The Adelaide Repertory Theatre. The Arts Theatre. 16 Nov 2017
Roll up, Roll up.
The Rep’s end-of-year romp into the realms of classic vaudeville is a night of raucous audience engagement and tears of mirth.
This is a wonderful tradition upheld by our oldest theatre company which happens also to be the oldest in the southern hemisphere, and quite a spectacle with the stage transformed to faux travelling tent, enabling the show to swing from high ham melodrama to assorted classic vaudevillian turns. Some audience members are still holding their ribs after watching Lindy LeCornu and Christopher Evan’s gloriously po-faced performance of the world-famous Balloon Dance.
Then there was Aled Proeve’s wistful rendition of The Hole in the Elephant’s Bottom which soon had the audience completing the punchlines like some huge smooth choral ensemble.
Indeed, in many ways the audience’s performance on opening night deserves its own rave review. It was of strong and beautiful voice both in song and booing and hissing and cheering; for, indeed, there was a valiant hero to celebrate, an evil villain to loathe and a beautiful heroine to champion in Walter Boughton’s dramatic melodrama, Virtue Always Triumphs or Life in the Wicked City.
Buddy Dawson has sprung miraculously out of musical theatre to save the day as Dick Truhart. This athletic young performer has a heavenly sense of physical comedy and an unerring instinct for the cornball. He plays it hayseed to the husk.
The object of his devotion is the hapless, innocent, unknowing heiress Charity for which part director Pam O’Grady has found the utterly divine Ashley Penny. Artful balletic physical exaggeration, a strong voice, an ability for split-second mood changes and the best howling bawl in the business put her in the upper echelons for melodrama stardom - for which, sadly, there is limited call today.
However, shades of the much loved Old Kings Music Hall of yore were ever present in this vivid and fun-filled show, not least when the bedazzling Mistress of Ceremonies, Penni Hamilton-Smith called upon the original Master of Ceremonies from those early Adelaide years, Mr Gordon Poole who, at 92 going on 93, still with that mellifluous British stage voice, was there in the audience booing along with the best of them.
Hamilton-Smith was true to the “ham” in her name in glamorous overkill, swishing about in blinding pink but, oddly, seeming almost to be sight-reading the show’s script when doing the absurdly alliterative introductions.
Also doing a lot of swishing was cloak-wrapped David Sinclair as the evil villain from “the city” whence all wickedness and depravity springs from the saloon bars and torture chambers. Raspy-voiced and evil-eyed, he pursued poor Charity with his gang of odd-bod thugs played by Matt Grohl, Laura Antoniazzi and Aled Proeve. Rose Vallen in black eyepatch was another evildoer as was Rebecca Kemp; not all that she seemed, as we came to find out. Tim Blackshaw and Annie Hall paired nicely as the earthy Truhart parents and Christopher Meegan pleased both with his twinkle-toed poise as the mysterious stranger and his lovely voice singing Danny Boy.
For, yes, there are songs for young and old, sing-alongs and knees-up in this celebration of cultural kitsch and, with Rowan Dennis on drums, it is the legendary Sandi McMenamin on the tatty old upright piano who gives the show its musical life. Move over Winnifred Atwell.
All this and much more is rolled into rowdy and rollicking fun by the expertise of director Pam O’Grady with a solid and seasoned backstage team, including Brian Budgen as scenic artist and Richard Parkhill on lights.
Give yourself a pre-Chrissie treat. Buy a ticket and live a night in laughter at the silliness of old-time shtick. It’s a tonic.
Samela Harris
When: 16 to 25 Nov
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
The Hills Musical Company. The Stirling Theatre. 10 Nov 2017
A bleak setting awaits those taking their seats at the Stirling Theatre for the Hills Musical Company’s production of Spring Awakening. Designer/Director Hayley Horton has wrapped the stage in black - a blank white projection screen, centre, the only relief. It is the foundation for this tale of a group of oppressed adolescents clawing, nay fighting, their way into adulthood with both hands figuratively tied behind their back. The set and lighting (Tim Bates) drives this message home.
