Therry Theatre. Arts Theatre. 11 Apr 2024
Playwright Roger Hall has been knighted for his contributions to theatre. He is the pride of New Zealand with a wealth of works under his belt including Four Flat Whites In Italy, an absolute charmer of a light comedy which was a huge hit for Therry at this time last year.
A Shortcut to Happiness is also a light comedy, but a much more complex challenge for director Kerrin White even with a cast of eight senior Adelaide actors. It is all about folk dancing and how good this activity is for the soul, especially the lost soul. Hence, it is a production which also leans heavily on a choreographer, in this case Therry's stalwart Rose Vallen.
As the adapted story goes, Ned is an Adelaide widower and retiree who joins a folk dancing class. It is run by Natasha, a highly-strung Russian woman struggling to make a living. Gradually she builds up a regular class of odd bods: three old girls on the hunt for a man and a spectacularly boring old couple of habitual class joiners. The ups and downs of all their lives are revealed between bursts of beginners’ Russian folk dancing.
Ned is a nice fellow, the script would have us believe. And there are few nicer men on the Adelaide stage than Lindsay Dunn. He’s a reliable character actor and here he builds a nice reliable character, albeit a bland sort of chap. Shelley Crooks is no mad Russian arts aficionado but she’s an all-rounder who can do a decent Russian accent and even unaccompanied a decent Russian song. Julie Quick and Deborah Walsh have a fine track record as seasoned Adelaide actors, with Gigi Jeffers more recently. They three play the comical old gals on the man hunt. Sue Wylie is something of a legend on the Adelaide stage and here she’s partnered in mute but wittily-observed obeisance by Greg Janzow. Last, in the list of our old luvvies, is Frank Cwiertniak who just gets better with the years. In this play, he’s the big excitement as the handsome “prey” the libidinous old gals haul in.
The Don Oswald/Kerrin White set slices the stage with Ned’s fusty home on one side and the church hall dance studio on the other. The latter, complete with notice board and serving window, is the more effective.
Therein the dancing class takes place and, with eight gloriously inept dancers, it is a bit of heels-up fun. The music comes and goes, stops and starts and its cues are appropriately confusing, seemingly coming either from nowhere or from Natasha’s phone tucked into her decolletage. While the music is loud, some of the delivery is less so and there was considerable audience grumbling at interval. More projection, please, cast. There are more sticks than stilettos in the auditorium at Therry shows these days.
A Shortcut to Happiness is not Therry’s greatest production nor is it Hall's greatest play. It’s a bit of multicultural romantic fluff with a seniors bent. But there are guffaws and giggles and the opening night audience was right on side. So, give it a go.
Samela Harris
When: 11 to 20 Apr
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
The Wharf Revue. Dunstan Playhouse. 9 Apr 2024
As befits the title, Pride In Prejudice opened in the ‘Bonnet’ parlour, with the prejudice flowing thick and fast. The befrocked Jonathan Biggins, David Whitney and Drew Forsythe managed to slay quite a few not-so-sacred cows as Mama and the Bonnet sisters, who are still living at home “as the Reserve Bank wanted”. The anachronistic references between the 19 and 21st centuries are pumped out with shotgun rapidity, with the Church, patriarchy and transgender children all targeted. The gay references were a little weary, fortunately it’s hard to find too much humour in ‘woofters’ any more. There are better comedic references than name calling.
The Wharf Revue have been producing political satire for 25 years and while the format harks back a couple of centuries, it doesn’t really get old. Sketches, dance numbers, songs and a nod to vaudeville ensure that the audience is always entertained; if you didn’t like this, hang on, we’ve got something else!
No-one gets off lightly in these parodies and satirical sketches, but there’s a definite left lean to most of them. Q&A gets a puppet roasting in one of the less successful numbers and Lidia Thorpe is serenaded in the afore-noted vaudeville style by Groucho March, clever but a touch cringe. David Marr shines and Robodebt has its moments.
There’s a lovely Trump/Giuliani moment when, escaping through the (undrained) swamp, Trump sings an ode to Mar-a-Lago, pulling out his ukulele to do so. What is it with leaders and ukuleles? Are they so determined to give them a bad name?
Mandy Bishop and David Whitney as Jackie Lambie and David Pocock were most entertaining, as were the French protesters looking for a cause. A fairly ordinary Biden sketch was lifted by a delightful physical lampooning of POTUS.
Bishop treats Sussan Ley with appropriate hubris, belting out a big jazz number with keyboard accompaniment from Musical Director Michael Tyack, who does an admirable job throughout. She’s no slouch at Julie Bishop either.
The Revue is at its best when it critiques with sharp political analysis rather than just poking fun at easy targets. While Dr No (who else but Dutton) is funny, there’s incisive commentary via a Robin Hood sketch about the stasis of our current government, and one is torn between laughing at the cleverness or weeping with despair at the greatest missed opportunity of our political times.
