Red Phoenix Theatre. Holden Street Theatres. 20 May 2021
It’s a huge, gutsy history play. It’s a landmark play. It’s an incredibly uplifting play.
It’s about women’s rights to an education, in which context it is a tale of the underclass fighting the establishment. It is about the smugly ruthless soul of the patriarchy and their way of demeaning academic women with the label of “blue stocking".
And, also, on stage at Holden Street, it is about the talent and enterprise of one Libby Drake, who has directed this deep and dark spectacular.
There’s a cast of twenty on the stage, everyone in handsome period costume and appropriate tonsorial style. There are myriad set changes, all of which are executed by the cast, swarming in quiet and swift co-ordination around the stage hauling heavy chairs and tables and erasing chalk boards in what is clearly a fairly daunting workout. Such a style of set moving is usually clunky and annoying but not so from Drake’s well-honed cast.
The success of this diligent production feat relies upon a deft and utterly precise lighting plot, which is expertly delivered by Richard Parkhill.
’Tis all tickety-boo, as they rarely say in theatre.
It is a long play which in this production does not feel long. It describes lots of concurrent themes: equality, class, love, hate, justice, ambition, suffrage and, most beautifully, as it turns out, the balance between the understandings of art versus science.
It is the first play by Jessica Swale, a rising playwright in the UK, and it has won encouragement awards and is already in the drama school syllabus and set to grow into a TV series. It depicts a group of bright, pioneering women who have made it into Girton College in Cambridge and are seeking a future as scientists and teachers, as women with the same elite education as men. Pivotal to their quest in 1896-7 is to be allowed the equality of academic graduation but this becomes entangled with the women’s suffrage movement of the times and their environment is fractured into adamant camps of pros and cons.
The story is delivered in snappy scenes, each introduced by titles written onto a large, moving blackboard. This big prop requires that all cast members can write in cursive.
The cast works as a thoroughbred ensemble but, of course, there are some outstanding performances. Brant Eustice plays the villainous, sexist psych professor with such venomous scientific bias that one can hear women throughout the audience gasping in horror. It is surprising no one has leapt onto the stage to attack him. He is brilliantly repugnant.
Bart Csorba, on the other hand, gives an eloquent depiction of the emancipated Dr. Banks and, oh, what an excellent voice he possesses. Interestingly, director Drake has cleverly gathered around her a cast of good, well-trained voices. It is another facet of the finesse of the production. Matt Chapman fits in here and also Tom Tassone, while Sebastian Skubala sings a wee folk song of exquisite beauty. Kate van der Horst leads the women as the principal student balancing the dilemma of career and love. She is a very engaging actress who draws the eye. Around her are Jasmine Leech, Laura Antoniazzi, and Rosie Williams each of whom achieves defined characterisations. Kate Anolak properly commands the stage as the wise, authoritarian Mrs Welch and is nicely balanced by the simpatico characterisation by Rebecca Kemp as Miss Blake. Jackson Barnard and James Fazzarli add fine support, as does each minor player.
It is an engrossing, intelligent, and relevant show well directed and well played.
If there are any seats left, grab one.
And, Brava, Libby Drake.
Samela Harris
When: 20 to 29 May
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
The Metropolitan Musical Theatre Co. of S.A. Inc. Arts Theatre. 12 May 2021
The Met’s production of the modern American musical about modern American girls, Legally Blonde - The Musical, is one rollicking ride of aural and visual pleasures.
Legally Blonde began life as Amanda Brown’s novel - later filmed in 2001. The musical emerged on Broadway six years later and although it won zero awards from 17 nominations, the subsequent West End production won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical.
Success is assured at The Met with the creative team of Carolyn Adams as director and set designer, Ben Stefanoff as musical director and Jacinta Vistoli as choreographer. This top trio never let the energy drop – it is a fireball of colour (especially if you like pink) and movement (especially if you like night club dance). Also kudos to Carmel Vistoli and Leonie Osborn for the stunning outfits, and most notably, Ms Carey’s pink ensembles in the lead role.
