Queensland Theatre Company. Adelaide Festival. Her Majesty's Theatre. 10 Mar 2015
The theatre is smokey. Flames lick out of a 44-gallon drum on the stage. And old man sits nearby against a backdrop of massive blackboards covered in chalky scrawlings.
The atmosphere is established for the audience shuffling into place in Her Majesty's.
This is a big night for Adelaide theatre. This is the 2015 Festival's big theatre production. It has been a thin theatre program this festival and audiences are hungry and expectant.
Black Diggers is a big show from Queensland Theatre Company, written by Tom Wright and directed by Wesley Enoch. It has already had seasons interstate and it has been localised for Adelaide, with references to local names and places.
It is a national story, after all; a broad-strokes account of Aboriginal Australians who served in World War I.
It is a tale of hope, innocence, friendship, loyalty, and racism.
Young Aboriginal men volunteered for service against a cultural tide which had denied them recognition. Black Diggers condenses the accounts of many of those men into a series of vignettes layered swiftly and neatly one upon another. The all-male cast is huge and it is as beautifully co-ordinated as an elite army unit. There are swift costume changes and tableaux. There are highly-disciplined representations of unruliness - for these men out in the charnel house of WWI, on the death fields of Gallipoli, Amiens, Passchendaele, and Messines, were also rough kids from the bush. There, so far from home and fighting for a political cause few really understood, they discovered the comfort of mateship. They were equals in combat, in sharing the hell of war. Skin colour was not an issue.
There were instances of intolerance, however, and the characters of Black Diggers chose various ways to respond. One chap, in punching out a racist soldier from another troop, explained to his mates that his violent retaliation had been at the accusation of not washing, not at the racial slur.
Hence were things different for Aboriginal soldiers. They were part of a family of Aussies bonded by deed. They gained a sense of national belonging and a new sense of country.
The production has some marvellous moments, none a more poignant portrait of war than the row of soldiers sitting in their trench singing their songs and killing time for day after day, their boredom occasionally disturbed by sudden bursts of utter horror and panic. The boys reflect on the small areas of gained or lost territory these slow strategies were achieving. And years rolled by.
The endless suffering breaks the spirit of some. One lad reveals that he really should not be there. He is only 15.
Places of combat are painted large in white on the great blackboards and, as the play draws to a close, they are whitewashed for the names of dead Aboriginal soldiers to take their place in black upon them.
Throughout, there is a soundscape which colours the audience's imagination with the details of time and place - from the birds of the bush through to the shocking blasts of shellfire. It is a brilliant and exemplary soundscape, impeccably balanced against the action onstage.
The soldiers come home in various states and to various receptions. Racism is not dead, but then again, from some quarters, belonging and equality has been earned and recognised. Some returned men will cope with the future and some will never be the same. Ever was it thus.
But for some Aboriginal men there were some dire injustices, not the least of them the deeply ironic loss of their lands in the solider-settler land giveaways.
Black Diggers covers this huge subject with its large scale - the large stage made to seem cavernous with just platforms and the blackboard background. It is a well devised and designed production. The cast is diverse and likeable. They play myriad characters, from recruiters and officers to an outback mum. When they sing, they do so with the ragged enthusiasm of a batch of untrained boys.
The play is finely written. There are some lovely turns of phrase. However, it is overwritten. There are some soliloquies which drift into didacticism. And the play suffers from afterthoughts, as if it does not know quite when to end.
Ah, but what a brilliant bugler.
Samela Harris
When: 10 to 14 Mar
Where: Her Majesty's Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Festival. Ayers House. 9 Mar 2015
Hello Dylan Thomas in the body of Mr Bob Kingdom.
It was very special to sit there in the Ayers House state dining room amid an audience of gentle literary minds and let your wonderful descriptives wheel around in mind's eye.
It is a while since I have read Thomas but he is embedded in my memory and my spirit.
It was my father, Max Harris, now recognised as "the father of Modernism in the Australian arts", who first published Thomas in Australia.
