Tower, Malthouse Theatre, until Nov 20, 2016 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Nov 9, 2016 

Stars:*** 
Review also published online in Herald Sun Arts and later in print. KH

 Matt Hickey, Olivia Monticciolo, Photo by Sarah Walker

Blessed is a play filled with the pain, despair and isolation of two disenfranchised people unable to escape the dire circumstances of their past or their present.

In Fleur Kilpatrick’s two-hander, Maggie (Olivia Monticciolo), after a decade or more, arrives unannounced in her former boyfriend, Grey’s (Matt Hickey) dingy, filthy flat (designed by Luc Favre), where she finds him remote, alone, almost mute and unlike his adolescent self.

We see this jaded, dysfunctional and ailing pair at the age of 30 in a series of short scenes that are intermittently interrupted by flashbacks to their first, tentative meeting as 15-year olds.

Much of this one-hour play is absorbing and chastening, acting as a reminder to the middle-class, theatre-going audience that, hidden in unspeakable squats or cheap rentals in our city, live fringe-dwellers such as Maggie and Grey whose options have evaporated.

Hickey elicits our compassion with his portrayal of the unkempt, delusional and taciturn Grey, effectively playing him with faltering speech peppered with strange and poetic thoughts that are reminiscent of his shy, awkward, adolescent admiration of Maggie.

Monticciolo’s Maggie is brash, angry and fearful, and she creates a sympathetic character in this skinny addict who rages at the world and tries to recapture the intimacy of her past, teenage relationship with Grey, but struggles to communicate with him.

Eventually, it becomes clear that Grey believes he has a mission from God and Maggie becomes a crucial part of that mission by the final scene.

Danny Delahunty’s direction accentuates the fractured quality of Maggie and Grey’s communication, separating them across the space as they struggle to reconnect, interrupting their fraught conversation with grimly flickering, fluorescent lights (Rob Sowinski) and under-scoring it with grinding sound (Tom Pitts).

The revelation of Grey’s mission is a welcome transition after about 50 minutes because the play, by that point, needs greater dynamic range.

Although there are some laughs in Kilpatrick’s script, witnessing these shattered lives and minds is not fun, and, although the play challenges one’s complacency about the social conditions of people like Grey and Maggie, it also leaves one feeling helpless and hopeless.

By Kate Herbert

 Matt Hickey, Olivia Monticciolo,  Photo by Sarah Walker 

Anti-Hamlet, Nov 4, 2016 **1/2

By Mark Wilson, The New Working Group & Theatre Works 

Theatre Works, St. Kilda, until Nov 13, 2016 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Nov 4, 2016

Stars: **1/2

 Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Mon Nov 7 and late in print. KH

LtoR-Brian Lipson, Natasha Herbert, Mark Wilson, Marco Chiappi, Piper Huynh, Marcus McKenzie, Natascha Flowers, Charles Purcell, photo Sarah Walker

Using Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a leaping-off point for a new play is courageous or, some might say, foolhardy, and Anti-Hamlet is a clear case of – well – both.

Mark Wilson’s script is an eclectic mash-up of the characters and narrative from Hamlet, mixed with snatches of Australian history and contemporary political issues relating to refugees, human rights and detention centres.

Wilson is not only the writer but also director and lead actor, but the clear highlight and significant drawcard for this production is the casting of three exceptional actors: Natasha Herbert, Marco Chiappi and Brian Lipson.

Hamlet (Wilson) is a brattish, depressed and entitled Prince of Denmark / Australia who stages embarrassingly mediocre, one-man theatre shows and makes ill-informed attempts at political activism against the regime of his mother, Queen Gertrude (Herbert), and her Prime Minister, Claudius (Chiappi).

Meanwhile, Ophelia (Natascha Flowers), a Rhodes scholar, returns from Oxford and becomes Claudius’s advisor on human rights, Hamlet’s hippy-musician friend, Horatio (Marcus McKenzie), is secretly a terrorist known as Anti-Hamlet, and a scurrilous, American marketing man, Bernays (Charles Purcell), manipulates Claudius’s campaign to become President of the new Republic.

If you are already thinking that this project sounds rather ambitious, sprawling and confusing, then you would be right.

There are some funny, outrageous and entertaining (albeit chaotic) scenes, some of the best of which involve Lipson as the hilariously stereotypical and smug Sigmund Freud when he psychoanalyses Gertrude, Hamlet or Claudius on his couch.

The opening night audience certainly laughed at the frenetic stage action, grotesquery, sexual explicitness and Hamlet’s nudity as well as the parallels between Australia’s human rights history and Hamlet’s half-baked views on injustice.