Thin plot-wise, Elle Woods is the UCLA sorority president whose ambitious boyfriend announces he’s off to Harvard Law School, without her. Yes, he underestimates his Malibu chick. She passes the LSAT and delivers her personal essay in person with her showbiz pals in a song and dance routine, showing enough love to gain admission to Harvard as well. Lover Warner has already re-partnered, so Elle is mentored by a very nice man while school features a professor from hell, and she constantly fights the blonde bimbo bias thing - quite successfully you wouldn’t be surprised. In a fish-out-of-water theme, the creative team perfectly contrasts the West Coast ditz with the East Coast ivy.
Well, let’s start at the top. You could be forgiven if after the show you thought there was only one person in it. Lucy Carey plays an unstoppable Elle Woods in this gigantic role. Perfectly cast – looking remarkably like Laura Bell Bundy from the Broadway production, as I presume she needs to be – her creation of Elle’s bubbly, irrepressible personality through song, voice, dance and presentation is a joy to behold. Brava!
In fact, Lucy Carey is superbly supported by prodigious acting, singing and dancing talent, and not one, but two dogs. When you need a musical theatre performer who is a terrific actor, you call Kristin Stefanoff. Jay Mancuso as the hard-boiled lawyer-lecturer-lecherer is imposing in body and voice and entirely believable. Daniel Fleming plays the nice guy guiding Elle through law school with tremendous empathy and bursts into song with gusto when required. Eve McMillan is wonderfully warm as the hairdresser-rescuer and her songs of wistfulness are heart-rending. Simon Rich delivers a feature star turn as the hunk with the packages in his tight delivery uniform. Shane Huang’s rap dancing is eye candy and Iman Saleh as the evasive witness is a hoot. Their short duet is laughable. Indeed, the short court scene discussing the stereotypes of homosexuality and getting away with it is great mirth.
Then there is all the rest of them – energetic Greek chorus/sorority girls and law students – all delightfully choreographed by Vistoli and snapped into sonorous voice by Stefanoff.
I don’t normally review this late in a season, but maybe I should, because the young cast was having the time of their lives having nailed it and everything went swimmingly well. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 6 to 15 May
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: themet.sales.ticketsearch.com
State Opera South Australia. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 11 May 2021
The organ prelude is ominous. Shafts of light spray down on the dark stage. Slum London flanks the stage as towering wooden scaffolds. As the audience braces for a horror story, a deafening scream shatters the air. No, it is not a scream. It is a vicious whistle. Audience members jump in fright. Some cover their ears. And thus, with a shock, begins a shocking opera. The darkest and scariest of them all. The stuff of nightmares.
For the State Opera South Australia, director Stuart Maunder wraps the terrible tale of the tonsorial serial killer within an oppressive underworld of squalor, cruelty, and madness; confirming a credible ugliness of the period. Maunder’s aesthetic partner in crime is Roger Kirk, one of the great theatre designers of our time. His seasoned expertise swings style with every stunning pleat of the Beadle’s great coat, with every shred of the beggar’s rags. And also, in the lethal barbershop itself, perched vertiginously centre stage on a revolve, whence the barber’s victims are launched comically into the netherworld.
The Sondheim opera of Sweeny Todd has long played abroad on the world's stages, but no two incarnations are the same, and one dares to assert that Maunder’s Sweeney is in a class of its own. It is not only the mood and the aesthetic but a clever manipulation of the message and extraction of the humour, irony, and absurdity of its terrible all. He brings us bursts of laughter and even, when murderous revenge is served, bursts of spontaneous applause, for, indeed, the audience is with him through every nuance of this beautifully layered and exquisitely sung production. Well, maybe not for the factory whistles. But where Sondheim offers wit, Maunder takes it in both hands and plays it to the people. Dark as it may be and politically incorrect as it most definitely is, we laugh in the face of its Grimm-like consequences.