It was the poem "The hunchback in the Park", which appeared in Angry Penguins no. 4, early in 1943 and Max wrote:
"...In this romantic poetry of the forties, Dylan Thomas is the most considerable figure to have arisen from English writers... We reprint this new poem by Dylan Thomas from an advance blurb of "New Directions" sent to us by the editor, James Laughlin, in the belief that it may be quite some time before the poems of Dylan Thomas as recent as this become available in Australia."
So it was to be.
By the time I was born, Dylan Thomas was well and truly available and in my world he was much read and adored.
Thus was my childhood a veritable Milkwood of mellifluous Welsh intonations and ravishing language.
Now comes Bob Kingdom and one could almost believe that Thomas was alive again.
With wiry sandy-coloured hair almost vertical, and wearing a suit with crumpled dress shirt, bow tie and running shoes a la Thomas on his last lecture tour, Kingdom assumes a world-weary expression as he attends the lectern. "A poor man's Charles Laughton," says he. He's rather better looking than Thomas, but when he opens his mouth, we forgive him. It is Dylan Thomas which comes out - laconic, droll and, oh, so lushly lyrical.
The words roll forth in a Welsh sea swell.
The pace of their rhythmic sway allows one to savour their beauty and ponder their originality.
There's a "gossip of neighbours" and the castle, "brown as owls", those partying Swanseaites who "hymned and rumpused", those who “lumbered out in a grizzle", things "smooth as a moth's nose"....
It is stories he tells, of childhood immersion in an adult world, of wild Welsh characters, larger than life. Kingdom voices them.
He, the actor, has a sore throat and he is protecting it. So, there is no booming, just the flows of narrative, the lilts of poetry, the ebb and flow of Welshness, the sublime eloquence of Thomas.
From time to time, Kingdom moves his position, giving relief to those with sightline problems.
He changes mood from colourful descriptives to lamentations of mortality. Every breath comes as from a perfect time capsule of Thomas.
There in the sweet late summer afternoon, fans whirring softly, beads of sweat forming, packed tight in that handsome old room, a little sea of Adelaide poetry-lovers swayed both in emotion and tempo - and nothing much else existed until Mr Kingdom picked up his papers and glass of water and modestly walked out the door, once again actor with a sore throat.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 14 Mar
Where: Ayers House State Dining Room
Bookings: bass.net.au
George Glass. Channel 9 Kevin Crease Studios. 8 Mar 2015
Perhaps you would, too, but the hit show of last decade, 'Keating!’ sprang to mind. However, 'Keating!' was a musical tribute by people who loved the politician and his parliamentary repartee, written at a time of nostalgia for Labor government. Poking fun at Keating was easy and fun and you knew he would have been flattered. Abbott! The Musical is made by people who dislike him, and he's happening now and there is a sense of profound disappointment.
I voted Labor in the last election because I felt Kate Ellis would represent Adelaide in opposition better than Liberal's child-candidate would do in government. However, no way did I want another unstable Labor government headed up by the unbalanced Rudd, and run by chief puppeteer and knife-thrower, Bill Shorten. Like many an Australian, I have a unique philosophy about voting. But Abbott really is a profound disappointment.
Nic Conway, with his Abbottic nose job and blue tac behind the ears to give them the necessary breadth, won me over quickly. His mannerisms and voice were well studied and immediately familiar. Conway's Abbott can't help but put his foot in it and then make the correction even worse. Through the show, he is increasingly made pathetic and isolated. Alister McMichael's Joe Hockey, when not tucking into a pie or ripping apart a chicken, takes a knife through the budget with fabulous falsetto in Fuck 'Em. The songs and dialogues are packed with policy and we see the omnipresent Credlin guide the PM like a mannequin through speeches, only to see him deviate and make some personal view on religion, abortion, detention, or housework a new plank in the Liberal platform.
The musical is written with biting sarcasm and comic exaggeration. Sometimes I felt they "went overboard, like a child in the Timor Sea," as in the frightening tour of a detention centre with a near demonic Scott Morrison. For balance, there is a reporter or PR fellow tagging along with the PM asking reasonable questions. He is like Alice in Wonderland, questioning the hare and the Mad Hatter and getting the same kind of enigmatic answers. Especially scary when a lot of the answers were verbatim from the PM's own statements, and indicated as such via the word ‘QUOTE’ lit up in red on the backstage wall.