Chiappi’s Claudius is very funny as he switches from prancing braggart and schmoozing politician to petulant schoolboy, while Herbert, as Gertrude, morphs from the dignity and elegance of the Danish queen to the overtly sexualised, older woman who is a messy drunk.

Wilson, at times, finds the right balance of parody and sincerity as the idiotic man-child, Hamlet, Purcell is suitably over-the-top as Bernays, the bullying campaign manager, but Flowers lacks the acting range to play the smart but naive, bleeding-heart leftie, Ophelia.

Wilson’s script needs a vigorous edit to reduce the parodic but overly long, philosophical and political speeches delivered by Hamlet and others; their wordiness does not increase the humour or political impact, nor does it illuminate characters and issues.

The frantic stage action and topical references in Anti-Hamlet offer some entertainment but, ultimately, the simplification of Shakespeare’s themes leaves the production looking shallow and predictable.

By Kate Herbert

The Light in the Piazza, Oct 28, 2016 ****

MUSICAL THEATRE 

Music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, book by Craig Lucas, adapted from Elizabeth’s Spencer’s novel; produced by Life Like Company 

Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne, until Nov 6, 2016 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert 

Stars:****

Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Mon Oct 31, 2016 and later in print. KH

 Centre: Genevieve Kingsford, Chelsea Plumley_ PHOTO BEN FON

The Light in the Piazza is an impassioned, contemporary musical about an old-fashioned, boy-meets-girl love story delivered with operatic passions and a neo-romantic, classical score by Adam Guettel.

Craig Lucas’s book, based on Elizabeth Spencer’s 1953 novella and set in Florence in the 1950s, follows Margaret Johnson (Chelsea Plumley), a refined, wealthy woman from North Carolina, as she travels in Italy, accompanied by her pretty but intellectually limited daughter, Clara (Genevieve Kingsford).

Margaret nostalgically recalls the romance of her pre-war honeymoon in Florence with her now absent and inattentive husband (Jeremy Stanford), but she doesn’t plan for Clara’s rapidly escalating, obsessively passionate, Romeo and Juliet-style romance with Fabrizio Naccarelli (Jonathan Hickey), a young Italian who falls for Clara across a crowded piazza.

Guettel’s score, performed here under Vanessa Scammell’s impressive musical direction, often thrills with soaring orchestrations, complex melodic lines and layered harmonies.

His songs are reminiscent of Stephen Sondheim’s style, although not all Guettel’s tunes are memorable and some of his lyrics are a little opaque.

In this moving and enthralling production, with assured direction by Theresa Borg, heightened emotions drive the story and compel all characters to sing about their desires and fears, driven by the beauty and passion of their glorious Italian surroundings.

The Florentine family (Hickey, Josh Piterman, Madison Green, Anton Berezin, Johanna Allen) has entire scenes spoken in Italian without subtitles, emphasising the ardent authenticity of the Italians, although some of their interactions caricature Italians as loud, jealous, interfering or philandering.

With her warm, true tone, vocal control and range, Plumley is outstanding as Margaret, singing the complex melodies of Dividing Day and The Beauty Is, as well as the hopeful, opening duet with Clara, Statues and Stories, and the gently romantic duet with Anton Berezin as Signor Naccarelli, Walk With Me.

Chelsea Plumley_ PHOTO BEN FON

As the narrator at the centre of the production and with her accomplished acting, Plumley balances wry and witty delivery with poignant narration and the fierce actions of a protective mother.

While Kingsford plays the childlike Clara with naiveté and girlish gaucheness, singing The Light in the Piazza with sweetness and gentle emotion, she shifts gears and becomes a firecracker during Clara’s out-of-control moment, singing Hysteria.

Hickey has a joyful boyishness as Maurizio, and his bright tenor is sensitive and expressive singing his impassioned solo, Il Mondo Era Vuoto (The world was empty), and his romantic duet with Kingsford, Say It Somehow, is a glorious ending to Act One.

Jonathan Hickey, Genevieve Kingsford, PHOTO BEN FON

The entire cast provides evocatively layered harmonies in the fervent choruses of Aiutami and Octet, and each performer plays multiple roles that, in conjunction with Tom Willis’s atmospheric design, conjure the Florentine piazza, Uffizi Gallery and the Naccarellis’ plush home.

The Light in the Piazza is a touching and simple love story with a rich score and a (mostly) happy ending that will thrill the romantics in the audience.

By Kate Herbert