Brigadoon, Oct 28, 2017 ****

Book & Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, Music by Frederick Loewe 

By The Production Company 
At State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, until Nov 5, 2017
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Sat Oct 28, 2017
Stars: ****

Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Mon Oct 30, 2017 & later in print (31/10). KH

Brigadoon - Genevieve Kingsford & cast  - pic Jeff Busby

Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon is a deliciously old-fashioned, musical rom-com set in a magical, 17^th century Scottish village that materialises out of the mist for only one day every 100 years.

Jason Langley’s production transposes the period from 1947 to 2017 when rich boy, Tommy (Rohan Browne), and his jaded friend, Jeff (Luke Joslin), who are New Yorkers on a tourist trek through Scotland, stumble upon this fairy tale place.

During their single day in this mythical place, Tommy falls in love with copper-haired beauty, Fiona (Genevieve Kingsford), while Jeff fights off the advances of brazen Meg (Elise McCann).

Accompanied by the on stage orchestra under Michael Tyack’s musical direction, the cast provides a feast of musical numbers including Almost Like Being In Love, the memorable love duet sung by Browne and Kingsford.

Browne is magnetic and roguish as Tommy, adding another dimension to the character with his skilful and sprightly dance moves, while Kingsford’s rich, powerful soprano is perfect for the spirited Fiona, and her duet with Browne, The Heather on the Hill, is warm and charming.

Matthew Manahan is boisterously upbeat as bridegroom, Charlie, and he vivaciously leads the ensemble in I’ll Go Home With Bonnie Jean.

Joslin garners laughs as the glib and cynical Jeff while McCann is suitably brassy and seductive as Meg and Nancye Hayes plays the restructured role of Mrs. Forsythe with dignity.

The simple stage design (Christina Smith) provides space for vibrant choreography (Cameron Mitchell) while the hanging wooden crosses that protect the village from the evils of the outside world lend a darker edge to the village story.

Brigadoon is performed infrequently, but the audience’s response to its rollicking tunes, magical landscape and romantic narrative suggests that it should materialise out of the Scottish mists more often.

By Kate Herbert

 Brigadoon - Nancye Hayes; Genevieve Kingsford; Rohan Browne - pic Jeff Busby

Cast

Rohan Browne - Tommy Albright

Genevieve Kingsford - Fiona

Nancye Hayes - Mrs Forsythe

Elise McCann - Meg

Luke Joslin -Jeff Douglas

Stefanie Jones, Matthew Manahan, Stephen Hall, Sally Bourne, Joel Granger

Director -Jason Langley

Musical Director -Michael Tyack

Costume Designer - Isaac Lummis

Choreography -Cameron Mitchell

Set -Christina Smith

Lighting- Matt Scott

Book of Exodus Part II *** Oct 19, 2017

THEATRE

Created by Adena Jacobs & Aaron Orzech, by Fraught Outfit

At Theatre Works, until Oct 29, 2017
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars:*** 
Review also published in Herald Sun Arts on Thurs Oct 26, 2017 in print only. KH

The cast of fifteen children works very hard in Book of Exodus Part II, an abstract, physical interpretation of Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament.

Adena Jacobs’ production, developed with Aaron Orzech, takes literally the notion of ‘The Children of Israel’ by casting children as the Israelites who escape Egypt led my Moses, roam the desert and invoke the wrath of Yahweh when they worship a false idol.

The cast captures a sense of the tribe’s disorientation, unruliness and desperate need of the leadership of Moses or Yahweh to lead them out of the desert and provide them with purpose.

Part I of Book of Exodus included surtitles explaining narrative and characters, but Part II has no such explication so relies on theatrical imagery and some visually engaging vignettes.

The performance is episodic, with children performing scenes that distil the stories into simple, repeated, ritualistic actions.

They begin in sleeping bags on the gleaming, black floor then rise to weave through the space as if lost in the desert.

They strip to shorts and singlets, then run, chase, murmur, whisper and scream – all without dialogue, apart from a few words spoken by one child.