Wendla Bergmann (Millicent Sarre) enters, dressed sweetly in virgin white, she is a picture of naivety and innocence. Sarre plays her coyly but with a strong desire for learning. Her Mumma Who Bore Me aches for wisdom and understanding. Sarre sings beautifully. In the immediate reprise the girls’ assault the stage, venting their frustration at their parent’s conventionalism. It is a powerful performance and has us upright in our seats. This production presents the innermost thoughts and desires of these otherwise outwardly compliant adolescents through the expressive musical medium of rock.
Sitting in their Latin class, the boys recite verse from memory when young Moritz Stiefel (Connor Olsson-Jones) has a mental blank. He has been kept awake at night by ‘wet dreams’ he cannot comprehend. When his close friend Melchior Gabor (Mitchell Smith) jumps to his defence, arguing with the boys’ teacher, Herr Sonnenstich (Josh Barkley) that Stiefel’s interpretation may still have validity it provides the perfect segue into All That’s Known. Smith gives us a first insight into the mind of a character that rejects both religion and institution. Smith’s Gabor is complex, inquisitive, relentlessly demanding, yet vulnerable; Smith’s performance is second to none.
The boys’ sexual frustrations are released in a powerful rendering of The Bitch of Living before the whole cast confess their crushes, unrealised sexual desires, and distant admiration, in My Junk; the number wonderfully juxtaposing the difference in the experience for girls and boys.
The Word of Your Body finds Sarre and Smith exploring their burgeoning sexuality in what is certainly a show highlight. We are trapped by the tension the two young performers exude as their hands explore their own body, and each other’s.
It is a troubling transition into The Dark I Know Well, but it is undoubtedly a defining performance for young actress, Sahra Cresshull who plays Martha Bessell. Cresshull tugs at our heart strings with her distressing, unnerving, and facially expressive performance, which is enhanced when her sister, Ilse (Jemma Allen), joins her for a stunning duet.
Olsson-Jones is dangerously good in And Then There Were None, with Fanny Gabor (Kate Anolak). It should be said that everything Anolak does, in her many roles as The Adult Woman, is delivered with panache and elegance. Thomas Phillips’ interpretive choreography – which enhances the entire performance – shines brightly, both in structure and cast execution, in The Mirror-Blue Night; another solidly executed sing by Smith. I Believe rounds out the first act with a passionate, believably staged love scene.
Horton’s set undergoes a constant transformation which mirrors that of her blossoming cast, as it is constantly ‘wounded’ by the players stripping it bare of the bleak wrapping which conceals its inner beauty, colour, angst, and impending destruction. The white screen, electronically decorated by hand drawings of innocence, is an evolving – occasionally distracting – canvas.
Olsson-Jones and Allen share a moment in Don’t Do Sadness/Blue Wind with another show highlight before Smith delivers an object lesson in performance with his rendition of Left Behind opposite Josh Barkley as Herr Stiefel. Both performers are outstanding in this number and, like Anolak, Barkley deserves recognition for his work throughout in his many roles as The Adult Man.
Totally Fucked is the showstopper number, which does nothing short of shake the house down under the skill of this ensemble. Never does this cast sound better than when singing together in harmony. The Song of Purple Summer a standout example of the sensitivity and power this group harness on stage. The talented ensemble is completed with the contributions of Emily Downing as Thea, Chelsea McGuiness as Anna, Emma Wilczek as Melitta, Kieren Gulpers as Greta, Zachary Moore as Hanschen, Harry Nguyen as Ernst, Robbie Mitchell as Georg and Dylan Rufus as Otto.
Tim Feedman’s sound design and operation manages the complex changing levels of dialogue and song with skill whilst musical director, Mark DeLaine’s band drives the rock genre without overpowering the show. What DeLaine has accomplished with the singers is the icing to Horton’s cake. There are a few creeping Australian-isms in both song and dialogue amongst the cast that frustrate, and a few nerves shake otherwise steady performers’ confidence on opening night; an issue likely to pass.
Horton’s vision for an updated Spring Awakening rings true, except for the costumes which seem oddly stuck in the past - perhaps one update too far from the original, or maybe an unnecessary alteration in the greater vision of this production? Either way it hardly matters, there is no doubt this is a show not to be missed.
