Decoupage Skin by Michelle Griffiths, May 25, 2005

Decoupage Skin  by Michael Griffith

La Mama, from May 25, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 25, 2005

Both writing and performing a solo play are enormous challenges. Decoupage Skin, written by Michael Griffith, is only partially successful on both counts.

Jennifer Andersen plays Helen, a woman married with two children. We see her anxiously awaiting the return of her husband and sons after a soccer game.

As she waits Helen addresses the audience directly, almost conversationally, as if she is peeling back the layers of her skin, revealing for us the underlying flaws or truth.

Helen's decoupage or cut out collage skin cover is not complete. It has cracks and peeling edges.

Griffith writes Helen as a woman living a veiled, even disguised existence, an uneventful life that she wishes to be more dramatic, even tragic.

She secretly hopes that her entire family is killed in a car crash on the way home from soccer. She reveals that, in spite of her inability to grieve over her youthful abortion, she faked grief, tears and even her subsequent mental breakdown.

As a seemingly harmless and trustworthy teenager, she was secretly a thief and a compulsive liar. As an adult she fantasises about leaving polaroids of her genitals secreted amongst the frozen foods in the supermarket.

Helen is clearly troubled but manages to live a superficially normal life shielded by her capacity for lying.

Barbara Ciszewska, directs Andersen's performance in and around a contraption shaped like the inner framework of a huge crinoline.

 Those sections placed inside the frame are the most effective. When she runs or stands outside it the space is cramped and Andersen's movement awkward and constrained.

Griffith's writing has some witty observations and interesting moments but the dialogue is often uncomfortable and the through line of the narrative incoherent. The character becomes muddled and the intention unclear.

Andersen engages the audience often but there is a disconcerting shrillness to the performance that keeps reminding us that is an actor, not a character we are witnessing. There is little emotional connection with Helen. In fact, Griffith paints her as a rather dislikeable person.

 Decoupage Skin is not without merit but the various components of the piece does not quite make an effective whole.

By Kate Herbert

The Room by Raimondo Cortese, May 24, 2005

The Room by Raimondo Cortese

The Store Room, May 24 to  June 12, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 24, 2005

In The Room by Raimondo Cortese, Greg Ulfan plays a man alone in a claustrophobic room. He struggles to understand the world outside his room and the increasingly confusing world inside his own head.

The script and Ulfan's performance are both disturbing and comical. The man's erratic behaviour and rapid shifts between unrelated topics are clearly the signatures of a fractured mental state.

However, they are often so absurd and sudden that we laugh as we might catch ourselves laughing inappropriately at the antics of a drunk on the street.

The man's predicament and obsessions are both grim and absurd. He awaits the postman, surrounded by scattered sheets of paper he has, perhaps, previously filled with his own scribblings.

He expects a letter or a visit from a mythical "General" whose invitation he will refuse.

He reminisces about times when he did leave his jail-like room and walk the litter strewn streets, drinking in bars, entering shops, compulsively collecting useless objects.

He pines for "The Angel," the woman he lived with and battled with for years.

The play references, to some degree, Samuel Beckett's play, Krapp's Last Tapes: an isolated man contends with his past and himself.

Cortese's writing is poetic and dense and the Man's speech is formalised and colourful rather than conversational.

Ulfan is compelling in the role. His dark, brooding intensity suits this quirky and volatile figure. He plays with the dialogue, using the voice to heighten the fractious and fractured thought patterns of the man.

Ulfan with director, Ben Harkin, developed this version of The Room. In the tiny enclosed space of The Store Room one feels the claustrophobic state of the Man's mind.

The design (Luke Pithar) is sparse and effective, creating with a few boxes, papers and frames a sense of a hollow oppressive space. Almost inaudible and distant sound (Kelly Ryall) adds an eerie quality.

Efterpi Soropos' lighting is dramatic and isolates areas of the stage that, in turn, isolate the man.

Although this is not one of Cortese's major works, it is definitely an interesting exploration of the machinations of mental illness.

By Kate Herbert 

The Room by Raimondo Cortese, May 24, 2005

The Store Room, May 24 to  June 12, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on May 24, 2005

In The Room by Raimondo Cortese, Greg Ulfan plays a man alone in a claustrophobic room. He struggles to understand the world outside his room and the increasingly confusing world inside his own head.

