An Inspector Calls by J B Priestley, April-May 1995

 At The Comedy Theatre 

Tues- Sat 8pm Until May 20, 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert for The Melbourne Times. Reviewed late April 1995

 

The most extraordinary thing about J B Priestley's An Inspector Calls is director Stephen Daldry's inspired staging. An elevated doll's house, home of the nasty, superior Birling family, teeters on stilts above a blasted war-time London streetscape.

 

 In the first scene our view is restricted. We peer through windows just as do the working class on the street.  Even the staircase is disconnected from the outside world. The building and the family appear inaccessible, impenetrable and invincible from their privileged upper- class position.

 

Not so. An inspector arrives to bring them to task about the suicide of a working-class girl they have all known in some capacity. He blows their world and their house wide open to his piercing eye and the torrential rain which pours onto the stage.

 

The script written in 1946 and set in 1912, is a humanist / socialist commentary on the invidious class system of Edwardian Britain and it remains pertinent today. Daldry's production for the National Theatre has revamped it for the London, New York, Tokyo and Australian stage.

 

There are moments of Brechtian political diatribe such as Inspector Goole's departing speech and director Stephen Daldry has accentuated the alienation through stark lighting effects, addressing the audience directly and by adding roving, inquisitive children and a silent majority of adult observers.

 

The maid, (Georgina Beer) who is unheard and invisible for most of the script, remains on stage constantly, tipping rubbish, carrying chairs, even rolling out a red carpet for the terrifying matriarch, Mrs. Birling, (Helen Lindsay) all as a reminder of the class distinction.

 

Barry Foster as the Inspector / Confessor gives an impeccable performance, both passionate and vigorous. The other performances are all exceptional as the characters face their judgement day in a crumbling world under a drenched sky.

 

Buy Kate Herbert

Nil, Cat and Buried, Stephen Sewell, 28 April 1995

 

Nil, Cat and Buried by Stephen Sewell

At La Mama at Courthouse until May 13, 1995

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around 28 April 1995 for The Melbourne Times

 

There are two stars in Nil, Cat and Buried by Stephen Sewell: David Pledger's crisp, vigorous direction is the first and he is evidently also responsible for suggesting to Stephen Sewell that he combine three short pieces into this one script.

 

Pledger has developed a powerful kinetic style which relies heavily on the ensemble. As in his Taking of Tiger Mountain, he has created an economical and often witty physical language of repeated gesture and movement which is concentrated in the three-person chorus. (Danielle Long, Paul Bongiovanni, Greg Ulfan) who comment, quip, mimic and abuse.

 

They make broad, simple statements which translate as a chorus of breakdown underlying the fraught and often violent communication of a man and woman (Leon Teague, Tamara Saulwick) dealing with being stranded in an isolated house together as their relationship collapses.

 

Shane Feeny-Connor is the second star. His intense and strange persona as Cat is riveting. His presence draws the eye and his words shock, lull and reverberate in the unadorned Courthouse space. Sewell's words in his hands are like poison darts, his imagery of "the unnameable horror" of which we are all capable, is relentless.  His extraordinarily powerful role as Mal Hennessy in Janus was no fluke.

 

The whole piece leaves one shell-shocked. I was less concerned with the content and the actual words, which are pungent but not particularly new, than with the mode of delivery. The actors confront and challenge us directly. Feeny-Connor climbs onto the scaffold seating and gets right in your face. It is a very fine exercise in style executed with great finesse by Pledger and his cast.

 By Kate Herbert

Rigoletto, Verdi, Australian Opera, 24 April 1995

 

By Giuseppe Verdi

By Australian Opera (Now Opera Australia)

At State Theatre, at  Melbourne Arts Centre

On May 4, 6, 9, 13, 16 1995. Followed by Peter Grimes

 This review published in The Melbourne Times in April 1995.  KH

Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto is an operatic novelty, having a baritone as the title role. Of course, he is a hunchback with a sharp tongue and no friends who loses his daughter, Gilda, to his Duke's lusty tastes while the Duke - the tenor - is the romantic lead who gets the girl, in fact all the girls and lives to get some more.

 

Director Elijah Moshinsky's production is reminiscent of Mussolini's vengeful Italy with Michael Yeargan's designs of opulent palazzi and back street bars in conjunction with some colourful choreography for a sycophantic male chorus. The Victorian State Orchestra is conducted with flair by Richard Gill.

 

Gregory Tomlinson's flavoursome, muscular tenor gives the ideal passionate tone to the promiscuous Duke. His stage presence was relaxed, credible and pretty damned sexy and his "La donna e' mobile" exhilarating.

 

Rosamund Illing's bell-like, crystal soprano is perfect for the ingenue Gilda and gives a light joyousness to "Caro nome." Bass baritone Arend Baumann's Mafioso-like Sparafucile has a wicked, lackadaisical quality, particularly in Act Three.

