Going Places by Lisa Dombrowski, 28 Oct 1994

 

At La Mama, Carlton until November 13, 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 28 October 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 28 October 1994. KH

 

The path of true art never runs smooth and when you combine an artist with love you have a very rocky road indeed.

 

In Lisa Dombrowski's new play, Going Places, Joan Murray plays Annie, a successful painter turning forty who discovers that her reviewers are saying that she has lost it. Being told you are predictable and passe' by a critic is hard on the ego but when your friends start to look away when you ask their opinion, it's time to regroup or give up.

 

There is some learning which can only be done alone without a prop / partner to boost your ego or to support and distract you. Annie is in a mid-life crisis which draws her to the vigorous, loudmouth Jude ("The Obscure?" "No. The Rude.") an inexperienced but sublimely talented painter who uses Annie to climb the arts ladder. She charms people into lying on the barbed wire for her so she can climb over them.

 

Jude is played raunchily by Belinda McClory who is a wonderful foil to Murray's fine and detailed emotional see-saw portrayal of the intellectual aesthete and conceptual artist, Annie. Annie's artwork is mannered and full of intellectual bullshit. Jude's is passionate, honest and vivid. Annie plays mentor and pal till jealousy turns everybody's head except the selfishly oblivious, invincible and ambitious Jude. The role of mentor is always fraught with danger. The pupil can overtake the teacher.

 

Performances are strong and the writing is smart. Dombrowski, who also directed the play, has a great line in witty observations of artistes of the ultimate wanker variety. Steve Payne plays Annie's long suffering lover Joe with a delightfully wry humour and deep pathos and the other two actors play fabulously wrought stereotypes. Leon Teague is hilarious as the total bullshit fringe artist, Pete and Lise Rodgers has a terrifyingly credible smug-gallery-owner 'visage'. (n.b. 'visage', not just 'face'.)

 

The form slips about a little more than is comfortable from the naturalistic to monologue to movement and the poetic, but the whole is clever and charming.

 

KATE HERBERT

Picasso and Einstein at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin , 25 Oct 1994

At Playbox Until October 30, 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 25 October 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 25 October 1994. KH

 

US comic Steve Martin's play, Picasso and Einstein at the Lapin Agile, is by no means great art but it is pretty bloody entertaining fluff. The play has a degree of silliness of about 95%. Martin has an eclectic magpie-like mind which draws from all sorts of areas: art, physics, philosophy, psychology, feminism and anything else you like to name.

 

He weaves the lot together with the twisted logic and conceptual somersaults he uses in both his stand-up routines and in his movie scripts like LA Story. The script leaps over the fourth wall into the audience at odd intervals. He brings in insane cameos like the could-have-been-famous Schmendiman (Richard Piper) and makes delirious references to symbolism, post-romanticism and the mad fact that nobody buys paintings with "sheep" or "Jesus" in them.

 

There is little narrative to speak of and jokes to burn but the most interesting element in the script is the convergence of geniuses and the fact that both the scientist Einstein and the painter Picasso are dealing with the same creative process. They have a surge of extraordinary, lateral ideas which they are compelled to pursue into a fourth dimension. The magic and mysterious intuition of art, the poetry and paradox of physics, become one in the creative realm. The intersection of these two processes was dabbled with in the script but remained frustratingly unconsummated.

 

Much of the comedy arises from the counterpointing of the respective sexual attractors of the two geniuses: Einstein’s mind and Picasso's animal passion. The two are ironically juxtaposed against the hottest thing of the 20th century, Elvis (Nick Bufalo) who time-travels to 1904 Paris to bring a message to Picasso foreshadowing his Post-Blue period.

 

Neil Armfield's direction is uncluttered and light-handed keeping the play going at a cracking pace. Performances are delightful. Tyler Coppin plays a sweet and edgy Einstein, strangely with an American accent. Jeremy Sims seethes and slithers latin-ly across the stage as the lusty Picasso.

 

Bufalo is a subtle, comic and soft-edged Elvis while a laconic and easy-going Bourne and witty Deborah Kennedy hold the piece together with portrayals of the relatively thankless roles of the two bar-owners. Piper as Schmendiman was a wild and zippy cameo which was a smart injection of energy into the middle of the play where the lack of plot was beginning to tell.

 

Martin wants to be a playwright. he may not be a great one but he will almost certainly be a famous one.

 

KATE HERBERT 

That Eye, the Sky, adapted by Richard Roxborough from Tim Winton’s novel 17 OCt 1994

 

That Eye, the Sky, Adapted & Directed by Richard Roxborough from by Tim Winton’s novel

Playhouse October 13 – 15, 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on 13 October 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 17 October 1994. KH

 

There is a simple, poignant beauty in the writing of Tim Winton which Richard Roxborough has captured in his sparkling stage adaptation of the award-winning novel, That Eye, the Sky. To coin a style, this is Magic Australianism. There are visions, hallucinations, poetic language and broad Australian colloquialisms stirred into the one sweet tragedy.