The script and Ulfan's performance are both disturbing and comical. The man's erratic behaviour and rapid shifts between unrelated topics are clearly the signatures of a fractured mental state.

However, they are often so absurd and sudden that we laugh as we might catch ourselves laughing inappropriately at the antics of a drunk on the street.

The man's predicament and obsessions are both grim and absurd. He awaits the postman, surrounded by scattered sheets of paper he has, perhaps, previously filled with his own scribblings.

He expects a letter or a visit from a mythical "General" whose invitation he will refuse.

He reminisces about times when he did leave his jail-like room and walk the litter strewn streets, drinking in bars, entering shops, compulsively collecting useless objects.

He pines for "The Angel," the woman he lived with and battled with for years.

The play references, to some degree, Samuel Beckett's play, Krapp's Last Tapes: an isolated man contends with his past and himself.

Cortese's writing is poetic and dense and the Man's speech is formalised and colourful rather than conversational.

Ulfan is compelling in the role. His dark, brooding intensity suits this quirky and volatile figure. He plays with the dialogue, using the voice to heighten the fractious and fractured thought patterns of the man.

Ulfan with director, Ben Harkin, developed this version of The Room. In the tiny enclosed space of The Store Room one feels the claustrophobic state of the Man's mind.

The design (Luke Pithar) is sparse and effective, creating with a few boxes, papers and frames a sense of a hollow oppressive space. Almost inaudible and distant sound (Kelly Ryall) adds an eerie quality.

Efterpi Soropos' lighting is dramatic and isolates areas of the stage that, in turn, isolate the man.

Although this is not one of Cortese's major works, it is definitely an interesting exploration of the machinations of mental illness.

By Kate Herbert 

Naming Rights (family matters), May 19, 2005

Naming Rights (family matters)
 By Meg Courtney, Chris Howlett & Xan Colman Dancing with Strangers

150-156 Dante's, Gertrude St, Fitzroy, May 19 to May 28, , 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on may 19, 2005

Small theatre company, Dancing with Strangers, presents three new, short plays in its season, Naming Rights (family matters). They have varying degrees of success.

The most effective is Plum, written by Xan Colman (OK) and directed by Rochelle Whyte. The style is abstracted and formalistic with the entire ten-minute dialogue being repeated in every detail.

The effect is to heighten the dilemma of this young couple, Jack (Sam Davison OK) and Kate (Mikaela Martin OK), who we surmise are anxiously awaiting an appointment for a pregnancy termination.

The repetition also clarifies the situations of their off-stage friends, one lesbian couple having a baby and the male gay couple who has assisted them in the conception.

There is little emotional engagement in the piece but the actors are competent and the direction exploratory. There is an effective sense of urgency in the dialogue and a restrained panic in the characters.

Turn, written by Meg Courtney and directed by Bruce Hughes, tackles the delicate subject of an adult daughter (Sharon Kershaw) managing her changing relationship with her mother (Marie-Therese Byrne) who has a debilitating stroke.

Although the issues are important, the play has too many short scenes and too little dramatic or character development of character.

The daughter acts as narrator which disallows any real communication between characters, the mother is shrill and unengaging and the father (Ian Rooney) is almost invisible.

The final play is the least successful. Lucy Devil Has Wealth Syndrome, written by Chris Howlett and directed by Justin Murray, is a parody of a soap opera but without the acerbic quality or cunning detail of Desperate Housewives.

Lucy Devil (Nicola Alexopoulos) is a fading starlet suffering Wealth Syndrome, a mythical illness caused by too much wealth. Her agent (Michael Cooney) and her assistant (Sophie Good) are conspiring to rip her off but Lucy prefers their dubious attentions to that of her sister (Liza Kennedy).

This piece feels like an undergraduate review with limited acting skill, clunky dialogue and unimaginative direction.

One of the highlights of the productions is the inventive lighting by Richard Vabre. Who uses a few lamps and colours to create atmosphere.

By Kate Herbert

Savage Grace, May 18, 2005

Savage Grace by Alana Valentine 

Steamworks Arts Productions & La Mama

La Mama  May 18 until June 5, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The argument over euthanasia is heated, emotional and exhausting. In the hothouse environment of Alana Valentine's play, Savage Grace, the issues are personalised in an unexpected way.

The argument between the two characters in the play is about the right of a young AIDS victim to choose when he will die and the responsibility of his doctor to assist him.

We never meet the young man, Jeremy, but his case is represented by his doctor, Tex, (Gibson Nolte) a youthful American medico who is under suspicion of assisting deaths in his hospital.

Tex is compelled to attend a series of sessions with a medical ethicist, Robert Bavarro (Humphrey Bower).

The plot leads us into the murky territory of religion and faith, humanism and choice, death and hope.

Valentine's story takes some surprising turns that intensify the tangle of issues to be dealt with by these two men from such differing ethical and social perspectives.

Robert is a cool debater, a philosopher who tries to remain detached and professional in his sessions with Tex but who finds himself being antagonised and baited by the hostile young doctor who is on a quest.

What complicates their professional meetings is that Tex starts flirting with Robert. Both men are single and gay and, despite being polar opposites, they are attracted to each other.

Once sex and intimacy interfere in their heated but rational debate, al bets are off and each seems driven to corral the other into his own belief structure.

Robert sees Tex as "casually assisting death" and defying God's own plan. Tex vies Robert as a ivory tower intellectual and snob who uses his version of faith to justify ignoring the pain of the victims of grave illness.

Bower manages to find charm in the supercilious and almost dislikeable Robert.

Is maddening rationality is credible for such an academic.

As Tex, Gilmore vibrates with a barely contained anxiety and energy, his passion for his patients equalling his delight in flirting with Robert and causing him  discomfort.

The spare light and set design (Andrew Lake) and economical and intelligent direction by Sally Richardson make this a compelling piece of theatre.

By Kate Herbert

Through the Wire by Ros Horin, May 11, 2005

Through the Wire by Ros Horin 

Performing Lines & Melbourne Theatre Company

Grant Street Theatre  May 11 to  22, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on   May 11, 2005

Through the Wire, written and directed imaginatively by Ros Horin, is the next in a growing list of plays about asylum seekers in Australia - and perhaps the best so far.

The play is composed from verbatim transcripts of interviews with refugees from Iran and Iraq. One of these refugees, Shahin Shafaei,  an Iranian playwright and actor, plays himself on stage.

This production is compelling because of the richness and authenticity of the stories it tells. Like other plays on this topic, it puts a face to the refugee and enables even sceptics to feel a connection to the victims of our detention centres.

This is nto to suggest that Through the Wire is emotionally manipulative. The play is quite restrained in its style.

The frequent direct address to audience and viewing of the horrors with hindsight, provides some Brechtian distance. This allows us to view the stories compassionately, but rationally.

The focus is on four men in detention and three women who befriend them.

Shahin, we hear, was banned from writing plays or performing in theatre but, when Iranian authorities discovered that one of his plays was being performed in a university show, his life was at risk.

He fell in love with, and still lives with, Gaby, (Eloise Oxer) a young detention centre guard.

Farshid, (Wadih Dona) discovered a plot to poison a prominent a young Iranian and his life was at risk. His mistake was to believe that being honest and telling authorities in Australia that his New Zealand passport was false would work in his favour.

Mohsen (Ali Ammouchi OK) was a whistleblower on judicial corruption in a court case regarding an intelligence officer and therefore under threat. He was befriended and supported by Suzanne, (Rhondda Findleton OK) a psychotherapist who took his desperate phne calls day and night.

The fourth man, Rami, (Hazem Shamas OK) was not even politically active. While doing work experience as a concierge in a five-star hotel, he went against authorities' directives by giving directions to a restaurant to a Westerner during the period of UN weapons inspection. 

Rami's comrade was a woman of Jewish-South African background. His panic and despair was assuaged to some extent by her concern and love.

Heide Riederer's design provides a marvellously spare and abstract set of metal bars and cyclone wire cages. Live music by Jamal Alrakabi not only evokes the Middle East but provides a vivid soundscape to these remarkable tales.

By Kate Herbert

Fool for Love by Sam Shepard, May 4, 2005

Fool for Love by Sam Shepard

 Trades Hall, Council Chambers  May4 to 2, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Fool for Love is a superbly crafted short play. The narrative unfolds seamlessly, the characters are compelling and the denouement shocking.

Sam Shepard's play is set in a Southern US desert state. In an isolated motel, May, (Karen Day) a young woman working as a cook, is reunited with Eddie, (Joe Clements) a rodeo cowboy she knows form high school.