When the ensemble really hit their straps, they cut to the bone. To the tune of Bad Moon Rising, the cast performs an acapella requiem to the Voice referendum – it’s chilling and heartbreaking.
The show is rounded off with a parody of South Pacific with some very funny piss takes and clever plays on words, and the excellent singing featured throughout the production finishes up the evening. Like all productions of this nature, there’s hit and miss in the sketches, but after a slow start it all kicked in, ranging from the gently mocking to the surgical filleting of some of our best-known political figures. With clever wardrobe design from Hazel and Scott Fisher and lightning-fast costume changes, this is a fine edition of the Wharf Revue’s theatrical oeuvre.
Arna Eyers-White
When: Until Saturday 13 April
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
Famous Last Words. Goodwood Theatre & Studios. 6 Apr 2024
In the intimate Studio performance space at the Goodwood Theatre, Benedict Andrews and Andrew Upton’s ‘transalation’ of Jean Genet’s psychosexual drama The Maids forces the audience to be voyeuristic and grips them by the throat for a continuous 90 minutes without pause. The expletive laden language at first elicits embarrassed responses, but this soon gives way to submission and then to arrogant judgement: whether we like it or not, the audience occupies the privileged position of crime scene observer, prosecutor, moralist, jury, and judge. Genet’s (updated) text, and director James Watson’s actual production design forces all this on the audience, and it is uncomfortable, provocative, and disturbing. More on that later.
The storyline of the The Maids has its basis in historical reality and concerns two domestic servants – sisters Claire and Solange, played by Emelia Williams and Virginia Blackwell – who plot against Madame (Kate Owen), their privileged employer. Their intention is to eliminate Madame and steal her assets. Like the witches in Macbeth, they routinely whip themselves into a jealous and avaricious frenzy by role-playing their fantasies whenever Madame is away from the house. They take turns in play acting: one becomes Madame, and dresses in her finery, while the other plays her sister. The blurring of personalities is palpable, and Genet’s dramatisation of the play acting is emotionally heightened, and extreme. The text provides fertile ground for Williams and Blackwell, who, in the main, tame and work the lurid text to their advantage. Blackwell is especially effective in presenting a personality on the brink of self-destruction, and Williams’ final scene is especially evocative as she employs levels of varying expression that stand in stark contrast to the often ‘shouty’ monologues at the start.
For much of the play, Madame is silently on stage serving as as constant pointer to what Claire and Solange aspire. Owen does it so well. Her presence is almost chilling. When Madame does finally ‘enter the scene’ and engages with her maids, it is immediately clear why Claire and Solange both despise and admire their employer. The success of this characterisation can be sheeted home to both Owen’s skill as an actor and Watson’s clear vision for what he wants.
This is not easy theatre, but one cannot help feel that Benedict Andrews and Andrew Upton’s translation has in part clouded some of the deeper issues evident in Genet’s original, such as the psychology of oppression: why the oppressed behave (and limit their behaviour) as they do in response to the actions and motivations of the oppressor.
The Studio at Goodwood is not an easy space to work, but Watson and his team turn limitations into advantages. The large wall of upstage mirrors is deliberately used as the dominant feature of the setting, and becomes a metaphor for Claire, Solange, and Madame continually and subconsciously looking inward at themselves while all the time being obsessed with outward appearances. The mirrors also give the audience a unique perspective: they force us to question the extent to which we might be reflected in the dramatis personae; they allow us to see everything that is happening all at the same time, but from different perspectives; they force us to be conscious that we are not only observing but also judging. Stage furnishings are minimal, but entirely sufficient: costume racks on which hang Madame’s couture; black lacquered cabinets and stands with rococo gold decorations; an elegant chaise. It all represents the world from which Claire and Solange are excluded, and to which they believe they cannot truly aspire. They are locked out, which is a sad parallel to the contemporary economic difficulties faced by many.
Rhys Stewart’s lighting is almost unstructured, and the entire auditorium is bathed in a stark white wash that lays bare everything. The audience cannot hide from the cast, and vice versa. There is no attempt at a ‘fourth wall’. Indeed, Solange directly engages members of the audience in provocative and menacing ways. It’s uncomfortable. At times one wished for the lights to fade down on the audience, so that we could be more secretive as voyeurs, and so that Claire, Solange, and Madame could not easily see us looking down our noses at them in our cosy and privileged judgement. But Watson had different ideas.
James Watson and Famous Last Words have daringly tackled a difficult play, and a testing adaptation of it. Again, they haven’t resiled from the hard stuff.