 

Ort (David Wenham) is the slightly simple ("I don't get some things."), pre-pubescent son of Sam and Alice Flack, a pair of latter-day hippies. His father is rendered comatose after a car accident and Ort, who was in a coma with meningitis as a little boy, is the one person with a common experience. Ort alone has visions of the crockery spinning and glittering like jewels, of a little cloud over the house which arrived on father's return and of the sky as an eye watching over them.

 

Ort, with his recalcitrant 16-year-old sister, Teguin (Susan Prior) and devoted mother Alice (Rachel Szalay) assisted by a stranger, Henry Warburton, (Richard Roxborough) who arrives unannounced and sent by God, to help nurse Sam back to life.

 

This production is a truthful translation of Winton to stage. Roxborough's astounding directing debut has created a stunning ensemble piece with exceptional acting, strong physicality and fine, unobtrusive choreography by Kim Walker. There are delicately rendered and intimate moments, seamless and inventive scene transformations, a thrilling introduction of live sound effects and music by multi-skilled actors, an extraordinary use of stage space and wonderfully appropriate distressed-fabric costumes.

 

A few f mentionable and magic moments were the transformation of six chairs into a gum-tree forest, Dad's chilling car crash, the "coming in" of the feathery cloud and a delightful cameo from Steve Rogers as Errol the rooster.

 

Wenham magically transforms himself into the fragile child Ort, doing the most credible kid acting I've seen in an age. Szalay is a warm and heart-wrenching as Mum and Prior is a fabulously physical Teguin. Roxborough himself is rich and dangerous as the alien Warburton.

 

The whole ensemble is charming, electric and committed to the piece, the style, the narrative and the play as a great theatrical event. The group beat out percussive rhythms by running on the floor or clanging on the scaffold set. There is a sense of the whole company being inside each other's roles as they breath in rhythm with each character's internal state, pulsing out an emotional landscape.

Sister Girl by Sally Morgan, MTC & Black Swan Theatre, 14 Oct 1994

 

At George Fairfax Studio, Melbourne Arts Centre in October-November 1994

 Reviewer: Kate Herbert on 14 October 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 14 October 1994

 

Sistergirl by Sally Morgan comes to MTC from the Black Swan Theatre which is an aboriginal theatre company from Perth. Rosy Snow, an old Koori woman, is dying in a hospital ward with only Molly, a naughty gin-drinking Irishwoman (Faith Clayton), for company.

 

The script flashes from the drying-out ward where she is visited by her sister (Dot Collard) and friend Tommy (Jack Charles), to her dreams and Dreamtime where she is visited by her dead child, the Aboriginal Protector at the Mission who took her child from her and the Bird Man who comes to test her, seduce her and take her to the spirit world.

 

The most potent moments were the visits of the Bird Man (Djunawong Stanley Mirindo). The atmosphere was charged and the production cried out for these scenes to be extended.

 

Other high points were the joyful and wickedly crude interactions between characters were hilarious and the relationship between the naughty Irish outcast culture and that of the disenfranchised aboriginal people was touching. Rosy and Molly they share not only nips of gin and a lusty love of men. They are both embattled victims of Protestantism and British government.

 

The whites are not a pretty group being represented by the patronising and righteous Crown Protector (Robin Cuming,) his churchy assistant and the bitter harradin, Nurse Kaye (Wendy Strehlow) who treats the women like retarded children.

 

There is a warmth, love and truth in the often rough acting which made the performances engaging. There is some funny, truthful dialogue between characters and Theresa Creed did a sterling job understudying the role of Rosy. while Jack Charles gives a perky performance as the lady-killer Tommy.

 

The design was strong. Projections of paintings by Mark Howett which spilled onto actors and set, were exceptional mood setters.

 

The raw acting was not well supported by the unimaginative staging and flabby direction. There were pauses to drive a truck through. Shifts between the hospital naturalism and Dreamtime became clumsy and slow. As the play nears its ending and Rosy's death, the frequent lighting changes become annoying and unnecessary. The drama is interrupted and flaws are highlighted.

 

This story needs to be told and Sally Morgan's script goes part of the way to doing so. The production may be flawed but it is charming and entertaining.

KATE HERBERT  

Bluebeard's Castle & Ewartung, Canadian Opera, Robert Lepage, 13 Oct 1994

OPERA
Bluebeard's Castle, Music by Bela’ Bartok, Libretto by Bela' Balazs

& Ewartung, Music by Arnold Shoenberg, Libretto by Marie Pappenheim

By The Canadian Opera Company State Theatre October 13 – 16, 1994

Melbourne Internatinoal Festival of the Arts

Reviewer: Kate Herbert o 13 October 1994

 

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 13 October 199

 

Canadian Robert Lepage is a visionary theatre director who makes his opera debut with two short 20th century works for the Canadian Opera Company. Arnold Shoenberg's Ewartung (libretto by Marie Pappenheim) is performed in Hungarian and Bela' Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle (libretto by Bela' Balazs) in Hungarian, both being accompanied by English surtitles. Lepage has created spectacular theatrical imagery and a common thematic form for these pieces which are here for the International Festival.

 

Both pieces explore the dark side of the psyche. In Ewartung, J one psychotic moment is stretched into 40 chilling minutes while in Bluebeard's Castle Judith, the fourth wife of the murderous Duke Bluebeard, probes both the mind and past of her husband.

 

Bluebeard is an hour-long work for bass baritone (Richard Cowan) and mezzo-soprano (Jane Gilbert). Bartok's score takes a dark, sonorous and dramatic line and the resonant velvet smooth voice of Cowan with the rich, near-contralto texture of Gilbert enhance the fearsome violence of the work.

 

Soprano Rebecca Blankenship gives a flawless performance as The Woman in Ewartung. She may be singing solo, but she is never alone on stage. Lepage peoples her nightmare hallucinations with dancers and objects which appear and disappear in the mind of this vulnerable, neurotic figure.

 

The landscape is intimate and Dali-esque. Arms grip her through a wall, figures tilt horizontally.  Freud sits by, coolly taking notes in his office chair. The woman confronts the murdered body of her lover. As the story unfolds it becomes clear she has killed him through jealousy.

 

Bartok and Shoenberg are not easy listening either musically or linguistically, but the orchestra, conducted by the extraordinary and ebullient Bradshaw is exceptional.  The gold leaf picture framed stage and stark brickwork of the design by Michael Levine provide an enclosed, grim castle for Bluebeard, and a bleak internal wall for the raving woman in Ewartung.

 

One magnificent highlight is Robert Thompson's lighting which supports Lepage's concept with some of the most dramatic design I've seen in years. The seven doors of Bluebeard's benighted castle are opened to reveal glorious reflections of jewels, weaponry, gardens and red clouds drifting across a mountainscape. An extraordinary image of a "pool of tears" is also represented in an actual stream downstage which catches light and sends ripples of colour across the front scrim.

 

This pool is the site of the most spectacular images of the production. Bluebeard's dead wives emerge from under water, dripping blood: water tinged with the red glow of light. The space becomes elemental, the danger heightens, the violence is palpable. In Ewartung, the Woman's lover rolls in slow motion into the pool and disappears underwater. The image is rich and terrifying.

 

The sheer theatricality of the production and the stunning intensity and courageousness of Lepage's vision, make the discordant brass and atonal score of Shoenberg and the gloomy thrum of Bartok into a mesmerising evening of music and spectacle.

 

KATE HERBERT 

The Trial adapted by Theatre Tarquin, 9 Oct 1994

Adapted from Franz Kafka by Theatre Tarquin 

 At Napier Street Theatre until October 23, 1994

Melbourne Fringe Festival 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 9 October 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 9 October 1994

 

The Fringe production of The Trial by Theatre Tarquin may need a big red pencil through it but there are some memorable moments and a good cast.

 

Melbourne Theatre companies love to deconstruct text and adapt great literary works but often the prose does not come off the page as theatrical dialogue. Exceptional narrative does not necessarily translate into dramatic monologue. This is one of the problems with Nick Harrington's adaptation of Kafka.

 

The meaning is thinner (I hesitate to say 'more simplistic') on stage than it is in Kafka's very dense and layered novel. The dialogue is often stodgy and the actors looked uncomfortable at first but warmed up as the pace improved. There was rather too much neurotic, twitchy mad acting in the ensemble for my liking and too many girlish, Melrose Place inspired interpretations of the sexy seductress.

 

There are a couple of stand-out performances. Nick Crawford-Smith is a favourite newer actor around town with his quirky and dangerous style. His Joseph K. is initially more of a bumbling buffoon than a tortured and oppressed victim, (I don't remember Joseph K. being dizzy) but he develops momentum. Ben Rogan who appears in various cameos is a face to watch.

 

Some strong images remain in my mind, one being the opening scene in which actors emerge from beneath a pile of video tape. However, this had no apparent relationship to anything which followed unless the connection was the stacks of Big Brother video screens which ran comments, images and quotations

 

The most arresting and deeply theatrical moment was the counter- tenor (Paul Scott-Williams) singing the Kyrie in the cathedral scene. For a magical 30 seconds I was transported. The scratching of my pen seemed sacrilegious in the silence which ensued.

 

The live piano (Monique di Mattina) gave atmosphere to some of the too wordy scenes. It must also be said that the smoke machine was bothering not only the asthmatics in the audience.

 

KATE HERBERT

 

The Dark Side of the Accordion & Mordsgaudi, Theater Ohne Grenzen 4 Oct 1994

By Theater Ohne Grenzen from Vienna, Austria

At 14 Lowther Street Alphington (home of IRAA Theatre)

4-8 October 8.15pm

Part of Melbourne Frige Festivla 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 4 October 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 4 October 1994

 

You've probably heard jazz piano but Jazz accordion? Now you're kidding me!

 

Otto Lechner is an Austrian virtuoso musician who makes both his instrument and our hearts soar. His music and indeed the man himself, are warm, witty and sexy. Yes, an accordion can be sexy, I assure you.

 

Lechner, after working on IRAA Theatre's Woyzeck, has stayed on to grace us with this season of his idiosyncratic musical form. He satirises a trio of Austrian waltzes, invokes a dark, atmosphere with drones, creates a whole big band including the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and percussive.

 

 He chants and intones over the top of the instrument in the mode of the Mongolian goat-herders, hitting a triple harmonic in a nasal drone. Lechner makes the mechanics of playing the instrument a part of the whole performance.

 

This man is passionate about his accordion. He is married to it. He becomes the instrument and it makes his performance terribly attractive and mesmerising.

 

I loved the finale of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon complete with heartbeat finale.

 

Dark Side of the Accordion is exciting, thrilling, engaging theatre with none of the usual trappings. The crowd on opening night stomped and cheered. A big 'thank you' to IRAA Theatre for bringing this consummate performer to us.

 

 The performance which opens the bill, Mordsgaudi, is also from the Austrian contingent. Airan Berg and Martina Winkel tinkle with kitchen implements to create a collage of witty and sometimes chilling vignettes challenging the Arian myth of superiority. They animate objects in the manner of Handspan Theatre, but they have a sharp political edge and are more performer-based than object-based.

 

Racial groups are defined by household objects. The Asians are represented by a chopstick and a surprisingly deeply emotive paper umbrella. The black is a chocolate royal bikkie, the fascist skinheads are a phalanx of smooth-pated soup ladles. The cold, fearless hit men are a schnitzel hammer and potato peeler. The golden wooden spoons are a cowardly "look the other way" father and son team.

 

The actors employ a Berlin cabaret club style of comedy, parody and political satire with songs and dialogue in Austrian and English. The whole piece is accompanied by a rhythmic background of utensil percussion.

 

Much of Mordsgaudi is cute and funny but I was amazed at the sheer violence achieved with simple images, symbols and objects. The moment a handful of raw beetroot is squeezed through the hand is horrifying. The murder of the chopstick is a racial outrage and the grief of the umbrella is palpable.

 

Look out for their Alt / Tag in Week Two of the Fringe. And hunt down Otto if it kills you.

 

KATE HERBERT

Rigoletto by Theatreworks, 2 Oct 1994

 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 2 October 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 2 October 1994

 

Theatreworks’ Rigoletto is an adaptation of Victor Hugo's Amusing the King, the precursor to Verdi's opera. Director, Robert Draffin, has stirred a hotpot of performance and musical styles together.

 

There are stretches of Verdi's Rigoletto, particularly La Donna e’ Mobile which becomes almost a tragic signature tune for Rigoletto's skateboard ride downhill, and chunks of hilarious club comedy, slapstick and black Berlin cabaret which has echoes of the darkness of Franz Wedekind's Lulu plays.

 

There is something amiss in the world of Rigoletto. He inhabits a world of darkness and deformity, being a hunchback in a hostile environment but he also lives as Jester to the King and is invested with the questionable role of amusing His Majesty with entertaining quips and women to be violated.

 

Strangely, in spite of the dreadful train of events facing Rigoletto and his virginal daughter (Antoinette Halloran) it was the two outsiders to the action who seemed to generate the greatest emotional impact. Heather Bolton's club singer reeked of failure and angst while her every facial twitch commented upon the fate of Rigoletto. Hugh Wayland as the musician and hired killer provided an amoral eye and a wry, critical presence on the sidelines.

 

The classical arias are counterpointed against piano accordion, intoning, clamorous dialogue and modern torch songs sung by Maddalena, (Heather Bolton) a dissolute, dejected and drunken club singer. There is an appropriate desperation and anguish in the at times near-cacophonous soundscape.

 

The content is eclectic and Draffin has employed a style which relies heavily on held moments, silences and intense gazes to heighten the dramatic tension. Characters step in and out of spotlights like rabbits in headlights. While one character is in focus, others cruise the perimeter of the space, disappear behind swathes of red velvet curtaining, tinkle at the piano or sit drinking and smoking a nightclub table drinking. There is always an observer of the action.

 

 Merfyn Owen is a delightfully eccentric, bitter and pained Rigoletto who can carry the classical singing as well as the stand-up comedy routines which he does in his anachronistic nightclub context. Ian Scott has a resonance and power as the immoral and indulged King who parades about his kingdom.

 

Considering the actual horror of the moment, I found the tragic ending surprisingly unmoving. Theatrically and visually it was powerful, but the production leaves us somehow emotionally disconnected from Rigoletto. The emphasis on the music leaves little space for development of the characters and their relationships. In an opera with a full orchestra the thinness of the narrative is compensated by the swell of the orchestral score. This Rigoletto rests somewhere between the two forms of opera and theatre and has yet to successfully blend the two.

 

This work is very new, exciting and has some extraordinary theatrical moments which will certainly develop as the season progresses. It's worth seeing.

 

By Kate Herbert

Cross Arts & Movement Program, Fringe 94, 16 Sept 1994

Cross Arts and Movement Program, Melbourne Fringe Festival 1994

Writer: Kate Herbert around 16 September 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 16 September 1994

 

 

Hybrid Arts, Cross Arts. Whatever you call these multi-art works, Fringe artists are notorious for slinging several art forms into the one scruffy package. You can lump dance, sculpture, cyber-machines, computer graphics, text, music, noise, dirt and costumes into an hour-long phantasmagoria. It might be spectacular. It could really suck.

 

I reckon the press releases tell you plenty about who's an artsy wanker and who's a real artist so here are a few excerpts.