There past and the nature of their relationship is mysterious but obviously fraught with rage and intimate secrets.

Into this tightly wound situation between Eddie and May comes poor, gormless Martin, (Peter Heward) May's doting date for the evening. The progressively drunker and wilder Eddie taunts Martin with outrageous stories  of Eddie's past with May.

This is witnessed by an old man (Bruce Kerr) seated in a rocking chair on the verandah and swigging whisky. At first he appears to be unseen and later he is a ghost from the past.

Fool for Love is a passionate, menacing play built around a dysfunctional relationship.

Clements is a potent presence, making Eddie primitive and threatening, a raw, violent cowboy with no hidden heart of gold. He gives Eddie an animal energy, both repellent and sexual.

As the overwhelmed and desperate May, Day moves between powerless victim one minute and screaming harpy the next.

The balance of power between the pair shifts constantly and the stage is a dangerous and sexy place.

As the hapless Martin, Heward is absolutely credible and Kerr is a potent counterpoint and commentator as the old man.

Gorken Acaroglu (OK) directs the play with a firm hand, keeping the pace rapid, the energy high and the passion turned up to full.

At times, in the first half, there is too much shouting and the performance is too much on one note, but the second half find a more balanced level of impassioned performance.

Shepard is relentless, grim, rich in imagery of the dusty heat of the remote desert and this production a fine example of his style.

By Kate Herbert

Playing the Victim, by The Presnyakov Brothers, April 29, 2005

Playing the Victim 

By The Presnyakov Brothers translated by Sasha Dugdale 

Red Stitch Actors Theatre

Red Stitch, Rear 2 Chapel St, St. Kilda, April 29 until May 21, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on April 29 , 2005

Playing the Victim, by The Russian Presnyakov Brothers, is like a satirical version of current Crime Scene Investigation television shows.

A laconic young man called Valya, (Angus Sampson) has a job playing the role of victims in the reconstruction of violent crimes. Running the investigations is the disillusioned Inspector Shnurov (Jim Daly) assisted by his doting Constable, Lyuda, (Olga Makeeva) and lackadaisical Sergeant, Seva (Anthony Rive).

The TV show parallel is obvious. The play begins with a screenwriter (Glenn Perry) meeting his director (Rive) to discuss the very same scenario of a man playing the victim. The series of bizarre crime reconstructions follow.

Director, Alex Menglet, accentuates the absurdity of the writers' style and the grim comical elements. This has the edge of a contemporary Chekhov play without the poignant characters and tragic inflections.

There are some really delightful scenes such as Valya's father and mother (Daly, Makeeva) giggling in their bed.

Sampson revels in Valya's cheeky diversionary antics and rambling monologues such as the rave about urine and Russian toilets. His distinctive rhythm and delivery blends well with this quirky character whose main objective is to avoid doing things he does not like such as dishes or swimming.

There are times when the ensemble seems uncertain or uncomfortable in the style but the play is definitely entertaining with its mad, grim humour.

Daly, as the Police Inspector, diverges hilariously from his task to solve the crime to bemoan the behaviour of the younger generation and the ailing performance of his football team.

A mysterious waitress in Japanese restaurant (Verity Charlton) dances and sings a peculiar version of Madam Butterfly story.

A criminal (Tomek Koman) struggles to explain how he stayed underwater to drown his victim. Another (Perry) escapes when the coppers forget he is in the toilet.

The little Red Stitch space is cunningly designed by Tomek Koman with a few simple items to locate scenes: two wooden chairs, a strip of lino as a swimming pool, a barn door as a café kitchen and an orange blanket as a bed.

The Presnyakovs' script is strange and funny but leaves us unmoved. The most entertainment comes from Sampson's shambling and ironical observations as Valya.

By Kate Herbert

Monologues by Asa Gim Palomera, April 28, 2005

Monologues  by Asa Gim Palomera 

Women of Asia

 Chapel off Chapel, April 28 to May 7, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on April 28, 2005

It is heartening to see a stage filled with so many Asian women in Monologues, by Asa Gim Palomera.

Six women of diverse Asian backgrounds, plus two from Mediterranean cultures, perform a series of vignettes about the various predicaments of women from Asia.

All are based on true stories an were originally part of a larger project called Women in Asia.

The women are all versatile and skilful performers, both physically and vocally. Director, Asa Gim Palomera, underlines the emotional dialogue with abstract and evocative choreography.

