State Theatre Company. Dunstan Playhouse. 25 August 2015
Shakespeare wasn't the only playwright in town at the beginning of the 17th Century when Ben Jonson was in full bloom during the English reign of King James I (1603-25). Writing wasn't his first career choice - he was apprenticed as a bricklayer to his stepfather when he volunteered for the army and is considered to have killed an enemy soldier in single combat in Flanders. On return to England, he started as an actor. Queen Elizabeth I banned his co-written play, Isle of Dogs, and Jonson did time for "leude and mutynous behavior." A year later, he killed one of the actors in that play in a duel, and also wrote his first successful script, ironically titled, Every Man in His Humour. He was/is regarded paradoxically as a bit of a hot-head and one of the best writers of satire in his time.
Whereas Shakespeare is performed verbatim, Jonson's Volpone (or The Fox) needed a bit of a massage by adaptor Emily Steel. Volpone in the first scene appears bound to his deathbed in Venice and, seemingly soon to be departed from his fabulous wealth, manages to extract even more treasure from three friends who are promised to be his sole heir by Volpone's mischief-making manservant, Mosca. I could see the Jacobean masses ripping laughter at the unadulterated greed of these rich bastards while they manipulate each other for ever more booty, work their way through corrupt courts with crooked, smooth-talking lawyers to protect their assets, and finally get unjust comeuppances.
But that was then and this is now. I didn't peal with laughter or feel anything often enough to make this a great night out. Director Nescha Jelk seemed to have all the design elements in place: Jonathon Oxlade's modern Italianate pillars and arches making a colonnade or peristyle as required, Geoff Cobham's lighting palate complementing Oxlade's colourful personality-bespoke costumes, and Will Spartalis's spoof music. Jelk and her cast invest the characters with over-the-top and physically comedic idiosyncrasies that were at first startling and laugh-fetching. But after the initial intrigue had been set, the script followed the course of a morality tale, and production values that were initially stimulating and unusual became loud and overloaded.
It was great to see some of the old favourites foiled with a younger crop of actors. Edwin Hodgeman charmed with his aged Corbaccio. Geoff Revell made his schtick comfortable in a variety of guises, and Paul Blackwell infused the eponymous role with his comic complexity. James Smith, Patrick Graham and Elizabeth Hay are the future on stage and no doubt we'll see a lot more of them. With Caroline Mignone and Matt Crook, director Welk guided the cast in script-enhancing physical comedy.
I think my lack of enthusiasm for this production is that the characterisations were fully understood once the key creative elements were established, and the story's wending didn't sustain my interest. Upon being told that Shakespeare never blotted (i.e., crossed out) a line when he wrote, Jonson apparently said, "Would he had blotted a thousand!" Careful, Ben.
David Grybowski
When: 21 August to 12 September
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
Theatre Guild. Little Theatre. 15 August 2015
George and Martha. Ever heard of them? You might have a couple like them in your life. That is, the couple that perform their marriage in public. They like to raise the stakes of the dinner party by goading and prodding each other to solicit a reaction, hopefully an embarrassing one, or to "enchant" the evening with witty barbs on the return of the serve. It's a dangerous game, and can spiral out of control. It can also be very disturbing for the guests, but that's part of the idea, to get people out of their comfort zone, push their buttons and to see what stuff they're really made of. Bad marriage turned to blood sport.
American playwright Edward Albee caused a sensation in 1962-3 when his psychological drama during a long after-party drinks session hit Broadway. He was rewarded with a Tony and a New York Drama Critics' Circle award for best play, and went on to win three Pulitzer prizes.
In Albee's hyper-version of this damaged marriage phenomenon, George is a clapped-out history (read yesterday's academic) professor at an upstate New York university. His marriage to Martha, the university president's daughter, for 23 years, has not resulted in the expected advancement. After a party at Daddy's house, Martha invites over a couple new to town, a young biology (ie; the future - genetics, etc are discussed) prof and his rather simple wife. It's on, as George and Martha play psycho-games with the guests and each other.
