★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Boyslikeme Productions. Holden Street Theatres. 8 Mar 2022
Fringe festival fun and games. There’s nothing like a truly lateral, existential play the performance of which is prefaced by the director asking the audience not to give away the plot. There’s a curly twist that should not be revealed to the next audience.
New Zealand playwright Gary Henderson has received plaudits for this play which some call a whodunnit and others simply don’t know what to call it or what to make of it.
An Unseasonable Fall of Snow is, as director Darrin Redgate touts it, “a puzzle”.
There are two principals: Arthur, the interrogator and Liam, the interrogated. The play opens with Arthur pressuring Liam to admit to whatever it was he did the night before and Liam stressing his innocence. Arthur is the man with the power, but what power he has is unclear. The victim-cum-culprit’s status also is a matter of seeming ambivalence. And there is a torrent of dialogue to eke it out; old-school interrogation style with endless cups of coffee. If one thinks one knows what is actually going on, one clearly has lost the plot.
This is the essence of fringey Fringe theatre. Under Redgate’s direction, it is a taut piece. Redgate was responsible for that hit production Next Fall at Holden Street last year. Perchance he has a thing for falls. Certainly he is a stylish director and, while one cannot say one is crazy about this oblique play, he elicited compelling performances from both Gavin Cianci as Arthur and Jacob Houston as Liam.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 20 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Studio, Holden Street Theatres. 6 Mar 2022
English novelist Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot, once penned that “Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.” Perhaps with this in mind, Patrick Livesey’s final utterance in his affecting dramatic homage to Naomi, his mother, who passed some years ago in tragic circumstances, are that he must say her name often so that he never forgets her. He then turns away from the rapt audience into the fading light and Naomi is ended. One thing is for certain, anyone in the audience will be able to recall Livesey’s mother’s name until their own dying breath.
Naomi is written and performed by Livesey, and it is powerful stuff. It is a seventy minute monologue – perhaps overlong by five minutes or so – and, in true Fringe fashion, is set very simply. In the empathetic ambience of the Studio at Holden Street, there are eight small lights placed in a line on the downstage floor that direct pale blue light upwards. They frame and silhouette Livesey’s face as he steps in and out of their gentle but uncompromising beams. Each lamp designates a significant person in Naomi’s life, variously a parent, sibling, partner, child, or friend. Livesey has selected and interviewed them all. He moves from one light to the other and becomes each significant person in turn. He impressively takes on their voice patterns and mannerisms as he gives accounts of each person’s memories of Naomi. Some of it is very funny, some of it is ruthless, some of it is charmingly nostalgic, and we hang on every well-crafted word, sentence, and gesture.
Director Bronwen Coleman has collaborated beautifully with lighting designer Matt Ralph, composer Biddy Connor, and set designer Xandra Roberts. Between them they have crafted an unpretentious but impressive aesthetic. It’s just enough and emotionally supports Livesey to deliver in spades.
Every now and then, Livesey moves upstage and attaches objects that are personal memories of Naomi to an illuminated large triangular frame: an article of her clothing, a photo, a corsage, and the like. It becomes a shrine. Why a triangle? Whether intended or not by the creative team, the symbolism behind the triangle in some ways illustrates the powerful opposites in Naomi’s life. It evokes the idea that things are often created from opposites: a child is created and parented from feminine and masculine opposites; significant relationships often include both affection and animosity; a child’s love for their parent is coloured by both positive and negative aspects to the relationship.
Livesey’s performance of ‘Vince’, Naomi’s partner and Livesey’s step-father, is memorable. It is thrust into one’s face. We are almost overpowered by the intensity of the character – it makes one feel intimidated and uncomfortable. Experiencing Vince’s harsh machismo almost feels voyeuristic. Is it right that we should know this about him and his relationship with Naomi? Isn’t it private, or at least shouldn’t it be private? And then, almost on the ‘turn of a dime’, Livesey steps out of Vince’s visceral spotlight and becomes someone else, someone gentler, and the dramatic tension is expertly eased.
But the subject matter of Naomi is not gentle. It is about mental illness, substance abuse and suicide. It is confronting, and above all it is a story about a boy’s unconditional love for his mother whom he wishes never to forget.
Livesey is an accomplished actor. Everything he does is absorbing and natural. This is compelling and important theatre.
Kym Clayton
When: 8 to 20 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Vitalstatistix and Brink Productions. Festival Centre - Space Theatre. 5 Mar 2022
I’ve always said, the only ordinary people are the people you don’t know. Emma Beech, creator and performer of The Photo Box is no ordinary person. The creative heads at Vitalstatistix and Brink, Emma Webb and Chris Drummond respectively, have watched with delight how she has grown her capacity to extract the extraordinary from the lives of others and retell it with alacrity, humour and sensitivity on stage. In The Photo Box, she turns her remarkable talent on herself.
Beech grew up in a huge family on the banks of Lake Barmera. She missed the hub bub so much, she had triplets. The youngest of nine by a country mile, her elderly parents surrendered the family pics for some organization and Beech discovered her mob was interesting too.
Lovely old photos in faded pink tones of the child Emma are splashed on to movable boards upstage that simulate album viewing. The set evokes the lake itself complete with one of the ubiquitous dead trees derived from frequent re-flooding. Early on, Beech wisely eschews strict chronology for thematic grouping and narrative arc. Christmases, boyfriends, jobs, big brothers, parents, school, and partying fly off the photos and inhabit the versatile performer. Sporting an orange suit, her slim figure belies birthing triplets - the stories from the hospital nursery were very poignant. Whereas Matisse conveyed fulsome form in a sketch of few brushstrokes, Beech theatrically evokes family, friends and acquaintances with skillful minimalism. Director Mish Grigor shows off Beech’s capacity to transit between scenes and themes with grace and assurance, and associate biography with whimsical nostalgia and poignant memory. Some family make cameo appearances in film and in person. Confessions and intimate detail must have provided a gamut of emotions for Beech during show development that exudes as tender humour and honest reflection on stage.
Many of us are challenged by old photos, often because of fossilised interpretations of the past. Emma Beech inspires us to plunge in and have a fresh look with our subsequent accumulated life experience and to discover that the past is not forever the same. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 3 to 7 Mar
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Michaela Coventry, Sage Arts. Queen’s Theatre. 4 Mar 2022
We are told the show will last 35:33. We are ushered inside the bare whitewashed walls of the colonial Queen’s Theatre and before us is a room with tiny round tables - each with a single chair - laid out in neat rows. The only light emanates from the desk lamp on each table which is accompanied by a mid-20th Century-style, pre-push button, fixed line rotary dial phone and a small plug-in switchboard. All this is designed to take one back if one’s been there.
When I listen to 891 long after Peter Goers is finished - in the wee hours when I cannot sleep - I wonder about the lives of the people calling in. Who are they and why are they up and apparently alert? Victorian theatre-maker Roslyn Oades has actually taken her inquiry of this phenomenon to a whole new level by collecting thousands of messages volunteered by night owls between midnight and 6 am who call her special number. Again to invoke the past, their voices are replayed with the scratchy sound quality when answering machine messages were recorded on magnetic tape. Shift workers, bar staff, students, and even young people purge their anxieties and foibles, or ramble on in the dead of night.
Like the operator of an old telephone exchange from the movies, one can switch between callers and have a unique listening experience. Frequently ambient sound (Bob Scott – co-creator) and lighting effects (Fausto Brusamolino) bring the audience together for a shared experience.
In this immersive audio experience, you are awake in the middle of the night. That’s when the mind wanders - searching for meaning or rummaging through memory. Neat rows of tiny desks took me back to high school exams – complete with an invigilator (Katia Molino) observing from a high desk. The messages forced me to recall the disassociation I felt hearing a living voice without bodily attachment – more pertinent with someone you love than with an entertainment. Remember, this was a time when recorded messaging in the home was new, and one was getting used to the technology. Although the rotary dial on the phone was not connected, I played with it by dialing the number of the home of my
adolescence 233-3756, several times – maybe my Mum or Dad would pick up - even though they are deceased and the house is demolished. And all those torturous calls late-at-night trying to resuscitate a dying teen relationship. I found the The Nightline experience a deeply personal one.
But what does it hold for a more youthful audience member without nostalgia to be triggered? Perhaps creator Roslyn Oades is an aficionado of American film noir with its dark moods of pessimism, fatalism and menace. This makes the The Nightline a visceral introduction to the genre for the novice.
After 35 minutes and 33 seconds, the telephone ominously goes dead with the beep of disconnection. The invigilator slides back the enormous roller door and the fresh air outside awakens one as if from a dream. A delightful and transcendent experience.