Some of the characters are comic while others are grim and disturbing. Many depict the women in their role as sexual objects or as abused by or subservient to men or to other women.

Strangely, the stereotypes of Asian women are reinforced in many stories, although the reasons for such stereotypes are investigated to some degree.

In Virgin Sale, (Shireen Morris, Kaori Hamamoto, Janette Hoe)  an 11 year old girl is sold into prostitution by her parents and lives a life of sordid sexual exploitation.

S.S.S. - Retired Prostitute (Janette Hoe, Shireen Morris) depicts a young woman who uses sexual wiles to manipulate the 2,000 men she "loves'.

A more disturbing tale is The Dowry, (Mandi Sebasio-Ong, Shireen Morris, Daniela Lucchetti about an Indian bride who is abused and starved by her mother-in-law.

Milking Madam Butterfly (Yet Again) features an opera diva (Shireen Morris) commenting ironically upon the tragedy of Puccini's Madam Butterfly, a victim of her own dreams.

An overtly tragic story is Japanese Medea, (Miki Oikawa, Diane Stathis OK).

A young Japanese mother, isolated, humiliated and finally abandoned by her husband, drowns her children.

Woman on Top changes the pace. The wife of an Asian Prime Minister (Kathleen Baguio OK) revels in the wealth and power she has bought with her marriage.

Two comedies involve food and marriage. An Italian woman, (Stathis) married to a Japanese, bemoans the meagre portions of food in Japan. Then a Japanese wife (Oikawa) of an Aussie bloke, appears docile but uses commando-like tactics to compel her man to eat seaweed and rice.

There is a little too much emphasis on Asian women as victims and the finale of naked women grasping at kimonos in the half-darkness, was confusing and awkward.

However, Monologues is lush, entertaining, challenging and passionately performed and directed.

By Kate Herbert

Smashed by Lally Katz , April 27, 2005

Smashed  by Lally Katz 

Store Room, April 27 to May 15, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on April 27, 2005

Two enchanting features of the production of Smashed are the magnetic performances (Katherine Tonkin, Suzannah McDonald) and the magical set design (Rainbow Sweeney).

Lally Katz's play revolves around two teenage girls and begins with Hazel (McDonald) lying prone in Ruby's arms (Tonkin).

Something horrid, they tell us, has just happened but they postpone their inevitable confrontation of this awful experience.

The pair retreat into their common past: their childhood, adolescence and budding maturity. They even tilt time to drift into 'memories' of their unlived futures.

Katz's script bends time as the girls comment upon or relive their experiences.

The two young women play out this entire series of fantasies and memories amongst a miniature set built of dolls' houses.

They tower over the buildings like giant angels walking through an unwitting city.

They relive their intimate childhood games, dancing to pop songs, discovering Hazel's mother is ill, their first kiss and sitting bored in Hazel's bedroom.

They creep back to the demolition yard where they make up stories about the redneck owners. They walk through the countryside, remembering a hill or a lake then they go for a drive in hazel's mother's car, singing at the top of their lungs.

Many elements of the text are successful. The notions of time and matter, love and friendship, memory and reality, loss and grief, create some interesting material, particularly in the first half.

However, the ideas, form and language run out of steam in the second half. The dialogue becomes overly poetic and the themes are repeated.

What makes the show work well is the lyrical direction of Clare Watson and the particularly compelling performances of Tonkin and McDonald. The pair are as unalike as black and white.

Tonkin is dark, statuesque and smouldering while McDonald is tiny, pert and blond and absolutely luminous.

The two accomplished young actors have enormous range and skill both vocally and physically.

Although it is not spoken in the play, it is obvious to us from the outset that hazel has died and Ruby is grieving. What we do not know until the end is how this horror occurred.

By Kate Herbert

Journal of the Plague Year by Tom Wright, April 19, 2005

 Journal of the Plague Year by Tom Wright
Adapted from Daniel Defoe, by Malthouse Theatre

Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse  April 19 to May 8, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Journal of the Plague Year is a series of theatrical images, often inspired, exploring a year in the bubonic plague ridden London.

Defoe's fabricated journal of a man living the year 1665, is the foundation for Tom Wright's vividly composed text. The book is a pseudo-documentary and the voice of its central character becomes the narrator, a man who is witness to, and survivor of, the plague year.