They spill black powder, spreading it over their skin and the ground then, in imagery that exaggerates the notion that they are infants, they suck on babies’ bottles or drink from a complicated tubal feeding system attached to one child who may depict Moses.

They jump frantically to reach a rack of feeding nipples lowered from above, but finally, exhausted by their failed efforts to drink from this device, they degenerate into feverish, convulsive hysteria.

Although they work hard, the children appear to have limited connection to the story so the Exodus myth remains confusing and incoherent; even those familiar with Exodus may not penetrate the symbolism.

Unfortunately, this production is so opaque and obtuse that the compelling stories of Exodus are unrecognisable and the outcome is ultimately unsatisfying theatre.

By Kate Herbert

What If It Works? MOVIE REVIEW Oct 12, 2017 **

MOVIE

What: What If It Works? 

Written & directed by Romi Trower, produced by Tristan Miall

Released in Melbourne on Oct 12, 2017 at Lido, Classic & Belgrave Cameo cinemas

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:**

Adrian (Luke Ford) is suspended from his post-doctoral research in quantum physics when his Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder finally impairs his capacity to function.

He encounters Grace (Anna Sampson), a shy artist who has multiple personalities, one of which is G, a provocative vamp and an artist, another being Spike, a crass and abusive loudmouth.

Adrian is a germophobe who cannot abide being touched, wears gloves 24/7 and scrubs everything several times a day. However, he adores driving fast and lives in a chaotic but well-scrubbed garage owned by his father.

This movie suffers from a lack of nuance and complexity in its characters, relationships, narrative and comedy. Adrian, Grace (and her other selves) and the people who surround them are caricatures instead of layered characters. The psychology is simplistic, with Adrian being a two-dimensional representation of an OCD sufferer and Grace’s multiple personalities being broadly comical.

The flimsy and contrived narrative, silly comedy and over-written dialogue are only occasionally interrupted by a couple of more sincere interactions between Adrian and Grace when they perch on their park bench.

Trower vainly inserts colourful drag queens and Melbourne laneways decorated with vivid graffiti to elevate the quirkiness but it is all to no avail when the story is so sketchy.

By Kate Herbert

American Song, Oct 8, 2017 ****

THEATRE 

Written by Joanna Murray-Smith, by Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre 

At Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, until Nov 5, 2017 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert 

Stars:**** 
Review also published in Herald Sun Arts in print on Thurs Oct 12, 2017, and online (date TBC). KH

Joe Petruzzi

Parents may relate to a father’s sentimental reminiscences about holding his baby son tucked safely inside his coat on a winter’s day.

They may also feel the aching familiarity of that same father, Andy’s (Joe Petruzzi) pain and alienation when that baby grows into his silent, secretive and surly teenage son, Robbie.

Petruzzi gives a sensitive, nuanced but muscular performance as Andy in American Song, Joanna Murray-Smith’s 90 minute, solo play that was commissioned for an America audience.

Tom Healey’s assured and well-paced direction lends the play emotional and dynamic energy as Andy builds a real, stone wall (designer, Darryl Cordell) while he weaves his tale of hope and joy that turns to grief and horror.

Murray-Smith’s dialogue is conversational and lyrical, philosophical and natural, while Petruzzi is convincing and compelling as Andy, playing him with passion and sympathy.

The writer successfully creates a dramatic structure that initially lulls us into a false sense of ‘happy families’, then sows the seeds of doubt that grow like weeds into genuine fears until Andy reveals one final, horrific incident that changed his life, and the lives of others, forever.

Guns are far too easy to access in America, gun crime is rife and, in a week when so many died in Las Vegas, this play confronts the human loss that is the result of Americans’ unholy and dangerous ‘right to bear arms’.

Healey’s intelligent and deceptively simple production incorporates evocative lighting (Bronwen Pringle) and a subtle soundscape (Patrick Cronin) that build atmosphere as the tension escalates in Andy’s story.

Through Andy’s musings, Murray-Smith asks where the simpler, more humanist America society that was characterised in Walt Whitman’s famous poem, Leaves of Grass, has gone.

This week, the world is once more asking the same question.