 

Accolades go to Barry Anderson as the jester, Rigoletto. His warm, velvet baritone captures both the jovial and despairing, the teasing and pain. His aria "Cortigiana, vil razza damnata" after Gilda's rape, is ripe with pathos and his duets with Illing were inspiring and well-matched. In fact, Rigoletto is unusual in being intentionally composed by Verdi as virtually a string of duets rather than virtuoso arias.

 

The drama hurtles toward its magnificently tragic third act, fulfilling "La Maledizione" (Curse) laid upon Rigoletto by  Monterone. All Rigoletto's sardonic humour has vanished, replaced by vengeance and shame. This act is perfectly constructed dramatically, musically and vocally.  It finishes poignantly, without finale, on Rigoletto's lone despairing cry, "La Maledizione.

 

See it and weep.

 

KATE HERBERT

Turandot, Pucccini, Australian Opera, 19 April 1995

 

By Giiacomo Puccini by Australian Opera.

At State Theatre until May 10, 1995

This review was published in The Melbourne Times in April 1995

 

Turandot, the icy Chinese Princess and first self-declared Radical Celibate, has vowed to take her revenge on all men for the abduction, millennia earlier, of her beautiful ancestor. A grudge grandissimo!

 

The story of Turandot, Puccini's final masterpiece, is man's perennial pursuit of the inaccessible, resistant beauty. Unfinished at the time of his death in 1924, the opera was adapted from the fairy tale by 18th century playwright, Carlo Gozzi.

 

Puccini's score is both playful and regal. It shifts from heraldic trumpetry and weighty drama of impending execution to the delicate emotional unrequited love aria of Liu'. Carlo Felice Cillario conducts the VSO with grandeur, ease and fluidity.

 

Ruth Falcon in the title role has a powerful and imposing voice in its upper register but rather stilted acting. As her masochistic suitor, Calaf, Kenneth Collins's tenor is warm and rich but perhaps not sufficiently full-blooded for this demanding role.

 

It has always been a mystery to me why Calaf marries the nasty baggage, Turandot, instead of the loving, loyal and passionate Liu' but he didn't have the mesmerising Arax Mansourian singing Liu'. In addition to having a haunting, delicate and perfectly controlled voice, she is an exceptional beauty.

 

John Pringle, Graeme Ewer and Christopher Dawes (Ping, Pang , Pong) cleverly walked the edge of comic-dramatic and Donald Shanks as Calaf's father has a voice with great heart.

 

John Montgomery's lighting enhances Graham Murphy's dramatic staging and carefully composed stage picture. An uncluttered stage accommodates the enormous, rippling chorus but fills the upper reaches with Kristian Fredrikson's emblematic design of Chinese filagree dragons, Peking Opera masks and a huge, symbolic moon.

 

The Emperor (Robert Gard) appears as a spectacular 10 metre mountain swathed in golden ottoman. Turandot emerges from beneath his robes, equally impressive and lofty, her initial massive height highlighting her later disempowerment at the hands of Calaf.

 

This really is a lavish production well worth seeing.

 

KATE HERBERT

Julius Caesar, , Australian Opera (Opera Australia), April 1995

 State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne

Closed April 10, 1995

Followed by Turandot and Rigoletto

until May 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert for The Melbourne Times. Reviewed in April, 1995

 

Julius Caesar is epic entertainment. It has one of history's great love stories: Cleopatra and Caesar, (to be topped only by Cleo’s next great love), a series of exceptional arias designed to showcase the eight principals' vocal gymnastics, and an extraordinary design.

 

Its story is both moral and hedonistic and has more action than the usual, late baroque "opera seria". Handel's orchestration is more restricted more than modern opera scores so that a single flute or bassoon over the strings is striking. It resonates with what we recognise of Handel's religious music. The Victorian State Orchestra is impeccably conducted by Graham Abbott and includes an instrument called a "Theorbo". Heard of it?

 

Francisco Negrin's spectacular direction is riddled with fascinating paradox. The set is minimalistic yet enormous, colourless and vivid, it dwarfs the actors and emphasises them, the battle fields are peopled with superb dancers, its potentate is a countertenor.

 

The design is magnificent with echoes of Egyptian hieroglyphics, weaponry, statues, temples and palaces. It has the dark brooding quality of stone surfaces with flashes of a single colour shattering the monotone. It all works to create an hypnotic, ageless atmosphere which hovers in space and time.

 

Yvonne Kenny's effortless, warm honey voice with its humming-bird tones, lingers in the air. Graham Pushee's phenomenal countertenor is at once delicate and powerful. He is comfortable on stage and manages to be both cheeky and stately.

 

The other principals are all fine voices. Rosemary Gunn (Cornelia) has a rich mezzo and Stephen Bennett (Achilla) a resonant baritone. Rodney Gilchrist (Nerino) must be unique in being both a countertenor and a dancer. Solo violinist Tony Gault makes a perky appearance on stage as Cleopatra's musician.