David Grybowski
When: 4 to 20 March
Where: Queen’s Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Production Image Credit: Tony Lewis
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and Adelaide Festival. Festival Theatre. 4 Mar 2022
Art reflecting politics reflecting art. Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov became an activist while a professor at the St Petersburg Conservatory in solidarity with his students protesting the shooting of workers petitioning the Tsar in 1905. This callous act eventually led to the Russian Revolution and the end of the dynasty. Rimsky-Korsakov bases The Golden Cockerel on the same-named Pushkin tale of a decrepit Tsar - who is derelict in his national duties - and his disastrous border wars which eventually leads to his demise. Referencing current events, we can only hope so.
The indefatigable Melbourne-born Barrie Kosky directed the 1996 Adelaide Festival with its memorable Red Square late-night venue (another Russian reference). Current Adelaide Festival directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield have already brought us Kosky’s operas Saul and The Magic Flute since 2017, so there’s a lot of love for this hugely famous, accomplished and productive international director.
It's easy to see why. Kosky’s flamboyant approach to the creative reinvention of the operatic experience is visually far removed from the static divas and divoes of the Italian romantic tragedies. And there is a perfect match between Kosky’s imagination and the mythical elements of The Golden Cockerel. As Rachel Healy opines - drawing heavily from Mark Pullinger’s excellent review of 21 May 2021 in backtrack.com - with its “political satire, sardonic humour and surreal burlesque, The Golden Cockerel is an opera tailor-made for Barrie Kosky.” Kosky’s creations are like living a dream rich in aural and visual textures, a double-barreled sensual assault. He imagines for you.
Far removed from the formality of the palace, the action takes place on the Russian frontier close to the warfare in a hilly field of autumn-dried tussock grasses dominated by a single dead tree. Longing for leisure and weary of the constant enemies on the border, the Tsar surrenders his vigilance to a golden cockerel whose magic is in singing of impending danger. But the Tsar’s promise to the astrologer in return for the bird will be his undoing.
The Tsar is disheveled and unhinged, waving his sword aimlessly at imaginary foes. His sons are spoiled sharpies in suits and their feint love for their father and misdirection of the Tsar’s affairs holds elements of King Lear. We see the boys later, headless, hanging from the limbs of the lifeless tree in a grotesque Goya-esque reflection of the horrors of war. And the Tsar is now beguiled by an enchanting queen.
Pavlo Hunka (Tsar) and the graceful Venera Gimadieva (Queen) dominate the central portion of the opera in a lengthy arioso comprising a beautifully ethereal exchange of intentions. But their emotional commitment is faint. The Tsar is a twat – like an impotent adolescent in an alcohol haze - while the Queen is regal, elegant, seductive and secure. Whilst they maintain their symbolism - the Queen as a shimmering symbol of the mythical East dressed in the gold of the rising sun and the Tsar as a derisive object of political satire – an interpretation on a human level shows us a beautiful woman unedifyingly throwing herself at a sad older man. An understanding of the symbolism in the original tale and in Kosky’s re-awakening richly enhances the experience, as the aforementioned protest in 1905 was associated with Nicholas II’s defeat by the Japanese over Manchuria. Andrew Popov’s astrologer is a Chinese sage in European attire - his soaring tenor-altino is startling. Kosky mischievously broadens the definition of “East” by having Matthew Whittet’s fantastically unfeathered and high-heeled cockerel resemble a Hindi saddhu (discombobulatingly voiced over by Samantha Clarke).
Four fantastic dancers costumed like you’ve never seen before have the main function of livening things up. The Adelaide Festival Chorus is out in force, sometimes dressed like extras from Beetlejuice, sometimes it’s horses for chorus – over-large heads supported by lovely legs. Bravo! Kosky briefly employed a wonderfully detailed wheeled machine that delighted. Conductor Anthony Hunt leads the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in another unreproachable performance. As Neil Armfield says, “If you’re transported by Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade or Flight of the Bumble Bee, you’ll fall in love with this richly melodic, kaleidoscopic work.”
Of course the whole is greater than the parts. Kosky sprinkles the theatre magic dust into your eyes and ears and you slip away from your worries into a sublime meditation. It’s the first staging of The Golden Cockerel in Australia and this might be your only shot at it.
David Grybowski
When: 4 to 9 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Production Image Credit: Andrew Beveridge