By Kate Herbert

Caravan, Oct 7, 2017 ***1/2

THEATRE - Melbourne Festival
Written by Angus Cerini, Patricia Cornelius, Wayne Macauley & Melissa Reeves, presented with Malthouse
At Forecourt, Malthouse Theatre, until Oct 22, 2017
Reviewer: Kate Herbert 
Stars: ***1/2
Review also published in Herald Sun Arts in print on Oct 10 & later online. KH

Susie Dee, Nicci Wilks, pic Tim Grey

The love-hate relationship between the mother and daughter in Caravan is ugly, unpredictable and characterised by bickering, confrontations and sporadic reconciliations. 

Daughter, Donna (Nicci Wilks), and Mum, Judy (Susie Dee), live a claustrophobic existence, emotionally and financially trapped in their tatty, 1960s caravan littered with Judy’s pill bottles and a fast-emptying wine cask and furnished with mismatched fabrics, a crummy CD player and tiny TV.

Judy lies stranded on the bed like a beached seal, craving the cheap alcohol that is killing her, while Donna searches for dates on her Tinder account then dashes out to meet them for dangerous, quicky sexual encounters behind the caravan.

The power dynamic is volatile between this co-dependent pair as Donna struggles to nurse her selfish and smug mother who, in turn, whines and manipulates her daughter and refuses, after 37 years, to give her a kind word or reveal the name of Donna’s father.

The dialogue is acerbic and funny, effectively combining Aussie slang with poetic language and, although it has four writers, the tone and style are coherent and cohesive.

With humour and poignancy, the play successfully articulates the desperate plight of these two women who are bound by poverty, tragedy and hopeless dreams of a better life.

Wilks is totally credible as Donna who looks like a trapped and beaten creature that keeps returning to its abuser, while Dee plays Judy with a wry smile and an almost palpable, inner fantasy life that keeps her mood strangely buoyant as she lies incapacitated.

The audience sits outdoors – albeit under cover – peering like voyeurs into the open side of the caravan, experiencing the cramped, physical environment of the ‘white trash’ caravan and feeling the despairing atmosphere of its two inhabitants.

There are echoes of Beckett’s hapless tramps and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when the women play games, tell stories and torment each other to pass the endless, isolated hours.

Caravan is an unsentimental observation of this dysfunctional relationship and its leaves an audience hoping that a better day will come for Donna and Judy, but knowing that it will not.

By Kate Herber

Susie Dee pic Tim Grey

 Nicci Wilks
pic Tim Grey

Please, Continue (Hamlet), Oct 5, 2017 ***1/2

Created by Roger Bernat & Yan Duyvendak, by Dreams Come True, Geneve

At Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne, Oct 5-9 2017 

Melbourne Festival

Reviewer: Kate Herbert 

Stars: ***1/2

This review is published only on this blog. This NOT a review for Herald Sun. KH

This pic is not of Melbourne season

Hamlet killed Polonius. It’s a fictional killing, but we know it happened because we witness him stick the knife into the arras behind which Polonius is hiding while he eavesdrops on Hamlet’s conversation with his mother, Gertrude.

But what would an Australian criminal court make of the evidence?

Please, Continue (Hamlet) is a dramatised and mostly improvised version of a court case against Hamlet, complete with a real judge, real lawyers and forensics expert. The legal personnel change each night but the three constants are the actors playing Hamlet (Chris Ryan), Ophelia (Jessica Clarke) and Gertrude (Genevieve Picot).

If you’ve ever witnessed court proceedings, you’ll know that they can be slow, laborious and mind-numbingly dull with occasional moments of interest or glimpses of brilliance and wit from a barrister.

Such is the case with these proceedings that are based on a blend of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with a real murder case.

On opening night, Lesley Taylor QC led the Defence with confidence, sharp humour and theatrical flair while John Champion SC was formal and dignified leading the Prosecution and forensic pathologist, Ass. Prof. David Ranson was compelling and a bit of a hoot – perhaps unintentionally.