 

The A.O. looks like having a string of hits this season.

 

Kate Herbert

Melbourne Comedy Festvial short reviews, April 1995

 5 short reviews of some of my favoruite shows in 1995 Melbiurene Comedy Festival.  KH

Curtains by Lano & Woodley

At Athenaeum Theatre 2. Tues-Sat 8.45pm & Sun 5pm until April 23, 1995

Lano and Woodley do my favourite brand of slapstick: dangerous and hilarious. I laughed till I wept. Frank (dare-devil with rubber bones) and Colin ( bent-est straight man ever), do totally sshtooopid knockabout, unforgivably silly songs and ad-lib with ingenuous and wicked charm.

Big, unadulterated "Haa! Haa!"

 

Totally Wicked by Flying Fruit Flie

Big Top City Square 3. Tues -Sat 7.30pm  matinees 2pm (Check days). Until April 2, 1995

Fruit Flies show, Totally Wicked, is full of cute and very skilful kids from Albury who are so totally unaffected and un-wicked it's adorable. Take the family and thank God it's not your kid up there without a net!

It is more "Ooh! Aah!" than "Ha! Ha!"

 

Decadence, by Steven Berkoff

 Reception Room Melbourne Town Hall Tues-Sun 9.30 pm, Sat & Sun also 5pm (No show April 8), 1995

 

Decadence is everything its name prophesies and more. Berkoff's lewd, erotic and outrageously funny verse play, is a scarifying indictment of London's Sloane Rangers and the obscenity of over-indulgence in sex, food, alcohol and violence. Rhyss Muldoon and Alison Whyte are masters of the complex text, giving it a vigorous physicality and impeccable comic timing. The sex romp during the Fox Hunt and the ensuing Tequila drinking rave are stupendous.

Both "Mmmm! Mmm!" and "Ha! Ha!"

 

Judith Lucy in King of the Road

At Lower Melbourne Town Hall Tue, Wed, Thurs, Sun 8.30pm, Fri & Sat 10pm

 until April 22, 1995

Judith Lucy’s new show, King of the Road, still has the hilarious laconic laid-back style we know and love but it also has a new level of theatricality. Accompanied by a very silly selection of slides, she spills her guts with poignant, truthful and funny and appalling tales of bonking and drinking her way unsuccessfully across several continents. A big "Ha! Ha!" and some "Oh, my God!'s".

 

Glynn Nicholas in Crossing the Line

At Comedy Theatre Tues-Sun 9pm Mon April 10 9.30pm  (no show Sun April 9 or Fri 14)

until April 22, 1995

The Rebetes , Antipodes Festival, 29 March 1995

Written by Rhondda Johnson

At Beckett Theatre, Malthouse

March 29 -April 15 1995

Antipodes Festival, Melbourne

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 29 March 1995. KH

 

In the Greek cafe featured in The Rebetes there are plenty of drug references, a hookah and lots of joints on stage, enough ouzo and cigarettes to sink a migrant ship.

 

The Antipodes Festival annually celebrates Greek culture but Rhondda Johnson's play for the festival celebrates specifically the Rebetika blues music and its associated drug, alcohol and liberation culture.

 

It is a fairly accurate representation of a very ugly side of the Greek migrant culture and its sadness, bitterness, conservatism. In short, it shows us the Blues. The scene is uncannily like peeking through a window of a cafe in Sydney Road but this time we see the men playing cards, drinking, dancing, singing and reminiscing as well as harassing any woman courageous enough to walk within coo-ee.

 

Kate the Celt (Helen Rollinson) takes a job in the cafe as a "hostess'. She ends up leaving her gambling loser of an Aussie husband (Steve Adams) and becomes immersed in the Greek culture warts and all.

 

There are some entertaining moments in this production, but they become very lean after three long hours. The script is well-observed with a few good gags but is repetitious and unnecessarily long. The direction is clunky and the style shifts from almost TV-style naturalism to abstract flashbacks with no clear distinctions made.

 

The Rebetika music was at times an integral part of the piece at others it was a thin cover for yawning gaps and interminable scene changes.

 

The cast ranged from good amateurs to quite strong performers who eventually, are struggling to keep the audience's attention. Helen Rollinson was energetic as Kate, the ring-in Aussie sheila, and Jason Raftopoulos, as her young second generation lover, gave a very credible performance. Steven Grapsis was terrifyingly believable as the sleazebag, Apostoli.

 

KATE HERBERT

Jump! Crying in Public Places, March 1995

At Napier St Theatre, Sth Melbourne

Tues -Sat 9.30 pm until April 2, 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert. Reviewed in March 1995.

Watching Crying in Public Places is like observing four women in their living room, playing, arguing, telling stories.

 

Watching Jump! has the wicked feeling of eavesdropping on four friends playing, arguing, telling stories. Occasionally they catch you at the keyhole.

 

Crying in Public Places (Anni Davy, Maud Davy, Karen Hadfield and Jane Bayly) have a cheeky, warm, natural style that makes me want to rush up and hug them all. Their melange of original a capella songs, body percussion, movement and yarn-spinning, has a fluid quality. The dynamic of Jump! is almost tidal. It seems to capture the wave motion of a life.

 

"Am I brave enough to jump?" they sing in their last song. Throughout the piece, they jump both literally and metaphorically. The fear of leaping from a cliff equates with that of hurling oneself into a new experience. Anni wants a dog, Jane is pregnant (really!), Maud celebrates being saved from marriage in the Mid-West.

 

The passion and guts and ease of this performance resides in the genuine bond between the women and the stories being more fact than fiction. Anni Davy's plaintiff cry as she lies curled on the floor, "Maudie, I can't feel my fingers", echoes her own fall during a circus trick three years ago.

 

Jump! resonates with the great leap forward which is our life, but it also teases us with tiny details, observations of our strange, self-absorbed and quirky world views. It's comedy is surprising and observational. "Where the fuck is my future?" quips Maud Davy as she peers under our seats.

 

Jumping is "the tragic imperative". Each little observation adds up to an indefinable and charming representation of the joy and pain of jumping.

 

KATE HERBERT

La Traviata, By Australian Opera, 18 March 1995

 

By Giuseppe Verdi

At State Theatre, Melbourne Arts Centre

On March 18, 21, 24, 28, 31, April 8, 19, 22 1995

 

Sex, love, death and fabulous tunes; Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata has the lot and Elijah Moshinsky's production for the Australian Opera is lavish and enthralling. Our excellent State Orchestra is conducted expertly and tastefully by Carlo Felice Cillario.

 

This tragic-romantic tale is based on Alexandre Dumas' Lady of the Camellias and translates loosely as The Corrupted One.

 

In case you don't know the plot: beautiful but ailing floosy, Violetta, rages with the fast-set in decadent late-19th century Paris, falls in love with rich boy Alfredo and gives him up at his Papa's request only to be reunited with him on her consumptive deathbed where she has found peace and religion.

 

Gillian Sullivan sings Violetta impeccably, giving the role, both vocally and in performance, a dynamic range which balances the feisty courtesan with the fading beauty. Her dying aria was heart-wrenchingly beautiful and her duets with both Alfredo and his father were charming and the aria "Fors e' Lui" at the end of Act One was a virtuoso demonstration of her coloratura.

 

Tenor, Jorge Lopez-Yanez has a fine vocal quality and plays the love-sick Alfredo less as the ardent lover than as a callow and enchanted youth. Barry Anderson velvety baritone has the requisite strength for Alfredo's worldly and patriarchal Papa, although he concentrates on the voice in isolation from the performance and the stage relationships.

 

La Traviata is spectacle. The set design by Michael Yeargan echoes both the extravagance of the Parisian demi-monde and its high-class poverty. While Violetta's apartment in Act Three is grandly spartan in its simplicity, Flora's salon in the second act is gaspingly beautiful with its rich colours, Moorish style and darkly gypsy overtones. The lavish interiors force the crowd scenes forward so that the impression of a lurid, cramped and clamouring hot-bed of iniquity is palpable.

 

Kate Herbert

 

Assassins, MTC, 17 March 1995

 

 Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim & Book by John Weidman

By Melbourne Theatre Company

At Fairfax Studio, Melbourne Arts Centre, until April 1, 1995

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 17 March 1995. KH

 

Stephen Sondheim cannot write a bad musical; nor can he compose an ordinary melody nor construct a banal lyric. He deals exclusively in challenging ideas. Look at Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, and now, Assassins, which takes a pot shot at the men and women who have tried and / or succeeded in assassinating a U.S. president.

 

Roger Hodgman's MTC production is hilarious and challenging entertainment. The style is Brechtian, almost vaudeville. Sondheim calls it ‘revue’. The four-piece band was exceptional and Tony Tripp's shooting gallery design extremely evocative.

 

Presidential assassinations may seem a bizarre choice for a comic musical and, when it opened during the Gulf War, Assassins was criticised for trivialising the subject. In the flesh, it is a passionate piece; passionate about the deaths (everybody remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot) and deeply emotional about the pathetic lives of the killers and their warped motives.

 

The lyrics by Sondheim and book (by John Weidman) are an indictment of the unrealistic expectations raised by US hegemony that every boy can be President; "You can climb to any height." These assassins represent the outsiders, the losers. "We're the ones who can't get into the ballpark."