 

Circus Soup calls itself "an action-packed night of music and marvels...with groove engineers and circus performers." I'm inclined to believe this one because it has Sam Angelico, a class mime and magic act, Matthew Hughes from Circus Oz who is hot, and Oxo Cubans who are a groovy band with a singer who has a haircut like a muffin. ($16 & $12)

 

Serious contemporary dance fiends should get along to Danceworks is back with a revamped Physical Business from '93 ($10 & $15). I don't know the dancers but you could try at the Women's Gallery for three solo female dance works or see the dance-doco The Road to Be-Bop which asks you to bring beret, dark glasses and a Beat attitude.

 

The Dancehouse program takes us back into hybrid arts with a program comprising dance, videos, performances, discussions and a visual art exhibition as a bonus. Mary Madigan wins prizes for best title: Read my Hips ($8) which has "drawings, movement and social change" and a very esoteric press release.

 

Students from Change studio in None of the Above are demonstrating dance and other "Afro-techno synchronised fire club swinging" stuff. Seriously! I'm quoting! ($9.50 & $7.50) Take a fire extinguisher.

 

The Newry Pub's Frenzy says "Enjoy a quiet drink" with your poetry, art and music. It's free!! Ghost in the Machine cites the use of movement and "interactive computer environments". You can get close to virtual reality with this show if you're having trouble with actual reality - which most of Fitzroy and St. Kilda do.

 

Look out for Leather Butoh , a cyber-inspired performance art group." Yikes! Suzuki stompin', machine grindin', computer groovin' cyber artists in black leather!! Don't you get scared when they're so seriously groovy? And when they use the word "installation" instead of "exhibition"?

 

Butoh features again in Butchyaketa's Crack. ($13 & $9). We seem to have a plethora of artists who crave dark Japanese angst-ridden movement in our middle-class Western environment. More praise to 'em.

But my pick for a big old hoot, is Dance of the Desert which boasts belly dancers with a band at a Turkish restaurant. Now that sounds like exotic fun for a gaggle of your friends.

 

Kate Herbert

Fringe Festival Melbourne 1994 -OVERVIEW- 16 Sept 1994

 

Fringe Festival Melbourne 1994

Writer: Kate Herbert around 16 September 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 16 September 1994

 

If you're not on your toes during a Fringe Festival, you could end up paying good eating money to watch someone smash bottles while standing screaming knee-deep in a puddle while someone wearing black pours pig's blood on her head. So let's put you in the picture quick smart so you don't get your fingers burnt and your wallet rifled.

 

35 plus theatre productions are listed in the Melbourne Fringe program ranging from established companies (IRAA, Theatreworks), through known local professionals (Shirley Billing, Ross Daniels, The Pidds), to international artists, interstate plays and cabarets, student shows and complete wild card unknowns which are always a risk but sometimes a gift.

 

Venues range from a student show at the Dodgem Hall at Luna Park, Last Laugh, North Melbourne Town Hall, Galleries, studios in Alphington and Fitzroy, Mechanics' Institute and the Builders' Arms Pub.

 

There are real theatres too, like Gasworks, The Universal which has zillions of shows, The Courthouse, La Mama which is three-deep again in its inimitable festival overkill form, Napier Street, St, Martins, National Theatre, and Theatreworks which is still getting shows on in spite of the ill-will of the nasty Church guardians.

 

Here's what I'd see. In the funny physical Theatre list The King's Player by Trevor Gare looks terrific. He uses European clown technique as a bit-player in Hamlet, David and Ian are finally doing Rawsharking, a comic, circusy show with music about doppelgangers.

 

Harry Cripps’ White Paris which will be black comedy in the vein of his Tania and Kit. Theatreworks Rigoletto is rampant, wild-eyed musical grotesguery. Cop Theatre Tarquin's adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial which should have Nick Harrington's usual innovation and blackness.  All Hopeless Romantics should see Theatre Zart doing Love's Idiotic Triangle, an adaptation of Dostoyevski's The Idiot.

 

We have an international contingent this year. Don't miss the three shows IRAA is sponsoring for their Austrian guest artists. Alt / Tag looks like something Handspan would do, with an 80-year-old female puppet in an existential dilemma about age. Otto Lechner is a magical musician who takes you on adventures with The Dark Side of the (Piano) Accordion.

 

La Mama is up to its little rafters with shows. Fairytales from the Future looks like violent, romantic fairy tales with a great cast including Maud Davy and Robert Lyon. Trampoline is a multi-media piece about the "The Great Earth Mother", and Her Mother's Daughter is by a German playwright, Chris Paul.

 

The Fringe Showcase replacing Short Works and Women's Season, invariably has one hot piece for a bunch of dogs but it’s cheap and short. Most tickets are from $10 to $17 but La Mama is a bargain from $6 to $12 max. Fringe Artists get discounts.

 

Go book now!

 

 

KATE HERBERT

My Body My Blood, by Margaret Kirby, 21 Aug 1994

THEATRE

At Chapter House St. Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, Mon-Sat 7.30 pm until Sept 10, 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 21 Aug 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 21 Aug 1994

 

Margaret Kirby's new play, My Body My Blood, , directed by Marcia Ferguson, investigates the attitude of the Anglican Church to women in religious roles, a profoundly emotional area of debate still raging in the church and the women's movement. A quote in the play from an ancient order of nuns, tells the story clearly. "Did they make it hard for you too? Did you fight? Were you strong?"

 

Mary (Tammy McCarthy) is deeply affected by the death of her friend and mentor Beatrice (Brenda Palmer), a deaconess desperate for the church to recognise her "priestliness". Mary questions her own relationships with church and family. Flashbacks draw parallels with 17th century women battling male prejudice, accusations of witchery, and denial of their healing skills.

 

The acoustics are appalling but generally actors dealt with the problem. There were some glorious solo, choral and canon singing which established the poignant, melancholy flavour of a mind in religious turmoil. I wanted more. The script screams for atmosphere.

 

This is not a serious and self-important script, although at times it lapses into religious polemic. It is peppered with funny observations about character, religion, gender and power. Sliced white bread and cooking sherry are used for an improvised communion and the absurdity of the whole gender argument is highlighted when an early Christian bishop simply changes "Julia" to "Julius" when confronted with a woman apostle in the Bible.

 

The ensemble is strong but the fraught verbal battles between two sisters, Mary and Martha, were the highlights for me. McCarthy is suitably addled and passionate as the heavily pregnant and religiously questing Mary but my accolades are saved for Maud Davy who is warm, eccentric and scintillating as her prim and subservient sister, Martha.

 

Scene changes to 17th century England are confusing and slow, which seems to be a production rather than a script problem. It needs clearer shifts in accent, space, lighting; something to give substance and clarity to the flashbacks.

 

The choice to perform in the woody, candle-lit interior of the Chapter House at St. Paul's Cathedral was inspired. The action has as a backdrop, enormous and imposing (in both senses of the word) portraits of Anglican bishops and audience trails upstairs past doors adorned with the nameplates of exclusively male clerics. Unfortunately, the stage design clashes radically with this environment.

 

Kate Herbert

Falling From Grace by Hannie Rayson, Playbox, 10 Aug 1994

THEATRE

At Playbox Merlin Theatre until August 27, 1994 then touring.

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 10 Aug 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 10 Aug 1994

 

Professional women's conversations meander from gossip to international politics, corporate work issues to romantic disasters - all in a nano-second; confusing for outsiders, namely men.  

 

Falling From Grace, Hannie Rayson's new play for Playbox, is uncannily accurate in representing the worlds of four modern women fighting forty who have busy, successful, complicated, often fraught professional and personal lives. The characters are never predictable but heck, are they familiar!

 

The narrative interweaves numerous threads. Central is the long-standing friendship between Suzannah (Catherine Wilkin), the editor of a smart monthly magazine and her two soul mates. The fiercely loyal Maggie (a difficult "go-between" role played warmly by Deirdre Rubenstein) and Brock (a feisty Diane Smith), a committed and pregnant journalist who shirtfronts the world.

 

A medical research project, led by a respected gynaecologist, Miriam Roth, (played with majesty by Belinda Davey) comes under fire from Suzannah's wet and guilt-mongering ex-husband (Sean Scully) and the magazine is faced with ruining a woman's career if they print a profile on Miriam and her research.

 

Performances are, without exception, extraordinarily skilful. Roger Oakey makes a meal of his role as Michael: lawyer, lover and "loyal but unfaithful" husband. Wilkin bounds from scene to scene in an emotional and moral mine field with her detailed and prismatic portrayal of Suzannah.

 

There is more, much more to the story. Secrets, loyalties, prejudices, deceptions all elucidate the dilemma, "To print or not to print". Each character's moral position is discoloured by his or her personal relationships. Everybody acts irresponsibly, childishly and selfishly at some point, but the major issue is the degree of trust women place in their friends and the damage a breach of faith can cause.

 

The brief scenes require frequent set changes which, thanks to Trina Parker's light, effective design and Aubrey Mellor's brisk and economical direction, move efficiently.

 

Dialogue is astringent, witty and economical. Some longer, more didactic speeches slowed the action but raised moral and ethical points. The numerous plot threads took some time to resolve in a longish second act but Falling from Grace maintains the tenor of warmth and honesty which permeates Rayson's writing. She is a jewel in our crown, a Victorian State treasure.

 

KATE HERBERT

 

 

Blood Brothers, Melbourne, 17 July 1994

At Comedy Theatre, Melbourne from July 15, 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 15 July 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 15 July 1994

 

Twins are known to have an uncanny bond, and those separated at birth experience a pervasive and perpetual sense of loss. Willy Russell's Tony award-winning musical, Blood Brothers, has two such boys at its heart.

 

One twin, Eddie (Ross Girven) is illegally adopted by an infertile but wealthy woman, while Mickey (Stefan Dennis) remains with his Liverpool mother who pops a babe a year. In spite of their mothers' attempts keep them apart, the boys become intimate friends, blood brothers for life - and to the death.

 

David Soul of Starsky and Hutch fame, has a potent stage presence and rich voice as the doomsaying bogeyman, the portentous Narrator who speaks their fates. Delia Hannah is exceptional as the boys' superstitious mother, with a powerful voice and warm, unaffected style.

