Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 18 Jun 2015
It's Just Sex had the appellation of a tawdry British farce but instead American playwright Jeff Gould's second play is a saucy and comedic excogitation on what is normally just a thought bubble at your average suburban drinks party - How much fun would it be if we go to bed with each other's partner?
After a racy start more at home in a porn movie, and a vignette of the state of coupledom in the three marriages, our tense but salubrious six-some turns salacious. The scene is set for something to happen after a few cocktails (I love the way Americans get plastered on cocktails and not beer and wine), but unlike Don's Party it's not election night, it's erection night. And following any good car wreck, there is a lot of excited talk and psycho-babble about what just happened. Gould doesn't waste words - he quickly closes in on coitus and the first act is over in 37 minutes.
Director Erik Strauts has chosen such a wonderful cast that I was completely convinced I was a fly on the wall. Bronwyn Ruciak, James Whitrow, Tess O'Flaherty, Jonathan Johnston, Sharon Pitardi and Luke Budgen each produced well rounded and naturalistic characterisations and shone in their turn on centre stage. Lines are delivered with expert deadpan and the jokes are good with many surprising big laughs. But something in the writing made momentum difficult to attain.
Playwright Gould has an interesting track record with marriage and he likes to tell the world about it. His first play was Troubled Waters - the kind you find in matrimony - and he and his ex did a live comedy routine for 19 months. But his chauvinism still comes barging through. The male characters in this play arrive or rise to self-assurance and show off their sexual philosophy, while the females don't seem to get it and need straightening out. Hurt and perplexity were well communicated by Pitardi, O'Flaherty and especially by Ruciak, whose host and game-leader Joan carried more important baggage than the other wives. In fact, it's very interesting to see people provoked into doing something they normally wouldn't do by somebody who has hidden, ulterior, and selfish motives, like revenge. It's manipulating, and Ruciak - and James Whitrow as Joan's husband, Phil - played with sensitivity and intrigue a poignant psychological drama. Better than Don's Party.
Director Strauts didn't see the need to employ any contemporary music which would certainly have jazzed up the production, and the lighting was a complete schmozzle with all the action stage right taking place in theatrical dusk (lighting design: Richard Parkhill). Costumes were great but there is no credit for them in the program, so maybe the actors just wore what they liked, I don't know.
The whole concept harks back to the swinging '70s and the keys in the bowl thing, which now seems a little old fashioned, but it's still one of the great naughty thoughts we have - thinking hopefully that there are no consequences and nobody gets hurt - and if you believe It's Just Sex, it leads to good outcomes, so I guess the play is inspiring? This excellently performed and nicely directed production deserved a much bigger audience than the quarter-full house I was part of on opening night. So take your partner and at least one other couple you like a lot.
David Grybowski
When: 18 to 27 Jun
Where: Arts Playhouse
Bookings: trybooking.com
Stephen Sheehan. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Centre Rehearsal Room. 18 Jun 2015
Guided in tranches through subterranean corridors in the Festival Centre, life has already become surreal by the time one is seated in the two-tiered auditorium which was once a rehearsal room. Is that the underside of a revolve overhead? There is a cave-like stage in a corner with a sink and mirror, a massage table, a TV monitor, sofa, and a keyboard. It is a dressing room. Opera plays on the Tannoy.
A man sits with his back to the gathering audience. A woman sleeps deep in the sofa's coffin-like embrace.
The house lights go down. The man turns. It is Stephen Sheehan who introduces his character and the composer Wagner whose name he pronounces as "Wag-na" and presents, for our convenience, his translation of the opera being sung. He flips large pages on a pad and a wild nonsense of misheard lyrics unfolds, except that, ridiculous as they are, one can hear them clearly. Then Arapahoe, the miniature horse enters. Solid little pony, he seems unfazed by the audience's laughter and the trilling of the soprano. He snuffles intently on some interesting scent on the stage. The hilarity of the lyrics rises as Sheehan flips the pages, moving around to make way for the little visitor. The little horse is as adorable as it is incongruous. His presence is not explained. The audience is in stitches.
And the show is not like anything one could ever have imagined. But, presto, it is the vivid imaginings of Stephen Sheehan. Move over Luis Bunuel. Here is a surrealist soul much sweeter. Here comes a voyage which is sweet-natured and clever, lateral-thinking, original, and off-the-wall.
The pony exits. The actor dons a beautiful white horse head and plays soulfully on the keyboard.