 

The cast was strong in both voice and performance. All were impeccably, some uncannily, cast by Hodgman.  Bruce Myles as Samuel Byck gives a beautifully textured performance with detailed and deeply touching monologues and John O'May as Lincoln 's assassin, with his rich and resonant voice, is a charismatic presence in the intimate space of the Fairfax.

 

This is a beauty. Seeit!

The Supper, Stable Productions, 26 Feb 1995

 

Written by Peter Sichrovsky

By Stable Productions

At Beckett Theatre, Malthouse Melbourne until March 18 1995

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 26 Feb 1995. KH

 

The Supper may be a play about the children of Jews and Nazis in Austria, but it does, surprisingly, have quite a few laughs to temper the traumatic recollections.

 

Erika (Julie Nihill) is daughter to a Nazi. Robert, (David Roberts) her husband-to-be and father of her baby, is son of concentration camp survivors. Having refused to meet during the four years of Erika and Robert's relationship, both paretal couples are coming for an obviously doomed dinner.

 

Sichrovsky's script is dense with ideas and the dialogue is fraught with traumatic references to the holocaust and the emotional games played by the couple. It is essentially an argument in which the two confront their differences instead of ignoring them.

 

This drama of words with a dark and strange comic edge, is not quite resolved by either of the two alternative endings. It does, however, weave into the preparations for "the arrival" (Act One) and into the "aftermath" (Act Two), an interesting debate on the risky issue of cross-cultural marriage and releasing past pain. It takes a circuitous path through persecution complex and victim mentality, reconciliation and revenge.  This reverberates incessantly in their relationship which almost recreates oppressive Nazi versus oppressed Jew.

 

The argument is powerful but somehow hamstrung by Erika being so dislikeable in her bitter, incoherent and, finally, violently abusive behaviour. It appears, at the very end, that their appalling behaviour may even be a regular pattern.

 

KATE HERBERT

 

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, MTC, Feb 1995

By Melbourne Theatre Company

At The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne until 25 March, 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert for The Melbourne Times. Reviewed late Feb 1995

 

We make of history what suits our politics and philosophy, even an earthly paradise – Arcady. Tom Stoppard's play, Arcadia, is impeccably crafted, perfectly structured, intelligent, witty and challenging. I cannot fault script, Simon Phillips production nor any individual performance.

 

In inimitable Stoppard fashion, Arcadia unravels a superb biographical-historical plot not unrelated to A.S. Byatt's novel, Possession.

 

He interweaves an aristocratic family of the late 18th century Romantic period of literature, painting, gardens and classical mathematics with the 20th century's literary criticism, computer technology and chaos theory.  The result is a mind-bending intersection of worlds charged with sex and conflict.

 

Two modern literary academics from polarised schools of academia meet at Sidley Hall. Lewis Fiander plays conservative, priggish snob, Bernard Nightingale in pursuit of Lord Byron while Helen Morse is the cool feminist, Hannah Jarvis, hunting for the more obscure Hermit of Sidley Hall.

 

History always eludes us. It is unscientific, as are natural phenomena and human nature. We cannot quantify it. The unpredictability is the rule, unlike quantum physics and relativity.

 

Under the mathematical tutelage of Byron's friend, Septimus Hodge (stylish, wickedly rakish Peter O'Brien), an inspired 18th century teenager (zesty Sarah Walker) stumbles upon a pre-computer version of Chaos Theory. Meanwhile various sexual liaisons are being played out and the 20th century theorists struggle to piece the jigsaw together.

 

In this story, as says twitty aristocrat Chloe (hilarious Sally Cooper) sex is the variable, the interferon. All the 20th century theory falls apart without knowledge of the personal details to which we are privy in the Romantic era flashbacks.

 

The play captures the "decline from thinking to feeling" which was the social norm after the Age of Reason. The Romantics created their own chaos as have the Chaos Theorists today. We discover that "everything you thought you knew, was wrong" both in life and in the drama.

 

The play is moving, passionate, analytical and inspired. It forces an audience to think, judge and feel. I could give you no greater recommendation.

 

KATE HERBERT

 

The Taking of Tiger Mountain by Strategy, NYID, 22 Feb 1995

 

By Not Yet It's Difficult- part of  series

At Theatreworks Wed - Sun until Feb 26, 1995

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 22 Feb 1995. KH

 

The Taking of Tiger Mountain by Strategy did not give us a chair. It shuffled us around the open Theatreworks space and we figured out where to sit on the floor for the best vantage point. This challenges the audience / performer relationship which needs a bit of rattling every now and then.

 

Director, David Pledger, is accessible in the space, talking to us, instructing. He is almost reading program notes at the beginning about the physical, mobile and participatory nature of the show and the Peking Opera tale which is the basis for this adaptation.  Meanwhile, the performers enact a series of exercises in Chinese mode.