Paul Rodda
When: 10 to 25 November
Where: Stirling Community Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Therry Dramatic Society. Arts Theatre. 2 Nov 2017
It’s the only murder mystery at which one is told to go out and tell the world whodunnit,
That’s because playwright Alan Ayckbourn wrote three optional endings and it is decided for each performance by being picked from a hat.
On opening night, Jocelyn did it. Well, she said she did. But It Could Be Any One of Us and there is plenty of room for doubt.
On this Therry production’s opening night, the plot took quite a while to evolve. The pace was more like treacle than honey. The cast worked ferociously hard but somehow were missing some cylinders.
All the right ingredients are there. The Kerrin White set of the grand farmhouse living room is wonderfully expansive, detailed and sumptuous. It features the grand piano on which Mortimer Chalke regales the family with his latest composition. A very tousle-haired Roman Turkiewicz plays this dire composer and both he and the music are very funny.
Mortimer is head of a dysfunctional and dependent family: sister Jocelyn a failed crime writer, brother Brinton, a failed artist with arrested development, and niece Amy whose main talent is eating. They live a quarrelsome life together with Jocelyn’s partner, a would-be private detective called Norris.
The cat is set among the pigeons when Mortimer announces that he is changing his Will to leave the family estate to a girl who came to him for piano lessons 20 years ago, and she is coming to spend the weekend. Who should be the victim and who the killer, are then thrown about culminating in one riotous scary and chaotic thunderstorm scene in which the murder eventually takes place.
Therry pulls this off nicely. It is fast and funny. It is the high spot of the show, much enabled by the good work of the sound and lighting techs.
The play is performed in a perplexing assortment of English accents, some of them so laboured they slow the action. Gigi Jeffers, clearly an accomplished actress, delivers the character of Jocelyn with most emphatic enunciation. She makes a bit of a send-up of measured delivery and brings fond memories of the style of the late Hayette Erickson.
Ben Todd has a slightly posher accent as he bumbles around as the family’s hapless simpleton. Bonnie McAllister, as the overweight and depressed quasi-punk daughter, Amy Polegarte, has more of an Essex thing happening; not that she has many lines. Hers is a performance of sullen stomping and eye rolling and she is a comic pleasure to watch. Brad Martin as the over-enthusiastic would-be sleuth and Miriam Keane as the former student do their own regional thing, both with panache. One leaves the theatre with Keane’s brave rendition of the sausage song ringing through one’s mind. If ever anyone did credit to a silly song, it is she.
One can usually be assured of aching ribs after an Alan Ayckbourn play. There are some good laughs in It Could Be Any One of Us but this Kerrin White production does not throw the audience into the aisles. Doubtless some run-in time will bring a more naturalistic feel to the performances.
Samela Harris
When: 2 to 11 Nov
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com or 8358 3018
Red Phoenix Theatre. Holden Street Theatres. 2 Nov 2017
Revolutions begin with words. They are sustained and powered by words as moral motivation and weapons of attack. Vaclav Havel’s The Conspirators was written not long after his works were banned by Communist Czechoslovakia and the brief period of liberalisation from Communist rule of 1968 was brutally repressed by direct Soviet invasion.
Director Michael Eustice’s production wields the comic power of Havel’s words and their darker side with incisive aplomb, delivered by a cast equally adept at balancing the light and deep darkness at the heart of a manipulative, repressive political machine.
Conspiracy is a paranoia born of a revolution seeking to survive and maintain its momentum. Viva la revolution! It comes to life when an uprising threatens an establishing dictatorship, forcing elites to decide where their best safety lies, the public’s more liberal democratic instinct being a side issue.
The survival conspiracy, and its conspirators, are dressed in delightfully bright Liechtenstein 50s inspired costumes by Libby Drake, backgrounded by Nicholas Ely’s white chalk political slogans adorning black walls.
The cheerful visual clash of light and dark is superbly matched in performance and language.
Light hearted pantomime crossed with melodrama is the style, perfectly accenting the very serious and dangerous nature of the proceedings political slogans shade.