This Hamlet is a lowbrow petty crim rather than a privileged royal and Ryan captures his nervous evasiveness. Clarke’s Ophelia is a resentful party gal while and Picot’s Gertrude is nervy and suitably bemused by the legal palaver.

Please Continue (Hamlet) is perhaps more interesting as an idea than as a piece of theatre but its success depends to a great degree on the legal fraternity’s capacity to entertain a crowd.

By Kate Herbert

On opening night, Oct 5, 2017, legal team included:

Judge: Hon. Prof. George Hampel AM QC

Defence: Lesley Taylor QC & Daniel Aghion

Prosecution: John Champion SC & Jeremy McWilliam

Judge’s Associate: Grant Lubofksy

Forensic pathologist: Ass Prof David Ranson

Calendar Girls, Sept 29, 2017 ***

THEATRE 

Written by Tim Firth, by Prince Moo Productions

At Athenaeum Theatre until Oct 7, 2017 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:*** 

Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Mon Oct 3 and later in print. (Tues Oct 4?). KH

Lulu McClatchy & Jenny Seedsman

Six middle-aged women doing a nude photo-shoot for the Women’s Institute (WI) calendar is the hilarious high point of Calendar Girls by Tim Firth.

In this production directed by Peter J Snee, the crowd goes wild when these self-conscious women pose with their private bits obscured only by their baked goods and craftwork.

Curvaceous Ruth (Lulu McClatchy) reclines amidst oranges and marmalade jars, wiry Jessie (Francesca Waters) poses pertly with skeins of wool, sassy trophy wife, Celia (Tottie Goldsmith) peeps from behind discreetly placed buns and single mum, Cora (Kate Gorman), turns coyly at her piano.

The instigators of this alternative calendar are mischievous Chris (Jenny Seedsman) and her more sedate friend, Annie (Abi Richardson), whose husband John’s (John Voce) death from leukaemia triggers the pair’s plan to raise funds for the hospital that nursed him.

Set in Yorkshire and based on the true story of the astoundingly successful, 1999 WI nude calendar, the play tracks the calendar’s evolution, Annie and Chris’s struggle to gain the support of their stroppy president, Marie (Lise Rodgers), and the national WI, and the personal clashes that arise when the calendar achieves worldwide popularity and fame outstrips charity.

Snee’s production may have its high point in the nude photo-shoot at the end of Act One, but the earlier scenes feel static, with slow cueing and some awkward, stand-and-deliver dialogue.

Firth’s narrative balances warmth with poignancy, although the dialogue gets a bit twee or preachy at times and it is a pity that the important, final scene, when the women visit John’s memorial, sunflower fields on the Yorkshire dales, falls flat.

The performances are good-humoured with McClatchy’s cutely naive Ruth a comic highlight while Waters’ feisty, retired schoolteacher is refreshingly wicked.

The real WI nude calendar has raised over $8 million to date and, in a week when Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner died, it is fun to compare the impact of the cheerful, charitable WI nude calendar with the nudie centrefolds that it parodied.

By Kate Herbert

Hay Fever, MTC, Sept 28, 2017 ***1/2

THEATRE
Written by Noël Coward, by Melbourne Theatre Company
At Southbank Theatre, The Sumner, until Oct 28, 2017
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ***1/2
Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Fri Sept 29, 2017, & later in print (Oct 3, 17). KH

Kim Gyngell, Imogen Sage, Marina Prior, Alexandra Keddie, Drew West_pic Brett Boardman

If hell is other people, the guests staying with the Bliss family in Noël Coward’s Hay Fever are plunged right into the inferno for an entire weekend.

In this comedy of ill manners set in Coward’s naughty but decorative 1920s, Judith Bliss (Marina Prior) is a retired actress living in her country house with her novelist husband, David (Kim Gyngell), dilettante son, Simon (Gareth Davies), and socialite daughter, Sorel (Imogen Sage).

When each of the Blisses, unbeknown to the other family members, invites a guest to stay the weekend, this eccentric, outwardly easy-going family reveals the extent of its ill-mannered and self-centred behaviour. The Blisses are eminently slappable.