 

The consciously self-conscious opening sequences give way to a more coherent and substantial dramatic form in the second half of this one-hour performance. (It is not a play.) The actors own commentaries are interpolated between fragments of the Tiger Mountain story with its Maoist propaganda.

 

Actors give a treatise on American Imperialism, the regimentation of classical ballet, gymnastic and military training, the repetitive process of which causes rigidity of thought. All these references, plus the witty representation of the Tiger Mountain battle, indirectly criticise the Maoist ideology, its violence and its propaganda machine. Taped snippets of the Chairman Mao exercises reverberate over the final scene, suggesting an insidious presence.

 

The vignettes from the deconstructed narrative are the strongest components of the production. Maud Davey, as always, is magnetic as a grieving mother, a chanting military leader, an interrogator. Kha Viet Tran's superbly controlled physicality and natural presence make him charismatic on stage. His Maoist soldier single-handedly attacking Tiger Mountain and its insurgents was a highlight.

 

Of course having no seating makes it, by force, theatre for the young, nimble and energetic. You wouldn't want to be disabled, old, sick or have a bad back - but it's only an hour.

 

KATE HERBERT

 

 

Al Andulus, by Hildegarde, Feb 1995

 

At Theatreworks 14 Acland St., St Kilda until March 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert for The Melbourne Times.

Reviewed Feb 1995

 

Amazing as it may sound, in the 10th century, a Jewish-Arabic community thrived in harmony in Spain until that Catholic red-neck racist, Queen Isabella, ejected them as heretics.

 

Al Andulus, devised by Hildegarde with David Wicks as director, celebrates this phenomenon with an "animated narrative". Three tragic love stories from the period are performed with flamenco-inspired movement and mediaeval songs which give an added emotional layer to the fragmented text. It is enhanced by an exotic floor design (Peter Long) in gold and jewel colours seems inspired by Byzantine mosaics and Persian rugs.

 

The atmosphere is charged with sexual and violent energy. The pulsating flamenco beat, the intense gaze (Angela Campbell's Scottish ancestors must have seen Spanish invaders!) the beating of sticks and feet on floor, hand on hand, and the interspersed songs from Spanish, Arabic and Sephardic Jewish origins, create an almost elemental atmosphere.

 

There were moments when, mesmerised by the rhythms, I lost the narrative which mattered little, the focus of the piece being on form rather than story or structure. The composite of vocal and percussive sound with symbolic and abstract storytelling is the core of Al-Andalus. The vocal canon with all five voices was memorable, but accolades go to the seraphic voice of countertenor, Hartley Newnham.

 

The cast demand our attention, demolishing the fourth wall with a full-frontal and sensual performance style. The men (Wade Beed, Charlie Powells) exude both power and vulnerability, the women (Angela Campbell , Bagryana Popov) are rare, wild and sensual figures with flashing eyes and swinging skirts.

 

The most powerful and evocative images were fluid sculptures such as the very erotic seduction and the horse-riding abduction. The piece could have used more of these imagistic representations, particularly in the third story, which lost some momentum. The form was in place by then and there were no surprises left.

 

Kate Herbert

 

Napier Street 1995, Article, 13 Feb 1995

Article about the evolving programme at Napier Street Theatre, South Melbourne in 1995.

 By Kate Herbert

 This article published in The Melbourne Times in Feb 1995.

 

"You can't just make a theatre. it's something that grows. It's organic," says Roderick Poole, Venue Manager for Napier Street Theatre. The South Melbourne venue has shed skins like a chameleon and its several lives echo through its present incarnation.

 

Lavish and grungy productions of European plays by Anthill Theatre resonate in every corner and colour our experience when we enter the space now. "There is a certain continuity," says Poole.

 

Each season is programmed by a committee comprising people from independent theatre organisations such as La Mama, $5 Theatre Company and the Fringe Network. There is definitely a style / taste factor governing selection.

 

Poole says, "There is a bias toward Australian work - not necessarily Australian-written but interpretations of European or other works".  Marriage Blanc is a Polish play in English with a lapsed-Anthill style.

 

In the upcoming program is, amongst other shows, new local scripts by Chameleon Theatre and Julie-Anne O'Brian and, in March, the long-awaited return of Crying in Public Places.

 

"Napier Street is a sacred space" he says", " like La Mama. Purpose-built theatres never have that feeling." These spaces have evolved after years of experimentation, countless layers of paint on walls, makeshift dressing rooms and innovative use of a non-traditional venue.

 

It is this very evolutionary process, the time-space continuum of theatres if you like,

which has brought Napier Street to where it is in 1995. This is its sixth six-month season since Anthill left to hasten its demise at The Gasworks two and a half years ago.

 

Poole describes the aims of the venue as essentially being "about giving a home to independent groups around Melbourne. There are a huge number of them, and the vast majority are not funded."

 

It is doing something which Fringe Network, with its open-door policy, does not do; it provides both quality control through its selection procedures and a well-equipped venue to artists.