This production is an absolute ripper. Director Geoff Brittain has marshalled his forces into a fighting team. The creeping barrages are laid thick and fast, and the swordplay is expert. "the Woolf" is a necessarily lengthy play so that the audience gets the wearing-down effect and both barrels in the denouement have maximum effect, but Brittain's production is action-packed throughout.
In spite of a delayed season due to an illness in the cast, they were a well-oiled machine of rapid-fire insults and slanging matches. There are four-out-of-four terrific performances. Julie Quick played a great Martha - mercurial and a superb drunk. Her venomous barbs lingered in the air and from the front row were rather frightening. Chris Leech as the harried George was every inch the has-been prof, but a cunning one as he invents new games, like Hump the Host, and Get the Guests. Mark Healy's Nick had the necessary unbalance while Jessica Carroll's Honey's descent into an alcoholic haze was palpable. But it was the way that Brittain had them working together with repartee, and in creating changes of mood and pace. Martha and George encircled their prey and used them like bait that ends in a winner-take-all end-game. Tony Clancy's study/lounge room set was just the ticket, but the soundtrack added nothing.
This is another Theatre Guild production delivering the goods and should not be missed. Double bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 12 to 22 August
Where: Little Theatre, University of Adelaide
Bookings: trybooking.com
Windmill Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre and AJZ Productions. Space Theatre. 14 Aug 2015
"the book of loco" won the 2013 Adelaide Fringe Festival Award for Best Theatre Production, so I was mucho looking forward to my first viewing and this faithful reprise with writer, creator and sole performer, Alirio Zavarce, and original director, Sasha Zahra, after a second season at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre last year.
This one act play is an extremely creatively expressed autobiographical amble through Zavarce's earlier and unsettled life, prior to current contentment with his wife Juliette and their two kids. He has a lot to get off his chest, and if he's not still terribly angry about it all, he certainly acted like he was. And that's probably why I left the theatre feeling rather sad, as if the trespasses against him, and those he saw in life, were not forgiven, in spite of a plea to the audience to be kind and considerate of one another, politically and even when exiting a burning building.
Many of his life's incidences struck a parallel with mine, but some serious ones I have not had to endure. Desperate phone calls with the recent ex- telling him to buck up had me recollect some pathetic moments. I have not endured the racial profiling from customs that Zavarce relates on return trips back to Australia, however, I share with him the dislocation of the life of a migrant to this country, and terrible visits back home to ailing, dying or dead parents. A kind of a running theme was what to do in an emergency (and airplane trips figure prominently here again) - later it emerges why. No, I haven't had that happen to my family.
Zavarce, stuffed into a black suit, and sweating profusely, is variably charming, frightening, funny, pathetic, threatening, throwing away anger and the next moment, defeated - driven crazy by manipulating authorities, bad behaviour, or just bad luck. Moment by moment, you just don't know what will be the next turn in the tale.
Director Zahra and Zavarce employ a panoply of theatrical tricks and script devices to keep one off balance - not quite knowing where something is leading and then bringing it all together. Every action seemed to be loaded with symbolic content, although I found selling the plate of shit irrelevant and he could have saved himself the 20 bucks, which must be adding up to quite a sum by now, the third season. The set, comprised of walls of cardboard cartons, designed by Jonathon Oxlade, provided me with a sense of transition or change - on the move, so to speak. As the wall was dismantled in various ways, the boxes lent themselves to all kinds of makeshift props and purposes.
"the book of loco" is like a book from the bible - allegorical, historical, mythical, entertaining, educational, functional and above all, human. A plate of poo and all the rest not to be missed.
David Grybowski
When: 15 to 22 August
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Sydney Dance Company. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 6 Aug 2015
De Novo (Latin): “from the beginning, afresh, anew”.
Sydney Dance Company’s new suite of three works, by three different choreographers, collectively embodies the essence of ‘De Novo’
With choreography by Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela, Larissa McGowan and Alexander Ekman, Sydney Dance Company gifts their audience with an evening of pure playtime for the curious of mind, romantically inclined, and pop culture enthusiast.
What it means to ‘emerge’, to reveal, grounds all three works. Topical subjects are played with afresh. How things are perceived to be is imagined anew.
The opening work, Bonachela’s Emergence, proves a rich experience in three phases.
Benjamin Cisterne’s lighting and Dion Lee’s costumes synchronise impressively with the subtle range in Bonachela’s choreography, which is centred on the body and emotive expression. The unified whole is beautiful and canny.
The first phase finds dancers wearing a striking mix of black and white, lit by thin mobile tubes of bright white. Classical form, lifts, and duets infuse the piece with a romantic air. Dancers are turned and lifted to the white side and back to the black in a series of passionate duets. One is enchanted as the svelte forms of dancers’ bodies are suddenly revealed and then hidden again. The gorgeously revealed human forms give both light and costume designs breath-taking purpose.
The costumes remain for phase two and it seems Lee’s design might constrict the choreography, but it is not so. The lighting shifts to warm yellow, and throws into relief both white and black; the dancers’ bodies are more fully revealed.
Choreographically, Bonachela moves to contemporary mode. The lighting change, combined with free flowing, warm and energetic glides, company tableaux and duets, offers a lovely sense of freedom and openness. The striking juxtaposition to the emotional intensity of phase one’s sense of “now you see it, now you don’t” is refreshing.
Bonachela’s third phase finds the company in black leotards with differing grey graphic designs. The previous phase had edged closer to a sense of full ‘revelation’. These more muted colours seem a reversion. Is it? There is a choreographic focus on strict adherence to line and form and turns draw one’s eyes to both the costume graphics and body shape, without really offering a sense of where the work’s journey has gone. Back to the beginning, perhaps?
McGowan’s Fanatic, a reimagining of cult sci-fi films Alien and Predator, is obviously a massive fan boy/girl audience moment given its enthusiastic reception.
Partnering with dramaturg Sam Haren, sound constructor Steve Mayhew, and lighting designer Benjamin Cisterne, McGowan throws down a gutsy, hard-core, comic 15 minutes of pure pop culture bliss.
Focussed on the character Ripley and pivotal film scenes, McGowan lovingly tears them apart and rebuilds them, bending character’s bodies using sharp, stop/start, angled moves cued to Mayhew’s sound effects and spoken lines. Cisterne’s sharp lighting references the movies’ darkest moments.
Fanatic has the audience with them. Haren’s contribution ensures a sharp and punchy dramatic structure, taking McGowan’s piece to another level entirely. The opening night audience is in thrall, accepting the work’s interpretation of the films as totally authentic. That is McGowan and team’s big achievement.
The final work, Ekman’s Cacti, roundly rails against how and why art is critically perceived. The choreography displays a tremendously bright, sharp and biting, cerebral sense of humour.
High art evaluation and criticism is mockingly examined in the nicest, most richly entertaining way. What better way to play with such ideas than to use a string quartet playing onstage?
Cacti has its roots more in music theatre than contemporary dance, though of course, it is the contemporary approach grounding the work.
Ekman co-designed the set with Thomas Visser. It consists of square blocks used as pedestals. On each pedestal crouches a dancer, costumed by Ekman in black coolie cap, body stocking and black coolie trousers.
His dancers make wonderful statues and film stars - not to mention a fantastic music theatre vaudeville hall dance corp, as the string quartet play around them.
The pedestal boxes come into their own as Cacti progresses; morphing from pedestal to painting canvas, to small screen to dressing box, to postmodern architectural construct.
Ekman and Visser combine to produce a work criticising the static nature of art perception which is lapped up by an appreciative, knowing audience.
David O’Brien
When: 6 to 8 Aug
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed
St Jude’s Players. St Jude's Hall. 7 Aug 2015
The bar heaters glow aloft in the St Jude's Hall. The audience sits well rugged up. It's a cold winter's night in Adelaide.
Onstage, it is yet colder. It is winter in New England. Windows on the set show scenes of snow outside.
The characters of Rhode Island playwright Tom Griffin's play, Einstein and the Polar Bear, stomp in through the door complaining about and endlessly discussing the oppressions and beauties of the white winter weather. Indeed, introductory premise of the play is girl seeking help and shelter when car breaks down in a blizzard in an isolated and snow-besieged village.
What she finds is the most wonderful bookshop. Floor-to-ceiling books and then more books in substantial expanse - or so it becomes under the design of director Dave Simms. This is one stunning set. It was created by a backstage cast of thousands and its substance and beauty stand as dividend to their loving labour. Books are real and books are painted. With lighting, perhaps just a little too low, they enfold the eye in a gently claustrophobic spirit of fusty, antiquarian book obsession.
There's a desk or two, a couch and a big leather wing chair in which poor old Andy snoozes the days away in a mysterious stroke-affected otherworld. The one thing he remembers is meeting Einstein in a Rhode Island coffee shop when he was a young man in a blue suit. In snatches of consciousness, he reiterates this fragmented memory. It is thematic to the play.
It is his son Bill's bookshop. He's a famous writer who has become a recluse, no longer writing but occasionally selling rare books online. His human world now consists of dad, the affable local postman plus an ice-fishing local mechanic and his seemingly naive wife.
Then urbane Diane Ashe steps out of the blizzard and into the shop looking for help.
There follows an engaging dance of new acquaintance in which stories are exchanged and a certain chemistry is aroused. Offers of a place for her to sleep elsewhere are rejected. She stays with Bill.
The postman, the mechanic and the wife come and go knocking on the door, letting it stand open way longer than anyone in a real New England winter would permit and, indeed, wearing much lighter winter clothing than anyone in New England would countenance.
Dad is ever-present, if not in his chair, ringing a bell from another room. He is loved but endured by his son. It's a fatalistic interdependence. He understands more than he indicates. He obeys requests to make hot chocolate or change his clothes. Norm Caddick depicts this old man's twilight world and his periodic announcements about Einstein. It is one of those exquisite occasions in which a small role's significance is made large through performance. In this case, it is the actor's compassionate understanding, underplay and outreach beyond the fourth wall. It is a sublime performance which will long linger in the mind.
Allison Scharber gives fine balance to Diane, breezy and confident and yet somehow shadowy. One does not understand why until the denouement. Adam Tuominen has never given a bad performance. His voice and poise always find the mark of the character to hand. He is an interesting and moving Bill.
Andrew Horwood, on the other hand, gives a spirited characterisation of the mechanic Bobby, but seems way too old to be the reluctant rake of the script. Shelley Hampton flits sweetly as the child-like wife. And handsome Peter Davies, as the town busybody of a postman, sports an accent and inflection so original it takes a while for the audience to tune in.
It's here director Simms needs to make a change or two, bring the actor forward more often. He needs to puff up the costumes to convince that it is really New England out there. And he needs to bring the lighting up.
This is the Australian premiere of Einstein and the Polar Bear and yes, there is a polar bear.
It is not a great work of theatre but it is an interesting work. The characters are well-defined and complex. There are threads of symbolism and dashes of humour. It is well-rounded.
It niggles in the mind that it must have been inspired by J.D. Salinger who was, indeed, a famous writer recluse in that very neck of the woods, but there is no mention or reference in either the play or the programme notes.
Either way, this show is a decent way to find shelter on a cold Adelaide night.
Samela Harris
When: 7 to 15 Aug
Where: St Jude's Hall, Brighton
Bookings: trybooing.com