Coward’s play is diverting flummery peppered with witticisms, gentle jibes, a little bit of 1920s sauciness and populated by a parade of silly characters.

In this frisky production directed by Lee Lewis, Prior displays her comedic skills as Judith, with histrionic gestures and ‘theatrical effects’, even singing a sultry, French love song as one of Judith’s blatant seduction techniques.

It’s a pity that Simon Gleeson, with his fine tenor, does not join Prior in a duet at the piano, but he has excellent comic timing and delivery as the poncy, stitched-up diplomat, Richard Greatham.

Davies is suitably brattish and mincing as Simon while Sage pouts and complains as Sorel and Gyngell is wry and prickly as the reclusive David.

Their guests suffer varying degrees of confusion, but Myra Arundel, played elegantly by Monica Sayers, accurately describes the Bliss house as ‘a featherbed of false emotions’.

Alexandra Keddie captures the bewilderment of visiting ingénue, Jackie Coryton, while Drew Weston is playfully puppyish as Judith’s adoring, youthfully gauche fan, Sandy Tyrell, and Marg Downey is refreshing as the dour, Scottish housekeeper, Clara.

The mad cavorting and social gaffes are reminiscent of Fawlty Towers, but the Bliss family always prevails because they are almost totally unaware of their own appalling behaviour and its impact on others. Like I said, hell is other people.

MTC_HayFever_Drew Weston, Marina Prior_pic Brett Boardman

By Kate Herbert

Cast

Gareth Davies - Simon  Bliss

Marg Downey -Clara

Simon Gleeson -Richard Greatham

Kim Gyngell -David Bliss

Alexandra Keddie -Jackie Coryton

Marina Prior -Judith Bliss

Imogen Sage,-Sorel Bliss

Monica Sayers -Myra Arundel

Drew Weston -Sandy Tyrell

Director -Lee Lewis

Lighting -Paul Jackson

Set -Christina Smith

Costume -Esther Marie Hayes

Composer- Kelly Ryall

MTC_HayFever_ Marina Prior_Simon Gleeson_pic Brett Boardman

As You Like It, Pop-Up Globe ***

THEATRE 

Written by William Shakespeare

by Pop-Up Globe (In repertory with: Henry V, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, Around the Globe in 60 minutes! 

At Pop-Up Globe, until Nov 12, 2017 

Reviewer: Kate Herbert 

Stars:***

 Review also published in Herald Sun Arts online on Monday Sept 25, 2017, and later in print (Tues26/10). KH

Photo by Jay Wennington

Picture yourself in early 17^th century London, perched on a balcony, peering down at rollicking actors on the stage of the Globe Theatre while the rowdy ‘groundlings’ – standing-room audience – cheer and guffaw at Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

At the Pop-Up Globe visiting Melbourne from New Zealand, we experience Shakespeare’s open-roofed theatre, the boisterous style of his comedies and the unruliness of the crowds who drink, shout and scoff at the drizzling rain.

UK director, Tom Mallaburn’s production favours hilarity over clarity, with characters relentlessly entertaining the crowd with riotous slapstick, bawdiness, running gags, topical references, modern love songs and men dressed as sheep. It’s panto-Shakespeare.

However, the narrative will elude those unfamiliar with the play, and one of Shakespeare’s finest and most famous speeches (‘All the world’s a stage’) delivered by the melancholic Jaques (Stephen Papps), is obscured in the flurry of comedy.

As You Like It is a rom-com, so why not have Touchstone (Michael Mahony) the clown eat Vegemite and sing My Heart Will Go On from Titanic, or have Orlando (Adrian Hooke) filch his awful love poetry from pop songs? But please, keep the story clear!

With her cousin, Celia (Stanley Andrew Jackson III), Rosalind (Jonathan Tynan-Moss) flees her uncle, Duke Frederick’s (Stephen Butterworth) court, disguises herself as a youth, seeks refuge in the Forest of Arden and encounters her secret ‘crush’, Orlando, who pines for Rosalind but does not recognise her in disguise.