 

"The number of people practising in the field has gone up," says Poole " and the level of funding in real terms has gone down. People have either been left high and dry or driven underground."

 

Poole describes Napier Street as "cheap, high profile, with a unique funding arrangement."

Unfunded independent groups pay $500 a week rental. for a 90-seat theatre, flexible seating, equipment and a couple of personnel.

 

"It means they can virtually do a show which costs them no money. Funded groups, which are in the minority, pay a larger amount." Poole calls it "a sort of cross-subsidy."

 

Of course, the venue also houses Arena Theatre which performs mostly in schools but programs 12 weeks in the theatre per year.  Arena had been managing the venue through its own Administrator but in 1994 the roles of company and venue were split.

 

"It has been a pattern," says Poole, " for theatre companies to separate themselves from their venues", as did Anthill and as Theatreworks has now done. "The venue can take energy from the work".

 

Certainly the quality of the Napier Street product has lifted since its inception. The program looks interesting, the public profile of the venue is excellent and nobody else is doing it. Vive l'Independence!

 

By Kate Herbert

Slick, Gry Day, 11 Feb 1995

Written & performed by Gary Day

At Beckett Theatre, Malthouse – Feb 1995 extended

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

This review published in The Melbourne Times after 11 Feb 1995

 

Go and see Slick. It is worth it. It opens with Gary Day jogging on the spot and the pace barely lets up for 70 minutes of this self-written monodrama. It leaves one breathless.

 

 Tim Burns is locked in the ugly embrace of his partner for life, The Demon Drink, or "Slick", as Tim ambivalently names the grog. He jogs to escape his wretched lot and to "click in" those fabulous endorphins to save his arse from snitching another drink.

 

Slick is everybody's addiction: alcohol, heroin. Slick's wife, Cigarette, completes the menage a' trois and Tim "goes down on her forty times a day." Slick is anthropomorphised, hiding in corners, jumping on Tim's back without warning. Slick is a sly and plausible rogue who convinced Tim at an early age that he made his life rosier, which he did - for a while.

 

 Day gives a muscular and riveting performance. His jittering, frenetic withdrawals are disturbing, his pain palpable. His reminiscences about childhood, to distract himself and to make some sense of his adult self, are hilarious and witty. Day's writing is pungent, permeated by the stench of weakness and loss. Even most of the poo jokes were funny.

 

Bruce Myles' vigorous and stylish direction enhances Day's muscular performance. Day's jittering, frenetic withdrawals are disturbing, his pain palpable. Day's writing is witty, pungent, permeated by the stench of weakness and loss. Even most of the poo jokes were funny.

 

The character's evolution felt truncated at the end. He finds some peace with his abandoned child, but we have not seen enough of the adult to know how far down the tube he has travelled. I wanted to know more of this tortured soul. I loved him by the end. I would have held his hand like Jenny, his childhood sweetheart did.

 

KATE HERBERT

Homage, 10 Feb 1995

 

 by Daniel Lillford

At La Mama at the Carlton Courthouse

Wednesday to Saturday 8.15pm Sunday 6pm until Feb 5, 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert 10 Feb 1995

For some unknown reason, I didn't write a review of this show but kept a short note. KH 

 

Homage is a fractured fairy-tale about tragic love and obsession.

With Nick Crawford-Smith and Simon McGuiness.

Mariage Blanc, Napier St Theatre, 8 Feb 1995

Written by Tadeusz Rozewicz

By The Mission

At Napier Street Theatre, South Melbourne

Until Feb 19, 1995 8pm Tuesday -Saturday

Reviewer: Kate Herbert early Feb 1995

This review published in The Melbourne Times after 8 Feb 1995. KH

 

The tail-end of Anthill meeting most of the $5 Theatre Company in new company, The Mission, was an exciting prospect for Melbourne Theatre.

 

The company's first production, Mariage Blanc (a Polish play, French name), has a strong cast and some striking ideas from director, Suzanne Chaundy, all of which augurs well for future projects.

 

The play is a product of the 70's "sexual revolution" as well as the political oppression and theatrical daring in Poland over recent decades. It is abstract, absurd and dark in its handling of sexual repression and awakening. Perhaps writer Tadeusz Rozewicz had read too much Freud or too much Timothy Leary.

 

It somehow felt too much like "Benny Hill goes to Poland." I have never been able to understand the European idea that incest and child / teenage sex is funny. Call me old-fashioned but Grandaddy (a wonderful cameo from Ian Scott) craving the adolescent's smelly stockings caused me to ponder the idiosyncrasies of humour and cultural perversity.

 

The second half tapped into something much darker and more challenging than the earlier sexual innuendo and childish sex play between the two juvenile sisters (Alice Garner, Nadia Coreno) one of whom is about to marry a complete stranger. Napier Street resounded with the clash of naivete against sexual robustness, of chastity with goaty old lust.