Kym Clayton
When: 6 to 13 Apr
Where: Goodwood Theatre & Studios
Bookings: eventbrite.com
SOLUS Productions. The Studio - Holden Street Theatres. 4 Apr 2024
Hunting down and confronting, face to face, the other half of a traumatically complex relationship 15 years later is a very big, very dangerous thing to do.
Una (Monika Lapka) does it. Ray (Marc Clement) is understandably anxious and disturbed by the sudden, most unwelcome presence of Una in front of him in the trash littered back room of the office building he works in.
Theirs is essentially a broken relationship seeking unmet need for closure, with much darker undertones and forces involved than expected, as Una begins pushing Ray about so many, many things needing explanation. Ray resists. Yet he too, finds a need to have many things revealed and explained.
Keys to this disturbing, electric, fast moving, thought provoking, emotive confrontation are age, experience, innocence, abuse, and love. All bound in a relationship that should have never happened.
David Harrower’s writing offers pain, shame, fear and unstintingly bright moments of human power games, transcending age. Games of overriding primordial instinct powered by a girl’s crush and a man’s confused misdirected passion.
This confronting conundrum is embodied and explored by Clement and Lapka with a delicate honesty belying the black and blue emotional bruises their characters’ have carried hidden within for 15 years.
Those bruises mark a truth both need the other to see. To understand. A truth hard to logically comprehend, because their situation doesn’t fit culturally accepted notions of survival, hurt, and forgiveness. That’s a tough call for an audience. Yet in performance, it’s a call an audience is hooked on, enough to seek answers as deeply as Harrower’s characters do.
Director Tony Knight states in program notes he merely fine-tuned his cast’s work.
The production substantiates that. Harrower’s writing would not sustain considered pressure to veer towards a predetermined point of view; to operate one dimensionally.
Harrower wrote a work daring to explore and question emotional landscapes and motivations with unflinching direct, morally unencumbered honesty.
A difficult work, but a profoundly effective one as staged by SOLUS Productions.
David O’Brien
When: 2 to 13 April
Where: Holden Street Theatres, The Studio
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
David Venn Enterprises. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 3 Apr 2024
Elvis Presley caused a Rock 'n' Roll musical revolution in the 1960s. He was a revelation. Sadly this production is neither revelation nor revolutionary.
Luckily, for the most part, what this show lacks in narrative arc is somewhat compensated for in the performances, production values, and choreography.
At nearly two and a half hours (including a twenty-minute interval) Elvis – A Musical Revolution runs about thirty minutes too long.
So, let’s get the book gripes (by Sean Cercone and David Abbinanti) out of the way early.
This show feels choppy and disjointed. The narrative jumps around in time attempting to explain seemingly obvious points and then completely glosses over other significant life events, whilst placing undue focus on scenes that would benefit from a lot of red pen.
Any mention of Elvis’s significant substance abuse is completely erased here, and his relationship with Priscilla is propelled from first kiss to marriage turmoil in mere minutes. Dixie all but disappears.
Those unfamiliar with the life and times of the King of Rock 'n' Roll will almost certainly struggle to follow.
But the show is not without redemption. In fact, despite the incredibly difficult task this talented Australian cast have been handed with this script, their performances are excellent.
One wonders as Rob Mallett, in the show’s title role, bangs out number after number with boundless energy and exuberance, how this music theatre triple-threat can possibly manage two shows in a day, and keep up that pace week in, week out, on this gruelling Australian tour!
Mallett is a powerhouse. He brings, and gives, his all and leaves nothing in the tank. Shifting from gravelly vocal tones into his velvety baritone, his Elvis only gets better as the show progresses.
He is not alone.
Noni McCallum plays Elvis’s mother Gladys in many of the show’s more poignant scenes (or at least in so far as the writers’ intended). She is at her best when showcasing her beautiful soprano voice. Ian Stenlake, in the only non-singing character role, offers up a believable Colonel Parker, presenting the role Tom Hanks donned a ‘fatsuit’ for, with a far gentler demeanour.
Dan Potra’s set design with Declan O’Neill’s lighting elevates the production – the live video to black and white TV projection is particularly effective. All of the supporting performers bring the staging and production brilliantly to life, executing Michael Ralph’s spectacular choreography in Isaac Lummis’s perfect period costumes with fervour and pizzaz.
It is Kirby Burgess who shines brightest amongst them with her portrayal of Ann-Margret on the set of the film Viva Las Vegas, showcasing her spectacular dance abilities and fine singing voice.
On opening night young Nemanja Ilic, a local Adelaide performer of just 9 years of age, takes on the role of young Elvis with aplomb – proving himself a performer with some serious dance abilities!
There’s a lot to like here in the 40 plus numbers performed for Elvis fans, but this show’s book needs a lot more work to truly plumb the emotional depths it barely skims at the moment.
Paul Rodda
When: 3 to 28 Apr
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au