The narration, by Robert Menzies, is the thread upon which the images of the plague are strung.

The production is a grim but often comic vision that combines the grotesque style with the vaudevillian.

Director, Michael Kantor, allows the gruesome realities of the plague to collide with the music, commentary, style and, perhaps most significantly, the hindsight, of the present.

It incorporates slapstick, satirical dialogue and slabs of text from Defoe. These weighty and awkward tracts of text are the weakest element of the production.

Printed titles, in the style of Victorian melodrama, introduce the horrors of each new month of the Plague Year.

Kantor uses a powerful and consistent theatricality. With one startling image following another.

A disembodied hands grasp at a dying man, huge balloons inflate overhead with an ominous hissing, a group of dissolute aristocrats fan themselves on a balcony (Ross Williams, Julie Forsyth, Marta Dusseldorp), a demented doomsayer shouts prophecies. (Mathew Whittet)

A leather-masked man (Dan Spielman) disposes of bodies in a yawning pit, ghoulish skull masks cavort through the streets and a giant rubber head appears over a fairground.

The atmospheric quality of the play provides a provocative and disturbing depiction of the plagued city.

The Dance of Death, typical of the bubonic plague victim, is distressingly portrayed in the convulsive death of a young woman. (Lucy Taylor)

The ensemble is compelling as they balance cruelty and comedy. Their awkward twitching bodies, white faces, blackened eyes, inky stained costumes and naked limbs give an awful sense of humanity stripped bare in a city laid waste.

Paul Jackson's lighting creates a complex, sculptural landscape with Anna Tregloan's constantly moving physical design. Max Lyandvert's live music blends an evocative soundscape with anachronistic contemporary songs.

This is a bold and irreverent production that augurs well for the new Malthouse.

By Kate Herbert

Two Brothers by Hannie Rayson, April 13, 2005

 Two Brothers by Hannie Rayson 
Melbourne Theatre Company

 Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, from April 13, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on April 13, 2005

Although the brawling brothers in Hannie Rayson's play are not the Costellos, there is a passing jocular reference to those real brothers who sit on opposite sides of the political fence.

Two Brothers makes its socio-political attitude crystal clear: Australia has done a great disservice to its refugees with its Pacific Solution and introduction of Temporary Protection Visas.

Brother number one, James "Eggs" Benedict (Garry McDonald) is a conservative politician, the Minister for Home Security who aspires to be Prime Minister.

His brother, Tom, (Nicholas Eadie) is a socialist human rights activist and lawyer working with an Aid agency for asylum seekers.

In the first half, the story is more credible and politically accurate. As Eggs' corruption and ambition escalates on a Macbethian scale, so the story deteriorates into an unbelievable soap opera.

The opening scenes zip along at a rapid pace. Relationships and characters are introduced swiftly, although with limited depth. The narrative was compelling, the jokes frequent and clever and the audience greatly entertained.

Director, Simon Phillips, uses a revolving stage to move quickly and effectively between the short and lively scenes. Dialogue is witty and credible in the first half.

An Iraqi refugee, Hazem Al Ayad, (Rodney Afif) is a client of Tom's and a survivor of the sinking of an Indonesian people smuggling boat on Christmas Day. His entire family drowned and Tom attempts to obtain residency for him.

The pivot of the story is that Eggs is responsible for an Australian Navy boat not saving the refugees. All this is complicated by the fact that Eggs' son, Lachlan (Ben Lawson), was a Gunnery Officer on the ship.

It is difficult to engage with the characters in the second half because of the chaotic and unrealistic situation. The dialogue becomes didactic and characters become ciphers for the play's political statement. Eggs and his assistant, Jamie (Caroline Brazier), become two-dimensional emotional thugs.

The performances are strong from the entire cast, particularly from the leads, Eadie and McDonald and from Afif as the passionate Hazem. Strangely, Hazem is the most believable and certainly the most sympathetic.

The stark chrome and glass design (Stephen Curtis) reflects the steely coldness of the plot and is lit effectively by Nick Schlieper.

A new play inevitably has some glitches. Although Two Brothers is entertaining, its narrative and dialogue need some reworking to give it the punch this topic warrants.

By Kate Herbert

Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story, April 12, 2005

 Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story 

Book, Lyrics and Music by Stephen Dolginoff

Theatreworks, 14a Acland St. St. Kilda, April 12 to 23, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The story of Leopold and Loeb, two teenage killers, shocked America in 1924 and entered US crime history.