 

Suzanne Chaundy has come up with some terrific ideas which have, in part, been realised. Susan Bamford's resonant chanting gave an operatic richness and emotional texture to the play. It did, however, become a little predictable.

 

Symbols abounded: the lusty father in a bull's head, old buckets representing the bride's dowry, a toadstool shaped like a phallus, distressingly blood red walls and floor, tattered furniture. In fact there was such an overload of symbology they often seem unfulfilled, incoherent or unnecessary.

 

The production in the end has some very funny and challenging moments but its style feels fragmented as it flits from abstraction to near-naturalism to broad farce - and I got sick of the innuendo whatever its intention might be.

 

by Kate Herbert

 

Save Suvla Street by David Britton, 31 Jan 1995

At La Mama Wed -Sun until Feb 19, 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 31 Jan 1995

This review published in early Feb 1995 (in either The Melbourne Times or Herald Sun. Sorry, I don’t have the details now). KH

 

Just like the weird perfumier in Patrick Suskind's literary and olfactory novel, Perfume, I spent much of Save Suvla Street at La Mama obsessed with smells around me. My neighbour wore a cloying blend of frankincense and cigarette smoke, the woman in front exuded sweet French perfume, Carlton smelt of petrol and coffee.

 

This was not merely the result of a wandering mind but was stimulated by David Britton's solo character, Hilda Armitage, who stores her memories in jars filled with smells, stinks and aromas from her past: her husband's sweaty singlet, the bullocky scent of her first love Gunter, her daughter's lunch box. We even got to play "spot the pong" when she passed her "memories" around for sniffing.

 

The writing is swift, intelligent, witty, at times echoing almost forgotten Australian idiom then drifting into a timeless, lyrical language which creates an unexpected emotional layering to the text. Hilda is a feisty old bag with a crusade: to save her beloved home in Suvla Street from being bull-dozed and turned into a Hotel. She has called her neighbours (the audience) into her front yard (La Mama courtyard) to discuss the tragedy of a society which no longer values anything old, unless it's an antique. This includes old mums we are soon to discover.

Sue Jones works hard alone on stage for 90 minutes and there are many warm, funny and gently moving moments. She engages and entertains. Director, Catherine Hill, has taken the challenge of the monodrama, and drawn some charming moments from it.

 

The location in the La Mama courtyard was a great choice, if a shade risky during this balmy, wet January. Anna Borghese's set was evocative and attentive to the minutiae of an elderly woman's life.

 

Somehow the production, although generally entertaining, did not seem to penetrate the surface of a potentially intensely emotional piece. It was erratically paced and, at times, did not do justice to Britton's fine poetic language.

 

KATE HERBERT

Blabbermouth, adapted by Mary Morris from Morris Gleitzman, 25 Jan 1995

Adapted by Mary Morris from Morris Gleitzman's novel

By Melbourne Theatre Company & Arena Theatre

At George Fairfax Studio, Melbourne Arts Centre

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 25 Jan 1995

This review published in late Jan 1995 (in either The Melbourne Times or Herald Sun. Sorry, I don’t have the details now). KH

 

Let's face it! Kids are cruel. Just a lisp, a limp, a stammer an accent - instant victim material. When Rowena Batts (a surname designed for ridicule) arrives at a new school and can't talk "'cos she was born with missing bits from her throat", she is teased by the school bully, avoided by other girls and treated as a "community project" by her newfound friend.

 

Blabbermouth, adapted by Mary Morris from Morris Gleitzman's novel, is a play for kids 7ish upwards. It has the hallmark Gleitzman wickedness. Ro's dad is an embarrassment to her, wearing satin C & W shirts and singing Tammy Wynette songs.

 

Everybody is flawed, all are heightened versions of people we know and love - or loathe. The oafish, incompetent headmaster (Francis Greeenslade), the sympathetic schoolteacher (Sue Giles) and the kid who can't read (Carole Patullo). Some are hilarious caricatures. Mrs. Granger (Sue Giles) doles out Cheezels one at a time and the entire Peck family are Def Metal head-bangers.

 

The audience loved the cruel and the gross in the story. When Darren Peck the bully has a frog stuffed in his mouth - twice - everybody squirmed and howled in delight. However, it is Rowena (Frances O'Connor) learning to assert herself with friends, community and father and discovering something of tact and tolerance herself which provides the core of the story.

 

The direction is lively and physical, musician/singer, Tom Lycos, adds another dimension and the whole company gives gutsy, comic performances of an astounding number of characters. Patullo, Giles and Greenslade scamper on and off, each with three or four hilarious roles. O'Connor is delightfully impish as Rowena and Danny Nash as her lovable, oafish dad is charming.

 

You can still catch it after school holidays at 6.30 pm. Early dinner, late to bed.

 

KATE HERBERT