When he reveals his face, it is with a dreadful curly wig and the revelation that he is now Tristan, ever besotted with Isolde. He's also a “background comedian” by which he defines himself; a strange sort of wallpaper entertainer. He tells jokes which he attributes to composers such as Chopin, Liszt, and Bach. He tells them while playing their music on his keyboard. He tells them softly, almost incidentally. They start out as cornball and then swerve into the lateral mindspace called Sheehan. He is not like anyone else.
The body on the couch rises to become the glorious Isolde, a Wagnerian soprano. She is a wonderful singer but, very strange. She sings while lying prone on the massage couch. She plays it straight from another world, oblivious to Tristan. In so doing, she enhances the strange humour of the piece beautifully. She is delivered by renowned opera singer Norma Knight - a performance of brave good spirit.
Sheehan weaves a narrative about Tristan's unrequited love. He plays many pieces. He tells more shaggy composer stories. His pace is beautiful. He is unhurried, unruffled, pensive. He has immense grace and a sweetness of demeanour. He is sometimes just a little coy. Sometimes he is just a little melancholy. Always he is strikingly original and his mastery of stagecraft is effortless.
The Cabaret Festival season of his show is brief. Too brief.
I would tell the world to drop everything and see this jewel of absurdity. But it has vanished into the ether of the moment. What a glorious moment it was.
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: Festival Centre Rehearsal Room
Bookings: Closed
Dunstan Playhouse. 14 June 2015.
With the opening medley of classical musics most loved symphonies still ringing in our ears, Ali McGregor, Dimity Shepherd & Antoinette Halloran enter to showcase a different side of opera.
Opera Burlesque is the brainchild of soprano Ali McGregor, whose artistic genius was sparked by the story of the girls of the Royal Opera House. After performing for the Convent Garden elite, they would discard their costumes and travel to the darker side of town to sing their arias to the public in the Miton's Music Hall. McGregor first staged the show with Shepherd & Halloran in 2005, and toured it successfully in both Australia and overseas until 2007.
Returning as part of this year's Adelaide Cabaret Festival, the three lovely ladies may be 10 years older, but they are as sexy as ever. Clad tastefully in corsets and lace, they soar through a mix of opera and rock, melding the genres with ease and charming all with sassy banter.
The audience delights in Halloran's euphonious performance of Un bel di vedremo, from her recent role as Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly. It is an unexpected treat for those who did not get the pleasure. In hilarious contrast, she also gets the pulse racing with an orgasmic, operatic recital from 50 Shades of Grey.
Shepherd's seductive mezzo-soprano vocal is perfectly matched to cabaret. She brings the sass, with a dark version of Grace Jones's I've Seen That Face Before. McGregor is the "nice" to Shepherd's "naughty", and her innocent rendition of Kiss's I Was Made for Lovin' You is one of the highlights.
The three lovely divas are well supported by their mini orchestra, who provide wonderful musical accompaniment throughout. The ladies bring plenty of saucy humour and gorgeous vocals, but in terms of burlesque, Sapphire Snow's set is the real deal. She glides and shimmies across the Dunstan Playhouse stage, peeking from behind feathered fans with all the cheeky glamour of a 1920s pin up doll. Lila Luna, stepping in for Imogen Kelly, also provides a lovely acrobatic performance on the aerial hoop.
One feels that the pop "arias" are slightly swamped by their symphonic counterparts, however the quality performances soften the blow from any misplaced expectation.
Closing with a rousing and ear splitting version of ACDC's T.N.T, these three more than succeed in bringing the fun, frocks and frisk of burlesque to the opera.
Nicole Russo
When: Closed
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Melbourne Theatre Company. Her Majesty's Theatre. 13 June 2015
There's only one house on Pennsylvania Avenue that matters and that's the big white one with the flag on top. In this one person play with fabulous songs, we sit with assistant to the assistant to the assistant Harper while she packs her removal box in the Blue Room of the White House after an extraordinary long service as a sort of events co-coordinator for the First Family from Kennedy to Clinton - with the unexplained absence of George Bush the First.
This is Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith's second bespoke play for songstress Bernadette Robinson. Both directed by the irrepressible Simon Phillips, Songs For Nobodies was a hit in 2010 and the trio reprise their success with this offering, which opened in November 2014 at the Melbourne Theatre Company.