American writer of musicals, Stephen Dolginoff, transforms this tale of murder, homosexuality, obsession and thrill seeking into a fascinating and disturbing musical for two men.

Two wealthy, educated and intelligent 19 year olds, Richard Loeb (Adrian Corbett) and Nathan Leopold (Nathan Butler) kidnapped and murdered a 14 year old boy in Chicago. They were caught and imprisoned for life plus 99 years.

Most of the details of the story are cleverly woven into the lyrics of the 15 songs. The rest is in the narration provided by Nathan Leopold, 35 years after the crime, as he addresses the Parole Board.

Butler and Corbett are appropriately cast as the two boys who seem such unlikely candidates for the horror they perpetrate.

This is an unusual story for a musical but it is strangely effective and affecting. It is not harrowing to watch but there are some distressing revelations in the story.

Dolginoff's songs draw on classic musical form and the music underscores the dialogue.

Pianist, Vicki Jacobs, the only musician on stage, brings passion and skill to the score.

 One drawback with the music is that the songs sound too much alike with repetitive tunes and little variety in style

However, the songs are well sung by Corbett and Butler who both have clear, bright voices that blend tunefully in their duets, particularly in the impassioned My Glasses/Just Lay Low.

The staging is sparse with only a couple of boxes and a single chair on stage. Director, Martin Croft, keeps the action simple and the focus on the characters, relationships and songs.

Cunning lighting by Katelyn B., (OK) closes the cavernous space to create discrete and intimate locations for the scenes.

Leopold and Loeb were lovers at High School who reunited before beginning Law School. Loeb was bisexual and charming. He manipulated the lovelorn Leopold to be his accomplice in a crime spree, seducing Leopold into a sexual contract written in blood.

Loeb became obsessed with Nietsche and believed that he and Leopold were superior men who could outwit anyone. He was wrong.  

This volatile fusion of compulsions led the pair to the kidnap and murder.

The show is diverting and capably performed with a very satisfying twist at the end.

By Kate Herbert

Mannix by Rod Quantock, April 8, 2005

 Mannix by Rod Quantock  

 Kingston Arts Centre, April 8 to 10, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert on April 8

Dr. Daniel Mannix was the controversial Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne from 1913 until his death at 99 years in 1963.

Mannix was an intelligent, fiercely independent and vocal Irishman, a spokesman for the underclass, the workers. His constituents were the Irish Catholics of Melbourne who, early in the 20^th century, were still considered dangerous outcasts.

Rod Quantock uses as research for this one-man show, performed by Terence Donovan, the early period of Mannix's reign.

Donovan plays Mannix as well as the feisty Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, and several other characters of the period.

This intimate and small scale play begins with Donovan playing a 10-year-old naïve and poverty-stricken Irish Catholic boy who witnessed the arrival of Mannix in Melbourne in 1913.

Through they eyes of this child, we hear of Mannix's compassion, generosity and fortitude. The Doc, as he became known, tried to follow the motto he assumed on ordination as a Bishop: "All things to all men."

Quantock's script is a series of monologues direct to audience, recorded quotes from the Argus of the time and of Mannix's critics and some delightful Irish ballads sung live by Donovan in a warm and sweet voice

Donovan portrays the dignified Mannix at the pulpit and in the street. He rails against injustice and speaks out, to his detriment, against Hughes' planned referendum on Conscription during The Great War.

Mannix's efforts attracted enormous criticism and paranoia. He was called "belligerent" and "provocative" and then accused of being associated with "reckless extremists, pacifists and pro-Germans.".

 Mannix became the target of every bigot in the country - but he marched on relentlessly with his quest for fairness.

Donovan plays Mannix with warmth and his opponents with a gentle criticism. Although he was a little under-rehearsed on opening night, the show has legs.

Quantock wisely chose a short time span of Mannix's career on which to focus. The verbatim speeches and quotations are effective in telling his story and expanding our understanding of the man.

The show leaves us wanting more. In its next incarnation, the play could expand further on Mannix's dynamic and forthright personality, the characters around him and the view of the Australian press of this historic figure.

By Kate Herbert 

By Night We Tremble by Susan Alexopoulos, Feb 24, 2005

  By Night We Tremble  by Susan Alexopoulos 

 La Mama, Feb 24 to March 13, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

It seems safe to assume that By Night We Tremble is based in the personal experience of the writer, Susan Alexopoulos.

