Adelaide Repertory Theatre. The Arts Theatre. 20 June 2014
The one thing Tracy Letts did wrong with this play was to entitle it 'August: Osage County'. What a sideways, puzzling name. But it has not stood in the way of this extraordinary play. It turns out to be one of the best new plays of the century. It has been drenched in plaudits, including a Pulitzer Prize. It has been produced and increasingly celebrated all around the world because it calls upon one of the lost properties of the theatre in these days of multitasking and downsizing. It is an ensemble play. A big one.
Adelaide is incredibly lucky in that it has a reservoir of extremely high-calibre actors and a thriving non-professional theatre world in which professionals are proud to work rather than rest in off-season times. The result is affordable good theatre of extremely high standard. The prize right here and now is 'August: Osage County'.
This production is a stunner.
You'd be hard-pressed to find better anywhere.
The play is about a family. David Sinclair seems to have spun his large cast of all ages right into the intimate oddity of family. One believes they are a family. Especially as the story line evolves and the family is gathered chaotically around a real meal at the table, it is easy to forget one is in a theatre and that these people are actors. It is gloriously real. This is the delicious fruit of good ensemble acting.
The play is about the aftermath of the suicide of the patriarch, a poet called Beverly. The family gathers with the best of traditional funeral intentions but there are abrasions, resentments, power plays and secrets. There are new characters being integrated into the family with surprising outcomes. And there is humour devolved from the folly and vanities of humankind.
Tracy Letts observes the nuances of these characters superbly. They are his people, from Oklahoma. The Rep actors play them with rather southern accents but Oklahoma mid-west is a toughie. The southern drawl actually lifts the dialogue and allows the actors ease of excess - which helps a lot with the funny bits. Oh, my. Sue Wylie and the casserole will never be forgotten. I'm still laughing.
Sue Wylie plays Mattie-Fay. She's the mad old auntie, sister to the matriarch, the suddenly widowed Violet who is suffering mouth cancer and is addled with drugs. Nikki Fort takes this major role and for most every minute she is on the stage, she owns it. It's a stellar performance as a wilful, tough, spoiled, manipulating, vicious, vulnerable and sick old lady. At times she is the dishevelled invalid almost incoherent with drugs. At others, wigged up, well dressed and chain-smoking, she rules the roost. There's a lot of love hate and it spears through from the challenges of the oldest daughter, Barbara. The award-winning Helen Geoffreys gives another expert performance in this part.
It is a long play and there are lots of cross-currents and sub-plots happening, many of which give the other players their moment in the limelight. Bronwen James, another notable Adelaide theatre name, intelligently evokes the complexity of the middle child who has never quite fulfilled expectations. Lisa Lacey bubbles in as the ditsy Karen, the one who got away and has come back with a rather sleazy salesman fiancee, hilariously performed by Rodney Hutton. Then there's hapless Bill, the unfaithful and semi-estranged husband of Barbara, embodied sympathetically by a greyed up Adam Tuominen. There's their pot-smoking teen daughter, Jean, most credibly played by Amanda Adamuszek. There's good performance from Tom Carney as dear old Uncle Charlie, a touching performance from Alan Fitzpatrick as Little Charles, a sturdy and moving performance from Melissa Esposito as Johnna the young native American housekeeper and, dammit, a glorious characterisation of the ex-boyfriend local sheriff by Nic Bishop. Interestingly, Bishop bookends the show insofar as he also plays the alcoholic poet father who presents a form of preamble setting the scene at the very beginning of the play.
The costumes are apt, as one expects of Bev George. Dave Sinclair's set is just right in the functional sense, although the weird autumnal tree and the yellow abstract painting could go. The music's lovely western Americana twang is wonderful. Lighting's good. Yep. It's all there.
Don't miss it.
Samela Harris
When: 19 to 28 June
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Brian D’arcy James. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 20 June 2014
Nicely coinciding with the aftermath of this year’s Tony Awards, Brian D’arcy James entered the stage of the Dunstan Playhouse to a small but appreciative mid-week audience.
Appearing on and off Broadway since the early 90s, his resume swells with impressive accolades including two Tony Award nominations, lead roles in Shrek The Musical and Next To Normal, and roles alongside the likes of Idina Menzel, Kristen Chenoweth and John Lithgow.