The situation is a bit like West Wing where you're with the underlings in the office except when the President just happens to surprise you at an embarrassing moment and lends you some avuncular advice. And Harper is a bit like Forest Gump - not only is she present at the late 20th Century's most historical events, she influences them. The cutest examples are when she whips off Marilyn Monroe's panties to smooth out that skin-clinging Happy Birthday, Mr President dress; and when she comes up with Tear Down This Wall! for Reagan's Cold War-ending Brandenburg Gate speech.
The set, comprised of a set of formal White House furniture, recalling Imperial Rome, and the presidential portraits that digitally dissolve to reveal images of the times, instilled an embarrassing, forelock-tugging cringe.
As Harper, Robinson is warm, charming and innocent, but the patter is just a petite too pat, and the Tennessee accent a bit over-egged. The Harper thing is a conceit to thematically link some songs to showcase Robinson's astonishing vocal skills and mimicking abilities. Sarah Vaughan, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Eartha Kitt, Barbara Streisand and even Bob Dylan are vividly present and accounted for. The songs are introduced with some cute intercourse between the diva and Harper - usually womanly support. Robinson has an uncanny ability to get into the divas's skins, and to astonish with vocal veracity, especially the black ones, yet her mimicry skates very close to parody and the drag show. Or maybe it just seems that way as these women are easy prey for the drag artistes. Along the way, she does a very passable Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, and who can remember what Gerald Ford sounded like?
I am personally a reader of this era of American history and I loved this show and Bernadette Robinson's work in it.
PS I cannot find any evidence that such a Harper person actually existed, though intriguingly, a slide show at the end of the performance showed a Robinson-looking person in a snappy with various presidents and at work in the White House. Maybe the CIA doctored the pics?
David Grybowski
When: 11 to 14 June
Where: Her Majesty's Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Bakehouse Theatre Company. Bakehouse Theatre. 13 Jun 2015
Misogyny, insecurity, spite, venom, and jealousy; they're hoary old dramatic themes but not usually intensively concentrated unless it be in a Neil Labute drama. This little ripper of an emotional pressure cooker is not a kitchen sink drama. It is a factory lunch room number. And, it is not exactly a working class saga but a class clash epic.
As we meet Greg and Steph, they are in violent, virulent conflict. She is on the attack. He has spoken poorly of her to his best mate whose thick and stupid girlfriend has seen fit to pass on the hurtful words. Steph won't take them lying down. She has an extended hissy-fit in which she generally explains how bad it is to make thoughtless comments on the physical appearance of others. Greg has referred to her looks as "regular".
The tirade goes back and forth and forth and back. Torrents of words are screamed. Greg was obviously wrong, but Steph is a foul-mouthed neurotic harridan who really wants an argument. Greg wants it all to go away. Fool that he is, he loves this strident hairdresser. But Greg, we finally realise, is adrift way outside his intellectual and cultural world. He has fallen into a hades of the dim and dangerous people. His best friend, Kent, is a grotesque caricature of a vulgar, ignorant sexist pig. One can't imagine how Greg has ever tolerated him. But Kent has a respectable girlfriend called Carly, a security guard, who seems not to notice how gutter-repugnant he is.
So there we have it; four catastrophic characters screaming at each other about who has betrayed whom and how. Somehow in the middle of all this, Greg wanders from scene to scene with a veritable library of classic literature in his hand.
His dolt friends regularly ask him what he is reading and he tells them. Their idea of a book is TV Week. What are these people doing together?
In the end of the day, Greg has his moment, a pyrrhic victory. We believe there are better things ahead for him.
The others are losers and we never want to see them again. What a pity there are so many such people crowding out this world, we feel as we totter, exhausted, from the theatre.
We have not liked what we saw. But we were not bored. Reason for this is not just Joh Hartog's fiercely snappy direction of the ferocious cut and thrust of it all, but the performances of the four actors. They are intense, committed and utterly focused, drawing the audience tightly into the awful thrall of the work. If Krystal Brock is convincing as Carly, Clare Mansfield is searing as awful Steph. David Hirst is so absolutely obnoxious as Kent that one may find oneself crossing the street to get away from the poor man if one ever sees him in real life.
Nic Krieg holds the key to the play as hapless Greg, the only character for whom the audience can feel an ounce of sympathy. He is a battered soul, out of his depth among the philistines. Krieg's embodiment of all of this simply breaks one's heart. Never did an actor colour a character with more shades of hurt. It's a tour de force. This brutish Labute play merits seeing for the Krieg of it.
Samela Harris
When: 13 to 27 Jun
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com
Photography by Michael Errey