 

Stefan Dennis meets her level as the tragic working-class boy. He has perfected every detail and mannerism of a boy at 8 and 14 and is totally credible. His performance is warm, funny, accurate and, by the final scenes, his character is truly heart-breaking. Ross Girven and Tina Regtien are charming as his twin, and his girlfriend.

 

The first act of Blood Brothers is light, entertaining, but a little slow. After interval though, all stops are out. The songs are more singable, the narrative weightier, the plot shifting away from melodrama to genuine drama and, finally, to tragedy. Russell, writer of Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine, has injected a rare depth into this musical.

 

The chorus is strong, but John Wraight stands out in several hilarious, broad comic cameos. The invisible live band was terrific. The music and lyrics also by Russell, range from the pedestrian to the hummable to the invigorating.  Dennis's yearning song "Long Sunday Afternoon" is charming and "Bright New Day" was a fine joyful ending to Act One.

 

"Tell Me It's Not True", sung movingly by Hannah and company, capped off this tear-jerker. Take a box of tissues for the finale. This is a real weeper.

 

KATE HERBERT    

Underwear, Perfume and Crash Helmet by Michael Gurr, 13 July 1994

 

By Playbox Theatre

At Beckett Theatre, Southbank until August ( No definite close)

 Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 13 July 1994

This review was published in the Melbourne Times after 13 July 1994

 

Underwear, Perfume and Crash Helmet deals with numerous issues, none of which is in the title. Directed stylishly by Bruce Myles, Michael Gurr's latest play for Playbox has a profusion of ideas, a litany of pithy social observations and myriad peculiar characters, but it never lights on any one topic. The writing is often witty and riddled with glib and cynical one-liners about politics, grief, loss, madness, but the content remains insubstantial and the narrative unaffecting.

 

Director, Bruce Myles, creates a strong, portentous atmosphere and uses a powerful theatrical device, scattering the stage with actors who remain on stage like voyeurs or critics, even if they are not in the action, observing, responding or ignoring it. Stuart Greenbaum's music supports the mood and Glen Hughes lighting is grim and stark against a fine expressionist backdrop by Judith Cobb. This extremely talented team creates an atmosphere which gives some weight to a rather emotionless text.

 

The play is a collage of scenes hanging like coats on a rack, but it is not an abstract, non-narrative script. An Australian Liberal member dies near an election, so Blair, a party worker-bee (Penelope Stewart) promotes the MP's hapless and politically incompetent wife Caroline (Janet Andrewartha) as a candidate. Lionel, (John Gregg), a globe-trotting Canadian speaker on conservative politics, assists Caroline to parliament. He is accompanied by an obnoxious valet-come- psychopath (Simon Wilton) who befriends Nick, Caroline's taciturn, saxaphone-playing brother (David Tredinnick).

 

An eccentric and seemingly irrelevant sub-plot revolves around Michelle, a loopy, homeless girl (Tammy Mc Carthy) and "True Believer" in aliens who will come to take her "Home". She is the key to the violent and peculiar climax and provides tenuous parrallels for a couple of themes: Caroline's craving for "Home", and the blind faith of the "True Believers" in politics both of which remain largely unexplored.

 

With such a plethora of narrative threads and characters, many issues are left dangling like Lionel's ties. Before interval, it was a novelty piecing together the jigsaw of scenes, but the second half is less successful. It feels laboured and ponderous, having too many threads and a multiplicity of endings. The six, very skilful actors, began to look uncomfortable and uncertain.

 

 

KATE HERBERT

 

Me and My Girl, Revised by Stephen Fry, REVIEW, 6 July 1994=

 Music by Noel Gay, Book & Lyrics by L.A. Rose & D. Furber revised by Stephen Fry

 Produced by Adelaide Festival Theatre Trust & John Nicholls Productions.

At Princess Theatre, Melbourne, from early July 1994 (no end date)

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 5 July 1994.  

This review published in The Melbourne Times after 6 July 1994

 

Some confusion over our seats for Me and My Girl meant I was sitting on an eight-year-old, but this vulgar, old-fashioned vaudeville-style musical was worth the discomfort. It is uplifting, with fine chorus work, dreadful jokes and fabulous costumes.

 

Derek Metzger plays Bill Snibson, a dodgy cockney who is the new Earl of Harewood. Where has this exceptionally talented and stylish Kiwi been hiding? He is a fine tenor, an effortless dancer and is charming, warm, magnetic and relaxed. Metzger has that illusive "It" "Star" tattooed on his forehead.

 

Rachael Beck, as Sally, is engaging with a very pretty voice and other strong performances come from Sheila Bradley and Peter Whitford as the stuffy old Duchess and her ageing acolyte.

 

The story is simple; poor boy gets rich, loses poor girl, gets poor girl back again as rich girl. (intentional echoes of My Fair Lady) The script is light and funny: a pun-fest. "Aperitif?" asks the butler. "No thanks," says Bill, tapping his teeth. "I've got me own." Many contemporary quips are probably courtesy of Stephen Fry (of “Fry and Laurie") who has modernised what remained of the original 30's stage script.

 

Nigel West's direction of the comedy has some smart clowning and good slapstick interspersed with an overdose of tacky sexual innuendo. The tiger-skin rug coming to life in the hands of Metzger, was a treat.

 

If the words "sexual politics" make you foam at the mouth, skip this. This is the most jaw-droppingly sexist script ever. There were some nasty verbal references to women, but an early seduction scene between the lusty Lady Jacqueline and Bill, borders on offensive, making Benny Hill look like political satire.

 

The elaborate sets by Martin Johns changed so seamlessly that I missed them, and the transparent ancestors' portrait gallery was a feast. Kathy Norcross has done some lively choreography, but Lambeth Walk takes the cake. Along with Leaning on a Lamp post, it is one of the few memorable songs and is the

 

But if you are expecting, as was I, that "The bells are ringing/ For me and my girl" was the title song, you are wrong. Another show evidently. 

By Kate Herber

Mysteries by Tom Lindstrom, REVIEW, 23 June 1994

Venue unrecorded.

Reviewer: Kate Herbert, 23 June 1994

This review published in The Melbourne Times after 23 June1994

 

Mysteries is an exceptionally funny, twisted view of the world through the psyche of the solitary, desperate and alien Edwin Cowper; a peculiar man who is amazed when others think him peculiar.

 

Tom Lindstrom's latest play, directed by Tom Gutteridge, is based loosely on Knut Hamsun's novel of 1892. The protagonist arrives in a hick country town. Both he and the town are riddled with unsolved mysteries; dislikeable young man has suicided; hunchback dances for money; Cowper's family may be murdered, abandoned or non-existent.

 

David Wicks plays Cowper with a faintly amused, quizzical and almost rapturous quality. He calls himself, cynically, a "professor of moral philosophy". Wicks is an eccentric and absorbing actor. His joyful, dynamic and constantly surprising performance often left me gasping.

 

All Cowper's conversations are somehow perverse but poetic, fascinating but disquieting in their intensity. He is a truth-sayer and a psychic with nothing to lose. Lindstrom's delicate but dense language is moulded by Wicks into some strange other-worldly creature. The two are a hot combo.

 

The comedy is often ribald or grimly amusing. I found myself laughing at farts during a funeral, and then at a gruesome, but disconcertingly hilarious, buggery scene.  Bizarre attempts to cover excruciatingly slow scene changes with mumbling actors dressed in mourning, shattered the atmosphere and drove me to distraction.

 

Minor characters are as eccentric as Cowper (pronounced "Cooper", he insists). Peter, the annoyingly obsequious hunchback (Bob Pavlich), is the butt of the whole town's scorn and was a role with more dramatic potential. A forbidding chamber maid is played with an intense watchfulness by Carole Patullo.

 

Lindstrom's subtle weaving of language, his quirky vision of reality, his portrayal of an existential dilemma, the arresting beauty of his images, all create a captivating theatrical vision.

 

Buy Kate Herbert

The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin by Steve J. Spears, REVIEW, MTC, 22 June 1994

At Russell Street Theatre, Melbourne, Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC)

From June to 23 July 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 22 June 1994.

This review published in The Melbourne Times after 22 June 1994

 

The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin leaves one with a sense of overwhelming sadness. It traces the later career of a homosexual elocution teacher and his decline at the hands of the Australian prejudice in the 70's. The play should be called The Execution Robert O'Brien.

 

Bob Hornery is charming and tragic as the ageing transvestite and homosexual who runs The Shakespeare Speech and Drama School. The opening scenes are witty and warm, quirky and high camp. He prances about naked, sings along to Skyhooks, talks to his bust of Shakespeare and brushes his teeth. It feels intensely intimate to speak inside someone's life. We all have peculiar solitary habits and writer Steve J. Spears highlights these.

 

O'Brien closes the luxaflex venetian blinds in his Toorak flat and applies the Helena Rubenstein rouge and lippy and dons some appalling matronly gowns. His daily clandestine ritual is funny and poignant.

 

There may be only one actor, but Spears peoples the stage with characters: innumerable speech students with stammers, lisps, accents, and bad acting. Bruce, a transvestite stock broker, makes regular appearances escaping from his wife and spotty children into his fantasy world of drag with his friend, O'Brien. Apart from his confidante Shakespeare, Bruce is the only person who sticks by O'Brien through the dreadful trials which beset him.

 

The rigid morality of the time, and the high-handed attitude of the surrounding conservative Toorak society which comprised his neighbours and clients, are comic until they destroy the man. Their nasty voyeurism and accusations are counterpointed by O'Brien's concern and altruism. He is no pederast, and he advises Benjamin to try girls. "You might like them. They're soft - and they have breasts." His lust for schoolboys is strictly fantasy.

 

Spears script is a witty, detailed and deeply moving tale. The first two acts are a collage of swiftly shifting scenes with only the odd slow moment. At the start, many of the MTC audience tittered at the homosexual, transvestism and lewd references as if it were a drag show, but the stillness and profound pain of the final moments make this a bitter-sweet commentary on our treatment of "outsiders".

 

There is something of The Guildford Four in this story. While O'Brien is incarcerated, a bevy of supporters and legal eagles pursue justice for him outside, but this has no impact on his daily life.

 

This production, 20 years after the original, international hit starring Gordon Chater, has stood the test of time. Charm, wit and tragedy do not date.

By KATE HERBERT