Given all this, one might be tempted to imagine him sweeping in to up-end his gunny-sack of Broadway classics. In contrast, ‘Under the Influence’ is an understated show brimming with enthusiasm for his roots and pop favourites. Featuring the likes of Billy Joel, Phil Collins and Sting, it’s a mixed bag of lesser known tracks that will either educate or impress.
James’s medley of ‘It Had to Be You’, ‘All of Me’ and ‘Isn't She Lovely’ played homage to song-writers from his hometown of Saginaw, Michigan, whilst his version of the classic 80s hit ‘Tempted’ was a fantastic reinvention.
It’s always a pleasure to see such a consummate performer paying tribute to their own musical influences, and James places himself on our level in exploring his heroes and first musical loves. It’s a fun and enjoyable show.
As you might expect, he saves the best for last and receives rapturous applause for his mix-up of ‘Who I’d Be’ from Shrek. This beautiful number really showcased his vocal talent and strength, but perhaps also highlighted what was missing from the show as a whole.
Whilst the songs are carefully chosen and clearly have strong personal meaning, it’s a low-key affair that doesn’t stretch his musical prowess enough. He purposefully adapts his style to mimic the artists he covers, and with great success, but we were all there to hear the artist himself. A bit more variation and complexity in the selections, and more of James in the music, would have taken the show to another level.
Nicole Russo
When: Closed
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
Kathy Najimy. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre. 19 June 2014
In case we don't know who Kathy Najimy is, her mainstage Cabaret Festival show opens with video clips of her past triumphs. She has been in a lot of stuff. There are movies like Hocus Pocus and Sister Act and then there are stage shows and soapies and, well, a great big career of a steadily working Hollywood character actress. The clips go on and on. Even Najimy notes that the show is more or less over by the time she steps onstage.
But it's all in good spirit. She has been working on just how to put a personal cabaret show together and a lot of thought has gone into it. She rattles off the ideas of potential themes at machine gun speed - rags to riches, overcoming adversity, love or hate your mother... It's funny shtick. She works hard. She wins her audience.
Najimy is from San Diego but she is of Lebanese background. "Full blood", she used to brag as a child. Of course, like everyone, her family is dysfunctional. But it is not the theme of her show. In fact, there really isn't a theme as such. There are assorted issues, instead.
Weight is one. Najimy wears a particularly unflattering black outfit and reveals that, while her first experience of Diabetes Type II was caused by being overweight, its later onset as Type I was not. Now, here she is, an overweight actress with "skinny diabetes". Mary Tyler Moore has it, too, you know. And look how skinny she is. Najimy relishes the irony and it goes down.
Najimy also has spent a lot of her life as a cheerleader for gay issues. She may be happily, heterosexually married, but she brags a world of gay friends and deepest devotion to the causes of their rights. In character as her wonderful old auntie, she goes to town on the inequities of gay and transgender marriage. It's a bit too didactic and she may cut some of the repetition before she takes in on to New York. Then again, foyer talk reflected some of the punters liking the auntie character best of her act.
This critic best liked her Bette Midler stories. Heaven forfend, Kathy Najimy was not just a Midler fan, she was a stalker. She even dressed up as a bunny and delivered a faux bunnygram to get close enough to tell the star that she loved her. Years later, cast as Bette Midler's sister in Hocus Pocus, she did her best not to let her pinup know of this shameful past. Very funny.
Najimy does not sing, but she belted out a few rough bars of this and that which justified the marvellous Brian Nash onstage as musical director.
And, she does lift her skirt. It's a very quaint grand finale. But it is done as a gesture of absolute humility in the context of sweet kindness. And, for the audience, the night has been a big "Like".
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Cecilia Low. Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 19 June 2014.
A piercing shriek of gravel voice and Betty Davis is reborn on the Adelaide stage. One of the ironies of showbiz is that an elegant performer such as Cecilia Low shouldn't be embodying such a coarse, raw and raucous performer. But that's show biz. Low can do it and Low believes that the funk rock fusion queen deserves to be remembered.
The Cabaret Festival audience clearly agreed, responding to her performance with its own stridency of whistles and whoops and two songs' worth of dancing around their tables in The Space.
It is a well-conceived show, something of a rock spectacle. Low is backed by a fabulous band which recreates the Chambers Brothers and many of the musical characters of the 70s wherein Betty D's flame burned so fiercly.
