A Cheery Soul

A Cheery Soul Holden Street 2024by Patrick White. Holden Street Theatres Inc. Holden Street Theatre Studio. 26 Sep 2024

 

When one leaves the theatre, Miss Docker comes too.

Miss Docker is one of theatre’s most complex and compelling anti-heroes.

She is arguably the greatest character in the greatest play by Australia’s Nobel Laureate writer, Patrick White.

And, while she was created out of the very Sydney-like, working-class culture of the 1950s in White’s fictitious Sarsaparilla, she’s a timeless personality - a suburban do-good monster. Perchance we all have met her ilk.

 

She also is a challenging stage role to be captured only by the finest of mid-life actresses. 

Hence, the utter serendipity of having Martha Lott in this city.

We cannot celebrate her too much. We may dare to call her a “great” actress.

And, we have Peter Goers who seizes that greatness and casts her in those elite and memorable roles, among them, Tallulah Bankhead in Looped and Noel Coward’s Lady Gilpin. Now White’s Miss Docker.

 

And so it comes to pass that, laden with emotion and fermenting with thought, we audience members leave Holden Street yet again with the knowledge that we have experienced something exceptional.

 

This latest production of the uncommonly presented tragicomedy, A Cheery Soul, is a triumph. Five stars and then some.

And, on a shoestring budget, too.

Not that everyone can swiftly rave about it. It is not an easy play. It has more shades than its vivid walls of patchwork crochet granny rugs. 

 

It opens as a nice local couple takes pity on Miss Docker and offers to take her in, only to realise that there is more to her than her facade of indefatigable good cheer. She’s a busybody who takes brazen liberties in the belief that it is always for the good of others. She’s the village clown, a status reflected in Lott’s quasi grotesque whiteface makeup. Her meddlesome nature eventually alienates her everywhere. Fellow inhabitants in an old-folks home shun her and, as for the hapless minister of the local church…

 

Martha Lott portrays not only the brash optimism but also, intensely poignantly, the so-carefully-suppressed vulnerability of Miss Docker. One's heart breaks for this despicable character. She’s ghastly and utterly compelling. It’s a tour de force performance.

 

Around her is a glorious cast. Catherine Campbell captures the essence of marital complacency as the well-intended Mrs Custance. Nuanced to a well-observed core, she's a symphony of smug suburbia. Brava. Robert Cuszena shows his seasoned stage skills in artfully complementing as her malleable spouse. Perched beneath a crochet rug on two chairs in a bedroom scene, they are the purest picture of a happy marriage.

 

While Sandi McMenamin brings the house down as the world-weary organist, she touches the heart as an old girl in the nursing home. David O’Brien makes a committed performance as a stroke victim and Amelia Lott-Watson has a delicious comic presence as the teenage Narelle. Christopher Cordeaux expressively adorns the stage as a useful extra as does dear Ron Hoenig.

 

David Arcidiaco is, oh, so winning as the self-doubting minister Mr Wakeman. There’s a lost soul in his eyes. While Jessica Corrie as the minister’s wife throws a cold balance of common sense into the dramas, it is Sue Wylie and Jo Coventry who brilliantly equip this Patrick White play with the essence of Patrick White.  As residents of the old folks home, they perform as the chorus, their blended voices underscoring their, our, and Sarsaparilla's inner world. Their lines are a joy of pure White prose, prosaic and profound all at once. For, indeed, A Cheery Soul was not written as a piece of realistic theatre. It ventured into the absurd and the surreal, the symbolic and the banal.

 

Director Peter Goers shares his understanding of all of this in the detail and finesse embraced by this exceptional production. Patrick White would have cause to be proud.

 

Samela Harris

 

When: 26 Sep to 12 Oct

Where: Holden Street Theatres

Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com

 

Disclaimer: Samela worked with Goers on his now lamentably lost Sunday radio arts show.

The Almighty Sometimes

The Almighty Sometimes Adelaide 2024Theatre Republic. Space Theatre. 25 Sep 2024

 

When the girl was old enough to walk, she began to float, two or three inches above the ground, and then higher and higher until her head hit the ceiling and her mother had to buy an extra-extendable ladder just to bring her down. “You must keep it a secret,” the neighbours said, so the mother tied a piece of string from the girl’s hand to her own, and let down the bottom of every skirt, so no one could see the space between the shoes and the floor. One day, the mother forgot to lock the kitchen drawer, and the girl found a knife, a big knife, the best knife, for old bread and tough legs of ham, and she dragged it down her body, top to bottom, opening herself like a leather bag. She stepped out of her skin and kicked it away, where it hit the wall – splat! – and slithered to the ground. The mother tried to catch her daughter but there was nothing there to hold on to. “Look up, look up, look up,” the little girl said, and she flew around her mother, and did somersaults in the air, and walked along the clothesline, and made silly faces at the window, while the mother cried, and the skin turned to slush in her hands.

Anna

Anna is 18 years old and has officially reached the end of her childhood. This milestone is emotionally difficult for any child/adult, as it is for their parents and those who care for them. For Anna, the coming-of-age projects her headlong into a confusing, complex and ultimately painful outcome for all concerned.

 

Anna lives with a mental illness and has been medicated since the age of 11. At her coming of age, she discovers boxes of her journals in her mother’s wardrobe, written before her diagnosis. Struck by the remarkable stories she produced as a child, Anna tries to find her way back by going cold turkey on her medication. Is she still in there?

 

Kendall Feaver’s The Almighty Sometimes reaches a fist into the world of mental illness, twists and turns until it bleeds, patches it up, then makes it bleed again. Opening with the monologue ‘When the girl…’, written by an eight-year-old Anna, the opening scene finds Anna (Emily Liu) and Oliver (Simon Chandler) engaged in the age-old courtship ritual albeit in contemporary terms; I walked you home, now are we sleeping together? The intervention of Anna’s mother Renee (Tamara Lee) indicates their relationship – tight, and tightly held. Anna’s psychiatrist Vivienne (Anna Steen) is a wonderfully realised character, also holding firmly to her feelings, her professionalism, her private life and most importantly, to her decision to prescribe the cocktail of medications to a young Anna.

 

Anna’s exploration of life without drugs leads to an unravelling, and while the triangulated daughter, mother, psychiatrist relationship takes up the most space, the nascent romance between Anna and Oliver has its own echoes of agony and ecstasy.

 

Simon Chandler works his way into the character of Oliver with a charm that does not indicate what lies beneath, until the comedic gives way to the distraught. The trauma that Oliver feels, and his inability to continue is portrayed adroitly by Chandler.

 

Tamara Lee takes her time fleshing out Renee, but when she arrives, she is a force of nature as the mother with a surfeit of unconditional love and warrior strength. This is counterpointed by Anna Steen’s vaguely enigmatic portrayal of psychiatrist Vivienne, a study in restraint and poise.

 

It is Emily Liu as Anna who is riveting, appearing to traverse the incredible range of emotions effortlessly. With an illness that (cleverly) never reveals its name, she depicts a journey into mental illness, coupled with the confusion of the coming of age, with a sure hand.

 

Meg’s Wilson deceptively simple set is lit by Nic Mollison; between them they take us from kitchen to office to hospital with slight but skilfully effective shifts. Jason Sweeney’s soundscapes conveys us from scene to scene, mostly quite loudly, continuing to work in with the overarching simplicity that echoes the firm direction that Corey McMahon brings to this production.

 

This script is exceptional, and well deserving of the awards Kendall Feaver has garnered. This company has taken this absolute gift and presented it back to us in one of the more riveting productions of the year. A must see.

 

Arna Eyers-White

 

When: 25 to 28 Sep

Where: Space Theatre

Bookings: premier.ticketek.com.au

The Puzzle

The Puzzle State Theatre 2024by David Williamson. State Theatre Company South Australia. Dunstan Playhouse. 24 Sep 2024

 

The slightest interest in taking a lifestyle cruise is utterly neutered when one sees David Williamson’s new play, The Puzzle.

What a tedious bunch of shallow and entitled losers our most celebrated playwright has created in the name of contemporary Australian comedy.

Yes. The play is diverting, a sort of boulevard comedy, if you will. There are a couple of ripper good lines.

But its premise is tawdry. 

The theme has it that wife swapping can be fun. Or not.

In itself, wife swapping is old hat. Leaning back into the 1960s when it was all the go, newspaper classifieds abounded with ads for “broadminded couples” and ensuing suburban parties featured spinning bottles or keys in a jar. There used to be an organisation called Wife Swappers International. Well, if Williamson is right, this same demographic now spends a lot of money hanging up pineapple symbols to swap partners on speciality cruise ships. And the thrill of it all is hit or miss.

As is the play.

 

It is not possible to shock audiences with sex anymore. Even the multi-generational polyamorous sex as bragged by the play’s young “Unicorn” character barely raises an eyebrow. 

Interestingly, Williamson sidesteps gender-neutral and non-binary issues in this new sexy romp. Even homosexual sex doesn’t get a look-in. It’s about horny squares, two married couples getting it off on a luxury lifestyle cruise. They’re professionals, heading for forty and lacking only a surfeit of orgasms in their successful lives. There’s some interesting current-affairs banter over pre-swap margaritas in the bar and there are several arguments about the value of cerebral fulfilment versus libidinous gratification - the good old Williamson bourgeois interactions we’ve come to know and love. So, there’s a bit of meat on the bone of the great man's new, maybe last play.

 

But, if one’s looking for meat, this production has pure, glorious, unadulterated beefcake in the form of Chris Asimos as Brian. Not only is he impeccably ripped but also, he is a talented and, in this case, a deliciously comic South Australian actor. He’s outstanding in an outstandingly good professional cast. Anna Lindner partners him as luscious, libidinous Michelle. She’s pin-up gorgeous and she’s equipped with exquisite reactive stage skills. Beloved Nathan O’Keefe is the weedy but needy one among these erotic blooms, an odd podcast-loving catalyst to the play’s dramatic machinations.  Partnering him is voluptuous Ansuya Nathan who delivers the ultimate cultural feel-good in torrents of erudition straight from the heart. The wise wife. It’s a strong, committed performance.

Ahunim Abebe, sylph-like with a glory of long, black braids, plays Cassie, the figure of utterly-not-innocent youth. Her character flies blithely on the zeitgeist of modern multi-love which comes as a bit of a surprise to her dear old dad, Drew. Erik Thomson artfully eats that stage persona for dinner in an adorable performance.  The audience falls in love with him. He is our everyman in that weird salacious eyrie, and, in a rather heavy-handed but ultimately aesthetic titular metaphor, he’s diligently engaged on a jigsaw.

 

The production values are, as ever with State, exemplary. Shannon Rush’s direction creates a zippy pace with characters flitting across the set almost credibly as on a cruise ship. And it’s that gifted stage designer Ailsa Paterson who creates the ship in a vast spread of an oceanic texture backdrop behind  two cabins, a bar, a lounge , a sun deck and, heaven help us, a tropical balcony on the side. With Mark Shelton’s perceptive lighting, it is an extremely pleasing world to behold.  Andrew Howard’s sound adds some boppy scene changes with Mark Oakley popping up helpful timelines such as “previous day” and “morning after” on the stateroom cabin’s big screen. 

 

The Puzzle is all a bit of a frisky caper on a tired old theme. Williamson has enabled the plot to be not too predictable. And, while the play evokes a few guffaws, ’tis the titillating stuff of general titters.

 

Samela Harris

 

Note: One does not usually describe actors’ bodies in contemporary theatre criticism but in the case of a play about sexy players, one may make an exception.

 

When: 24 Sep to 12 Oct

Where: Dunstan Playhouse

Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au

Newsies Jr.

Newsies Jr Pelican Productions 2024Pelican Productions. Arts Theatre. 21 Sep 2024

 

They’ve done it again. The Arts Theatre stage literally swarms with a wealth of beautifully disciplined and upliftingly talented young performers.  Talk about a peep hole into the future of the Australian stage. The joy of Jen Frith and Kylie Green's Pelican Productions is the way it rallies and trains school after school of thrilling young emerging talent in Adelaide.

This critic has yet to see them put on a bad show.

Nor to see greater groups of youngies working better or harder together. 

Choreographer Carla Papa and musical director Ben Francis have a lot to do with that.

 

The company has been presenting two simultaneous productions at The Arts this time around. Heathers the Musical (already bestowed a very positive review on this grand old arts site by colleague Arna Eyres-White) and Disney’s Newsies Jr

Newsies Jr.  features the old American Broadway finesse of Alen Menken’s music with Jack Feldman’s lyrics from Harvey Fierstein’s book, all based on the Disney Film which, in turn, is based on fact.

 

Not only is it a bumper stage show but it also depicts a precious piece of history, an early era, pre-electronic media, when print reigned supreme as primary sources of information and influence and when newspaper circulation featured sales on the city streets - newspapers hot off the presses being sold by (predominantly) teenage boys. There once were newsboys shouting out the headlines and selling papers for coins on almost every street corner in Adelaide.

 

Newsies Jr. is set in New York City in 1899 when Joseph Pulitzer was the ruthless editor of the sensationalist World newspaper and Teddy Roosevelt was Governor of New York. Newsies is particularly pertinent right now since it was a highly political and Democrat-leaning publication and it targeted corruption. Not that Newsies makes Pulitzer into a hero. His arbitrary raising of the price of the paper and compromising the meagre profit line of its street sellers is core to the story. 

 

Led by Jack Kelly, the battler kids take on media moguls by striking for fair pay. Hence, the musical is about political activism and the power of the people, nicely intertwined with greed, rivalry, discrimination, and emancipation.

This latter is embodied by a pioneer female journalist in quest of the scoop, this role is performed by Amelia Boys who is among those outstanding with names to be watched. Hers is not only an eloquent characterisation with impressive keystrokes on a vintage typewriter but a powerful voice with a particularly lovely timbre.

 

While Reo Gerhardy carries the lead role of newsboy Jack Kelly with heaps of chutzpah and Will Fleming charms in fine voice as Crutchie, the eye is constantly drawn to one of the dance ensemble, not only because of his height but the fact that Francis Osei-Tutu is an outstanding dancer - another name for which to watch. Noah Byrne and Casey Mifsud also are notable along with Mia Khairul hamming it up a treat as the kid.

 

Production values are high, as ever, in these big-cast shows. Lighting is on the ball, costumes thorough, and sound well balanced. It’s a professional production by and for promising amateurs.  Bravo once again, Pelican.

 

Samela Harris

 

When: Closed

Where: Arts Theatre

Bookings: Closed

Heathers: The Musical

Heathers Musical Adelaide 2024Pelican Productions. Arts Theatre. 13 Sep 2024

 

Can’t we be seventeen? croon high school sweethearts Veronica and J.D. It’s a reasonable question but considering that they’ve just murdered three people and are contemplating some other pretty macabre deeds, the idea of baking brownies and going bowling is a bit fanciful.

 

In this musical adaptation of the 1988 movie Heathers, the Americanisation is emphasised, and with that one seems able to remain a step removed from some of the truly appalling actions of the characters; sexism, misogyny and stereotypical gender role playing.

 

Heathers comes with some serious warnings - explicit language, graphic violence, suicide, sexual violence, fat shaming – and that’s just in the first act! Unfortunately, while it may not be the norm in Australian schools, there are scenes in this show that remind one all too sombrely of the school shootings, violence and student abuses that are occurring all too frequently in U.S. schools. There’s a salient lesson here, but fortunately, in terms of this production, the story is told with humour, albeit dark at times, and some of it is just laugh-aloud funny.

 

On a set depicting a brick wall (another brick in the…?) topped with an iron framed catwalk, the students of Westerburg High School arrive for the new term. Fresh faced, beautiful healthy bodies, excitement in the air… but it soon becomes clear that there is something noxious in the air, and this is exemplified by the entrance of the ruling clique, the Heathers - Heather Chandler, Heather Duke and Heather McNamara, played respectively by Taylor Schwartz, Emma Pool and Abi Sharp. These are vicious young women, bullies of the first order, and heavy-set Martha (Juliette Keir) is just one of the many to feel their wrath. Martha’s best friend Veronica (Lluka Wadey) is determined not to be a victim, so introduces the Heathers to her forging skill (hall passes, sick notes, whatever you need) and is soon inducted as the fourth group member.

 

Enter the enigmatic Jason Dean aka J.D (Alek Kudra), the Baudelaire reading newcomer, who beats up the jocks Kurt (Ewan Pugh) and Ram (Jack Keukenmeester) and Veronica’s heart is won. What follows is an all-singing, all-dancing fest of sex, death and destruction – just your average high school semester.

 

Director Georgia Broomhill has elicited a highly professional production from such a young cast. The original film / musical was set firmly in the ‘eighties. From the first scene, the singing and dancing skills were on fire and did not let up until the finale. Music Director Ben Francis has worked well with the more than 20 songs in this production; for the most part they’re standard music theatre, with the standouts being the aforementioned Seventeen, Candy Store, JD’s Freeze Your Brain and the emotive Lifeboat, beautifully delivered by Abi Sharp.

 

The highlight of this show is the dancing. Amongst the murders, mayhem, date rape, suicides and hauntings (the dead visit regularly), this cast is constantly on the move. Choreographer Shenayde Patterson has read this show brilliantly, and working with Ben Francis’s musical direction, has created a tour de force of movement and excitement. Just wonderful, from first to last.

 

Heathers has two casts: this night saw Class 2 on the stage and no doubt Class 1 is just as accomplished. While the subject matter can be difficult at times, the performances are to be lauded. Well done, Pelican.

 

Arna Eyers-White

 

When: 13 to 15 Sep

Where: Arts Theatre

Bookings: trybooking.com

Page 3 of 277