Tynan-Moss switches gleefully between girlish capering and tittering and gruff, laddish posturing, and the crowd roars at the goofiness of a man playing a woman who pretends to be a man who repels a gay shepherd’s (Jonathan Martin) advances.

Hooke’s Orlando is suitably gauche in his pursuit of Rosalind and his ludicrous love lyrics are diverting, while Mahony’s Touchstone is a comic hit, addressing the audience directly, singing and playing a mandolin, taunting and urging us to cheer and laugh.

As Celia, Jackson is saucy and entertaining, and his dance duet with James Hardy as the snobbish Oliver is a riot.

Paul English brings dignity and grace to Duke Senior, Rosalind’s exiled father, providing one of the few non-comic characters and a considered, clear delivery of the poetic dialogue.

As You Like It is not one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays and, although there are glimpses of his exceptional language, this production emphasises physical comedy over poetry.

By Kate Herbert

Photo by Jay Wennington

Black Rider, Sept 20, 2017 ***1/2

Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets
Original music & lyrics by Tom Waits, text by William S. Burroughs
Produced by Malthouse Theatre & Victorian Opera
Melbourne Festival
At Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse, until Oct 8, 2017 
Reviewer: Kate Herbert 
Stars: ***1/2

Review also published in Herald Sun Art online on Thurs Sept 21, 2017, and later in print. This show is an early opener for the 2017 Melbourne Festival. KH

Dimity Shepherd, Kanen Breen_c Pia Johnson

Meow Meow is captivating as the seductive devil, Pegleg, stealing the stage in Tom Waits’ and William S. Burroughs’ eccentric music theatre work, Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets.

American director, Robert Wilson based his 1990 production on the German folktale, The Fatal Marksman, about a young clerk (Kanen Breen) who falls in love with a hunter’s daughter (Dimity Shepherd) whose father (Richard Piper) demands the young man be a crack marksman.

The clerk makes a pact with the devil who guarantees the magic bullets will always hit their target, but it all goes terribly wrong when the final bullet hits his bride.

Waits’ music quirkily merges opera with German cabaret and vaudeville then veers into gospel, jazz and rock influences, all played with zest by the Victorian Opera Chamber Orchestra led by Phoebe Briggs.

Burroughs’ poetic text uses rhyme, repetition, vivid imagery and references to heroin addiction to illustrate this insidious bargain with the devil.

Performed on a compelling, abstract design (Zoë Atkinson), Matthew Lutton’s stylised production parodies the grand gestures of operatic melodrama, and his characters move with halting, puppet-like movements that are initially interesting but become awkward, repetitive and distracting.

As Pegleg, Meow Meow is sultry and sexy while also being demented, dangerous and despairing as she prowls the stage, perches atop a soaring white wall, reaches clawing arms through crannies and sings raunchy or vengeful German cabaret songs.

Breen is a fine singer playing the young huntsman, a tough role that challenges his voice and contorts his body when the tormented youth collapses into madness.

Shepherd has a rich, poignant voice and a highlight is her lament, I’ll Shoot the Moon, as the young bride writhes on her chair waiting for her love to return.

Paul Capsis effectively uses his brash style and shrill falsetto, while Piper and Jacqueline Dark play the bride’s parents, and Winston Hillyer and Le Gateau Chocolat fulfil additional roles.

This daring production of Black Rider has some fine performances, eclectic music and compelling imagery although at times its style overwhelms the content.

By Kate Herbert

Black Rider _Ensemble_c Pia Johnson

Cast:

Kanen Breen, Paul Capsis, Jacqueline Dark, Winston Hillyer, Le Gateau Chocolat, Meow Meow, Richard Piper & Dimity Shepherd
 

DIRECTOR/ Matthew Lutton


MUSICAL DIRECTION / Phoebe Briggs  

MUSIC SUPERVISION / Iain Grandage


SET & COSTUME DESIGN /
 Zoe Atkinson  

SCENIC ARTIST / Patrick Jones


LIGHTING DESIGN / Paul Jackson

SOUND DESIGN / Jim Atkins  


SOUNDSCAPE DESIGN / Jethro Woodward  

CHOREOGRAPHER / Stephanie Lake