You don't have to make this stuff up. Abbott's speech at the Women’s Auxiliary Club on International Women’s Day was another example. What planet is this guy from? I wish I could tell you more about who did what in the show, but there was no programme. Production-wise, the show has not reached its full potential in its presentation or character possibilities. The music was sometimes odd.
They nailed him to the cross, a cross of the Mad Monk's own making, and a true blue Laborite would probably cheer. In the final scene, the exasperated journalist summed up his frustration - "leadership is not running out in front and yelling the loudest." Abbott puts a hand around his shoulder, and has no answer. I left the show feeling rather sad.
David Grybowski
When: 4 to 14 Mar
Where: Channel 9 Kevin Crease Studios
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Sharon Burgess Productions. The Garden of Unearthly Delights - The Factory. 7 Mar 2015
Abandoman is back again since winning the 2012 Fringe Best Comedy Newcomer Award. Judging by the publicity images of previous shows, the current production is stripped down to Irish rapacious rapper Rod Broderick - not nearly as nattily attired as in the pics - working with only the weakest narrative connecting him to P. Diddy and the original Hot Desk concept.
Talking or rapping non-stop for an hour, Abandoman - with witty interrogation that has the dedicated audience constantly laughing - garners information from selected individuals, and with an awesome virtuosity, immediately weaves the material into a rap portrait without missing a beat. It's like a magic trick - mindboggling. There are squeals of delight as words like accountant, sales, Salisbury, or Subway sandwich maker are rhymed and embedded in the lyrics.
More interesting song sketches are built if audience members can answer trickier questions, like, what is the thing you would like to do most, or how do you show your love to your partner, or what is your favourite party trick. His accomplice extemporising on the electronic xylophone is acutely tuned into Abandoman's wavelength. And he loves people with names like Dan, as "it rhymes with everything."
He does four raps like this but he has probably does hundreds. It's as wondrous as gazing at the pyramids.
David Grybowski
When: 2 to 15 Mar
Where: The Garden of Unearthly Delights - The Factory
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Northern Sabbatical Productions and MMA & PAA Theatre. The Bakehouse Theatre. 7 Mar 2015
Marlene and Mac find themselves in a Yukon town in far northern Canada in the springtime. Just as the moose and elk get frisky when the snow begins the melt and the days get longer, it's mating season in the libraries and bars. She is from Saskatchewan and is hiding out after a relationship gone bad. He needs the dough and is hanging gyprock for the foreman.
It has all the makings of a boy-meets-girl story and that is exactly what you get in Linda Wood Edwards's play. It's very cute and sweet. Even the rude bits are conveyed apologetically. Sue Huff's, Marlene is bubbly and cautiously open to new experiences including releasing sexual tension all by herself. Andy Northrup's, Mac is a nice guy blue collar bloke who stumbles across a couple of mating possibilities. They each have a good friend at the end of the phone line who gets the play-by-play from the Yukon as things progress. In fact, Marlene and Mac never actually speak to one another until finally. This uninterrupted device I found tiresome. They weren't doing anything I couldn't easily imagine from the script and the explosive possibilities of watching people in expressive conversation were absent. "Why don't you just hang up the phone and talk to me?" I wanted to scream.
Director Kevin Tokarsky got a lot out of his cast and Woods created a sympathetic portrait of the far north lifestyle. Most people - and most people are men - are up there for the work, and it's hard yakka. The jobs are short term contracts, you eat crap trying to save money or because it's easy, drink lots of beer, friends send you pornography, and you're lucky if there's anything to do, if you're not beat from seven 12 hour shifts in a row. The snow and cold is as isolating as the heat is here, but the isolation has its own beauty. It's the Canadian version of the Pilbara or north Queensland and I'm sure many folks would find the comparison interesting.
I nearly hung up on Spring Alibi, but there is enough to stay on the line.
David Grybowski
When: 5 to 14 Mar
Where: The Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au