The story is told from the point of view of a young woman (Alexopoulos) who, for the first time in her short but colourful love life, is dumped by her lover. (Tim Stitz)

The style is abstract and absurd and is written in an almost stream of consciousness style. It is an outpouring of grief and pain about loss of love.

It is more successful theatrically when it does not take itself seriously. Much of the time the dialogue is indulgent and immerses itself in platitudes and introspection that have little theatrical impact.

Two other actors portray the young woman's mother (Georgina Capper) and father (Stitz) but they also shift into playing the young woman and her lover.

Capper is quirky as the young woman's mother and suitably provocative as the young woman in love.

The direction (Julie Waddington & Thomas Papathanassiou OK) provides some imaginative physical representations of the sexual antics of the young lovers both in love and in separation.

The broad caricatures of mum and dad become repetitive and smack of the 1950s. Both parents live in a state of rage at the loss of their youth and sexuality and loss of control over their recalcitrant daughter.

Dad wears a daggy, old cardigan and constantly sprays a can of Air deodoriser. Mum wears an apron made of mothballs and her despair drives her to continually throttles.

Their aim is to make their daughter grow up to be sensible and responsible, just as they have had to do

The entertaining moments come with the inermittent sardonic reflections on the uncontrollable behaviour of those who are left by lovers.

The young woman comically bemoans the fact that she succumbed to begging her partner to stay, a behaviour that she always loathed in others.

"Loneliness is a great repellent," the actors intone ironically and repeatedly.

Lighting designed by Peter Heward provides an evocative atmosphere of murky blues and mauves.

The show is underscored with eclectic music including an impassioned tango.

There are certainly some interesting images and ideas in At Night We Tremble. but in the end, it feels less like theatre and more like private therapeutic  writings.

By Kate Herbert

Necessary Targets by Eve Ensler, March 22, 2005

Necessary Targets by Eve Ensler 

 CUB Malthouse, March 22 until April 10, 2005

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The horror of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia is brought home to us again in Necessary Targets, a play by Eve Ensler.

It is a moving, chastening and at times funny play that penetrates beneath the surface of statistics and horror stories, revealing the humanity of the survivors. 

Although both men and women suffered in this conflict, it is the women who are the focus. It is a story about not only the Bosnian women but about the two American therapists who travel to Bosnia to work with traumatized female victims of war.

J.S. (Vivienne Garret) is a psychiatrist who is out of her depth with war trauma. She wears Christian Dior in a war zone.  Her initial, comically patronising attempts to engage the women in arm's length psychotherapeutic sessions fall flat. When she engages with and feels for them, she is far more successful.

In competition with J.S. is Melissa, (Caitlin Beresford-Ord) a tough young woman counsellor experienced in war trauma but who is more concerned with recording the women's stories to include in her new book than with genuinely helping them.

Ensler highlights the ordinariness of the women who are damaged by war. It could be one of us. Their homes, families, work and play are destroyed by the conflict.

The diversity of the Bosnian women reflects how the war impacted on all levels of society.

Zlata ( Rosie Lalevich) is a successful and wealthy paediatrician who is vehemently opposed to these American outsiders pillaging the women's hearts and minds.

Nuna (Bojana Novakovic) is a youthful girl, interested in fashion, music and having fun. Jelena ( Danielle Antaki) is boisterous and cheerful despite the violence she experiences at home by her husband.

The oldest woman is Azra, (Jill Mc Kay) a farmer who pines for her cow and wishes to be buried on her farm.

Each woman slowly and unobtrusively reveals her own harrowing story but it is Seada (Kym Vercoe) whose story is the climax of the play. Seada carries a bundle of rags that she treats as a baby. Her denial and disassociation are painful to witness. The cruel revelation of her story is achingly tragic.

Pete Nettell directs the play with a deft hand using a multi-purpose and spare set design by Wayne Harris. Recorded Slavic music and dim lighting evoke an exotic but dangerous atmosphere.

The cast is all capable but several performances stand out. Lalevich as the indignant Zlata is a potent presence and Antaki is delightful as the drunken Jelena. Novakovic, as Nuna, is charming and joyful. But it is Vercoe's moment of revelation as Seada that breaks our hearts.

By Kate Herbert