She dated Eric Clapton, was friends with Jimi Hendrix, recorded with Sly, Santana and the Pointer Sisters and was married to Miles Davis. She wrote and arranged her own music. She had a screeching instrument of a voice like no other. One inwardly flinches at the vocal exertion it takes to emulate it. Brave Low. But she's not just a performer and trained singer. She's a BettyD fan.
Low has written the show as an homage as well as entertainment. In realising it, she is joined on stage by the sublime Eliza Wolfgramm and vividly backed by musical director Tony Kopa with an out-there 70s-style band featuring, among wonderful others, Phil Ceberano.
The show presents its very different format from the outset. As the audience settles into the room, Kopa, in a huge shock of Hendrix hair, warms the house up with music and a bit of atmospheric ham from the band.
Low struts in complemented by simultaneous video and her story begins. The video, both live and recorded, tries to give a 70s spirit and also a sense of an offstage world.
BettyD was known for her skimpy costumes and Low's fine, athletic figure showcases them well - tiny shorty shorts with long boots or black satin teddy and garter. She doesn't so much dance as gyrates her way through a myriad of highly sexual poses.
The life story emerges, sometimes in pure narrative breathily delivered to a kiss-close hand mike, sometimes as snippets between songs. Captions on the back projections add further context - and dates to identify where in the drug and sex-fuelled 70s we are.
There is a certain looseness to the production which gives it a sense of spontaneity. And there are a couple of dramatisations, one of which pits Low against Wolfgramm, like two cats brawling over a Tom. After all, there are no pretences of respectability in this show. It is rough and edgy and very loud indeed.
It is also a nicely-created time capsule which not only gives a memory trip for the oldies but a music history lesson to the youngies. It goes down wildly well with both.
Samela Harris
When: 19 to 20 June
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Cabaret Festival. Mark Nadler. Space Theatre. 18 June 2014
And the love affair goes on.
There has never been an international showbiz relationship quite like it - and the the New York entertainer heard the love loud and clear as The Space's full house leapt to its feet in a riot of acclaim for his performance. Of course, it had been as seamlessly enriching as have his others over the years. Mark Nadler is a class act. It takes a special sort of consummate pro to engender all this love from Adelaide's notoriously discerning audiences. The Adelaide Cabaret Festival is just not the same if Mark Nadler is not here.
This year he took his audience on a musical storytelling adventure back into the daring 20s when Cabaret was born of a wicked edge and prohibition had people drinking more than ever before. In narratives shimmering with wit and innuendo, he told of just how movie star Clara Bow spread her famous "It" around. He told of one of the world's first openly gay performers, Gene Malin, and of the irresistible Libby Holman whose super-hot sexy style was not what it seemed. Heavens, she was an early cougar, bisexual no less, who ended up murdering her husband. Juicy yarns indeed. Nadler threw in Mae West and, spicing things up a treat, a couple of evangelists, always good to include when the theme is vice and scandal.
Nadler comes as almost a new model of himself. He has become a skinny man. But the new bod is a fine clotheshorse and his superbly-tailored white evening jacket and slinky waistcoat looked extremely dashing.
With two token 20s-style backing musicians on stage, he made magic on the grand piano and sang 20s songs both renown and forgotten. Lots of Cole Porter, some Cab Calloway, Irving Berlin and, of course, Kurt Weill.
He used tricks of coy come-hither in songs such as 'Ain't Misbehaving', he held the audience in thrall with his meld of Gershwin-cum-Braham et all in Limehouse Nights and Blues, all about London's druggy 20s. He raised a steamy torch, he shook up the house, he pranced a bit, mingled a bit and he made a New York dry martini which is so dry that the vermouth is barely an idea.
His performance reached from soft suggestiveness to full-power Broadway belt-outs, from yarns and a few gags even to true confession of an incongruous little religious canker...
On which theme, at show's end, Nadler added the best of stage acknowledgements by naming each person associated with his production in The Space as candidates for the "down there" where the sins are bright. That is the wild "down there" on which the show's devilish underworld theme was based, one suggested by the 20s night club where patrons slid down a chute and into the arms of a huge black man who carried them to their seats.
It seems odd that there was only one day of performances from Mr Nadelaide for he could have filled that cabaret space over and over again. However, he's moved on to the late night fun and games in the piano bar where he and his rubber chickens may continue to be adored for the rest of the fest.
And, perchance more, Mr Humphries?
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed