Stones in his Pockets

Joh Hartog Productions in association with Bakehouse Theatre. Bakehouse Theatre. 29 Oct 2021

What a very clever confection of a lateral-thinker’s play. It’s a wild Irish gamble which comes off as a triumph. No wonder it won an Olivier Award during its four-year London run.

Written by Belfast-born playwright Marie Jones, Stones in his Pockets depicts a couple of impoverished Irish yokels working as extras on a Hollywood movie being shot on location on their home turf. Jones’s script demands of the two actors playing these roles that they embody the Hollywood film star, the film crew, and several of their fellow locals. Thus, being a massive quick-character-change challenge, it depends on the astute casting of two strong and versatile actors.  These director Joh Hartog has found in Brendan Cooney and Scott Nell. 

They are onstage for two 50-minute acts in which, in a torrent of quick and often funny dialogue, they zap to and from fifteen diverse characters with assorted accents. It is exhausting just to think about it and even more so to watch, in utter amazement, as the actors actually do it - and well.

Phrases such as “tour de force” and “bravura performance” spring to mind. Then again, one can’t help thinking “ham” and “over-the-top” when it comes to some of the characters in the mix. It is all these things and also something of an actor’s masterclass, directed, as it is, by a noted drama lecturer.

For a play which is fundamentally oddball and satirical, it has a sad thread of suicide. The stones in his pockets refers to a local lad who drowns himself by weighting his pockets with stones. The where’s and whys of this would be plot-spoilers but it is so artfully embraced in the overall storyline that the work retains an upbeat spirit - and the audience leaves the theatre smiling. After all, everyone knows how pretentious film people can be and how they think the world revolves around what they are doing and what it costs. And, everyone can think of vapid Hollywood prima donnas. It’s wholesome to laugh about them and to explore the odd world of hapless extras.

There’s time for a titter about accents, too. Cooney and Nell have to turn on regional Irish accents, non-regional accents, American accents, English accents, and even how-to-do accents. If one thinks for a moment that they don’t have their accents quite right, it’s such a wild melange and quick-change party that one stops caring. Token character changes are executed by putting on and taking off caps, reversing them, popping on headphones, a scarf around the neck, all at lightning speed. 

Fortunately the actors have the professional acuity of veteran lighting guru Steven Dean to have the lights playing in perfect co-ordination with their quick changes along with designer Tammy Boden’s clever costumes with their braces and big pockets. All this as well as the extremely agreeable and deceptively simple set convincing one that there is lots of room on the Bakehouse stage and that there are even green fields.

It’s all very nicely done. It’s a fast-and-furious quirky play featuring two of the most fearless, fit, and able actors in town. Unforgettable will be Brendan Cooney’s gorgeous physicality as a huge, beefy security guy.

Catch it if you can.

Samela Harris

When: 29 Oct to 6 Nov

Where: Bakehouse Theatre

Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com

Perahu-Perahu

OzAsia Festival. The Space. Adelaide Festival Centre. 27 Oct 2021

Wayang Kulit is an ancient tradition of Indonesian shadow puppetry usually telling the beloved sagas of the Ramayana or Mahabharata. They are usually performed with beautiful, intricate leather shadow puppets held on sticks and the plays are usually rather long.

This new variation on the theme of Indonesian shadow puppetry certainly does feel long.

It is a cross cultural phenomenon, a “contemporary Asian-Australian” production with images devised by celebrated artist Jumaadi and music by Michael Toisuta. It features silhouette cutouts illuminated via projectors onto double screens in the theatre; quite straightforward. Beside the screens, a group of musicians with a wild wealth of assorted instruments plays live onstage.  

The show opens with an introduction sung perhaps pedanda-style by a dignified elderly Indonesian gentleman who then joins the band and features on classical Indonesian percussive instruments. There in the band is a female singer who is also an exquisite violinist and a snappy twister of a ratchet rattle. She occasionally translates Bahasa Indonesia snippets in song form. Two guitar-playing multi-instrumentalists are with her, focused and intense.  Much of the music is earnest and meditative and interestingly cross-cultural. One becomes fascinated by the daunting array of assorted instruments. 

The performers are both Australian and Indonesian. The name, Perahu-Perahu, means “boats” and the story idea is to represent boat voyages between Australia and Indonesia over the very many years. It does, grimly, depict refugee boats and their drowned passengers. But, with very little in the way of written explanation, the audience is left to decipher what the hour of assorted enactments represents.  There are charming village folk at work and people climbing over mountains. One thread depicts the Dutch invasion of Indonesia and the subsequent struggles of the dreaded “Da Da” colonialism. Another seems to be about the importation of mangoes and durian.  The scene of fruit harvesting is charming. There is a sudden streak of politics with the portrayal of Australian cattle whose fate will be ill-treatment at the hands of Indonesian slaughterers. The show ends with lots of exuberantly celebratory music; “Opah Opah” cry the musicians and it is, of all things, a pineapple wedding. Strange, indeed.

It is a perplexing show. Is it cultural usurpation or is it brave new art? It sends one off to ponder the point. Jumaadi’s art, briefly shown onscreen at the opening of the show, is bright, lively, idiosyncratic, and highly appealing. There is a strong sense of his delightful designs in the Perahu-Perahu cutouts but, of course, they are shadow and rarely coloured. They also are highly reiterative. And, the storyline feels muddy. 

As one who is au-fait with the traditions of wayang kulit, Perahu-Perahu comes across as an interesting interpretation of the genre but less fun than the real thing. There is no clown and the couple of gags slipped into the show are unfunny. It is certainly not “immersive” theatre as advertised but slow and, dare one say, obfuscatory for many.

Hence, while much of the music is interesting and the musicians clearly have a really good time, the message of Perahu-Perahu leaves one just a bit “bingung", as the Indonesians would say, or confused.

Samela Harris

When: 27 to 30 Oct

Where: The Space

Bookings: bass.net.au

Chicago

The South Coast Choral and Arts Society. Victor Harbor Town Hall. 23 Oct 2021

Never underestimate the showbiz acumen of the out-of-towners.  Yet again a fabulous show pops up under lights in the Victor Harbor Town Hall, this one not only showcasing some shining stage talent but also a seriously promising young director, one Jonathan Ogilvie.

For this beloved musical, he has drawn together a huge ensemble of experienced performers in musicals, many of them teachers, dancers, and tertiary students of the performing arts. Hence, there is no weak link, lest it be the limitations of the dear old Town Hall itself, something promised to be remedied in the one-day-maybe plan for a Victor Harbor Arts Complex.

True theatre troupers just get on with things - to which end, Ogilvie has tiered an excellent band of musicians over the top of the stage and assembled a classy chorus of press characters at cabaret tables around the stage’s catwalk with further vaudevillians onstage. No inch of space is wasted.

It is a vast cast of singers and scantily-clad dancers and it is clear that, despite the stringent masking rules which must have dominated through rehearsals, Ogilvie has worked this cast into ensemble quality. Everyone is cue-ready, in tune, facially expressive, word perfect and, blow me down, spot-on with American accents. 

Perchance, one of Ogilvie’s secrets is collaboration. One notes from the impressive glossy program that, while he is director and designer, there are no less than three musical directors acknowledged as well as a choreographer and an assistant director. 

While Ally Miller, in the principal role of Roxie, is an accomplished song-and-dance performer, alongside her as the fellow Chicago murderer Velma Kelly is young Shannen Beckett, an emerging talent and a specialist dancer with an extremely agreeable singing voice.  Both performers deliver their prison inmate characters with verve, focus, and agility. Beckett, particularly, has some of the toughest dance challenges in the history of musicals as Velma and she braves them with panache. 

Meanwhile, there’s the coveted male role of the sleazy, charming lawyer, Billy Flynn. Jon Grear strides down the theatre aisle, throws his mandatory mask to one side as he steps onto the stage and then, effortlessly, takes charge - just as his character is meant to do. Grear is no stranger to these audiences and they, rightly, love him. His voice is easy on the ear. His character nous is astute. If there is one comment a persnickety critic might make, it is that he could do with more eye makeup.

Perhaps also so of Chris Stevenson, a particularly gifted performer whose face is hidden behind a massive fuzzy beard. Oh, dear.  He plays Roxie’s hapless husband, Amos, the man who sings that most poignant of all musicals' songs, Mister Cellophane. It is one of the treats of the production albeit he restrains his power throughout the storyline, to become a character so pitiable that the audience is sighing and moaning for him.

Georgia Martin embodies Mama, the prison matron. She is smooth, cool, commanding and possessed of a beautiful voice.  Kiara Wiese is cast in the other featured part of Mary Sunshine. Once this was a drag role, now it is represented as a quaint female character which, with a powerful soprano range and lovely stage presence, is delivered by Kiara Wiese.

Chicago, with its book by Fred Ebb ad Bob Fosse, music by John Kander, and Lyrics by Fred Ebb, is not a short show. It only seems so, since it is rich with so many fabulous songs, such wild and sensual choreography, and such a ridiculously scandalous storyline.  It enthrals and engrosses when, as here, it is well done. 

Perhaps one could argue for some more oomph in the intros to a few solo numbers. Perhaps one could jog the lighting tech to enliven a slowish cue.  Or, perhaps one’s attention has been so diverted by the energy and spirited commitment of the classy ensemble that flaws are rendered unobtrusive

All one can say, in the end of the salty-air Victor Harbor day, is that this Chicago production is worth the drive. If only there were tickets left to buy at the end of it. 

Maybe it calls for a Fringe revival for the city audience.

Samela Harris

When: 23 Oct to 6 Nov

Where: Victor Harbor Town Hall

Bookings: Sold Out

Men Who Dance

Star Theatres. 22 Oct 2021

Currently available during the last two weekends of October at Star Theatres on Sir Donald Bradman Drive is the poorly publicised Back to Back Short Show Festival. It’s a celebration of local talent conveniently scheduled so that you may attend two or even three one-hour cabaret-style shows back-to-back in one evening.

In the opening number, the five men who dance energise the cabaret room in a robust display of prancing machismo while dressed in unbuttoned white shirts flying away off their bodies -beautiful like angels’ wings. This is going to be good!

And then there is the second act. Quirky. A projection introducing galactic conflict is followed by two of the men dressed like extras from a gay Ben Hur dancing a wrestling match until a kind of Nordic pupae complete with fur drops down from the fly tower and wiggles while confronted by both warriors. It’s so bad it's good fun, and an introduction to the variety these talented men of multicultural backgrounds are going to give us.

The next surprise is a young man singing a song of a lost love. He can’t go on with the lament and a voiced-over producer gives permission to pick a lady from the audience to waltz with. And he picks my wife! This is just getting better and better!

The numerous following acts are all short, surprising and inventive. The men have trained in distinctly different styles – ballet, hip hop and jazz - and the mishmash of the group choreography punctuated by some stunning tumbling and acrobatics is fresh and novel.

But wait! There’s more! A Vaudeville tap dancing duo complete with straw hats. Men dressed in fluorescent Woody Allen sperm suits (aka Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex *But Were Afraid To Ask) on wheels, a narcissistic American cowboy, and a mallet-wielding macho man. A bit of singing. What a hoot! Charlie, Kurt, Ricki-Jai, Willian, and Felipé – take a bow! Plenty here for the ladies, and the men, too.

David Grybowski

When: 22 to 31 Oct

Where: Star Theatres

Bookings: startheatres.com.au