Wheels within wheels turn. Well to do widow Helga (Emily Branford), her sister Edith (Martha Lott) and husband, State Prosecutor Dykl (Tony Busch), and Joint Chief of Staff head Major Ofir (Adrian Barnes) find themselves in a dance to manage Colonel Moher, Chief of Police Intelligence (Brant Eustice.)
It’s as thrillingly entertaining as it is a sombre reflection not only of the past, but the present day global political climate. Helga often reinterprets Ofir’s political language to best suit the regime. Her sister’s husband Dykl does his best to play things two ways. Head of Censorship Aram (Nick Fagan) keeps much to himself but is exceedingly polite. All fear Colonel Moher. All are warily working around him, to save themselves by insinuating themselves into power somehow. A family affair, effectively.
Emily Branford and Brant Eustice are magnificent opposites in this dance of power. Branford’s comically flirtatious performance matches well with Eustice’s intense, yet ridiculously bombastic political thug of a character whose words are genuinely dangerous.
Equally effective are the rest of the cast, particularly Martha Lott’s comically risk averse Edith, Adrian Barnes’ affable, easily manipulated Ofir, Tony Busch’s bumbling Dykl and Anna Bampton’s superb character play as Ruth, Dykl’s attractive but possibly dangerous secretary.
The Conspirators successfully reaches the fearful and questioning mind through its humour. It needs no raging anger to make clear the dangers to human dignity and freedom it addresses, given it is borne of a time when such dangers were a brutal reality not needing to be accented. Sadly those times are still with us on the globe, and threaten being unleashed in places least expected.
David O’Brien
When: 2 to 11 Nov
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
Marie Clark Musical Theatre. The Goodwood Institute. 
Nov 2017
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee tells the story of a charming bunch of eccentric youngsters all vying for the title of the Spelling Bee champion. It’s a feel good musical that reminds us that feeling good about ourselves is way more important that merely winning at all costs, and it is easy to see why the delightful score and lovable characters made the show a winner of nine major American theatre awards including two Tonys. Marie Clark Musical Theatre’s Adelaide production is a lovely rendering of this wonderful show.
Directed by Kristin Telfer in her ‘musical theatre’ directorial debut, with musical direction from Sarah Whiteley in her musical direction debut, one wouldn’t immediately pick that two of the four-strong production team were so green. They are complimented by co-choreographers Rachel Dow and Rebekah Sonelaitken and the result of their efforts is a perfectly pleasing production.
It is the casting which has been the greatest success for Marie Clark’s second 2017 season production. Standing proudly at the helm and with a voice that could melt chocolate, Sarah Wildy gives a stand-out vocal performance that is pivotal to the show’s success. The cast is wonderfully balanced and blend effortlessly. That said there are standouts amongst them whose characterisation or vocal ability shine.
Favourites included Emily-Jo Davidson’s wonderful physicality as Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, Ashleigh McFadden’s mucosally challenged characterisation of William Barfee, and Joseph Giblin’s complete disdain for his part as Comfort Councillor, Mitch Mahoney, and hilarious pirouettes! Shay Stonelaitken delivers one of the best performances this reviewer has seen him execute in his multiple roles, including the home-schooled Leaf Coneybear.
Alisa James is beautifully insular as Olive Ostrovsky and does justice to one of music theatre’s most amazing numbers, the I Love You Song, in which Wildy transcends. Naomi Crosby is perfect as Marcy Park, Gus Robson’s unfortunate erection has a life of its own, and Jamie Wright’s Vice Principal Douglas Panch is wonderfully apathetic.
Overall the show is only just shy of an A+, with a few production elements falling short of framing a perfect performance. Lighting by Rodney Bates is a little hit and miss; mostly focussed at the floor it leaves dark patches in the corners and high on the rostrum. Sound – also by Bates – is well balanced but could do with a few notches on the volume. The pace in the opening numbers and in the dialogue between the songs really suffers and could do with being lifted, and a few odd blocking decisions niggle at otherwise lovely staging. These few misgivings aside, Marie Clark Musical Theatre’s production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is simply delightful.
Paul Rodda
When: 27 Oct to 4 Nov
Where: Goodwood Institute
Bookings: trybooking.com