Just as this work is classic melodrama in the guise of musical theatre, so are we human beings secret monsters in our taste for the appalling. Her Majesty’s Theatre proves herself once again a world of excellent sound and sight-lines and, against the blackness of the dark saga, we see exciting designs wrought by Philip Lethlean’s lighting and we hear, sometimes too well, the voices and harmonies of the cast.
With Anthony Hunt leading a creamy ASO orchestra and the choral discipline of the State Opera Chorus, one is embraced by rich professionalism.
It’s is nothing less than a superior production and it is peopled by a cast of excellence, principally that powerful one-time construction worker, Ben Mingay, in the lead as Todd. But, with him, as his partner in crime and the world’s most opportunistic baker, is Antoinette Halloran who takes the role of Mrs Lovett and makes it her own. Her vocal range is matched only by her fulsome acting skills. She steals the show. This is not easy when Mat Verevis is up there showcasing his talent in the role of dear, gullible Tobias.
Of course, there are the old hands of opera, solid and reliable, able to thrive in the worst of roles as does Douglas McNicol. He is sleazy and reprehensible as Judge Turpin but oh, so luxurious on the ear. Adam Goodburn, who sings the flim-flam rival barber Signor Pirelli, is rich and wicked and funny, one of those stalwarts who has never turned in other than excellence on stage. He’s nasty and funny. Similarly, Mark Oates as Beadle Bamford. He’s a villain character with a wee scene of his own in which to show the drenching beauty of his voice. The audience swoons and breaks into spontaneous applause. Nicholas Canon and Desiree Frahn play the “straight” roles of the young lovers and do it nicely, by the book. They are the least interesting characters and the only ones left standing, which says a lot about life, and about the dark and thorny path that Sondheim has chosen for this musical which, unlike most of its characters, refuses to die - and for very good reason.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 15 May
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide University Theatre Guild. Little Theatre. 9 May 2021
Cheek by jowl but worlds apart, the American servicemen man their post beside the tiger’s cage. The zoo must be protected. The proud old tiger paces to and fro in his cage. Each is living in their own hell of war, the ingenuous young soldiers unlikeably crass in their talk of sex and looting. The tiger, talking in a fugue of indignation about how the war had enabled the loathed lions some freedom in the city. And the tension of the 2003 Baghdad war zone is artfully woven by these hapless characters.
And then, the explosive moment of conflict. No blame. Just a maimed soldier, a boorish thug empowered and a dead tiger.
And so the great discussions of this remarkable play unfold. The afterlife, as is mooted by playwright Rajiv Joseph, is a realm of vast enlightenment. Everything one should have known in life becomes instantly accessible, albeit not everyone can see the dead in their visitations. Language and belief barriers slip away. Remorse and enlightenment arise. Of all creatures, it is the tiger whose existential awareness soars to the greatest heights. He is wise, wonderful, challenging, and intensely interesting. Or is it David Grybowski’s performance that makes it so? This role was played by Robin Williams on Broadway and one can imagine his embodiment and compare it to Grybowski’s. Did Williams have that nuanced underplay? Did he bring the stage to life as he prowled? It is a wonderful thing to witness great performances, and this is the reward for seeing the Guild’s production of Bengal Tiger.
The play earned assorted acclaims in the US and some mixed reviews. From its Adelaide premier under Nick Fagan’s direction, it emerges as weighted by the overwritten portrayal of Uday Hussein. This forces young Noah Fernandes to spend a lot of time shouting at the hapless interpreter-cum-gardener, who is a pivotal cross-cultural link in the plot. He is very sensitively played by Nigel Tripodi who has also to speak a lot of dialogue in Arabic, as does Anita Zamberlan Canala as the hysterical Iraqi woman. The use of the two languages and the barriers it imposes in war are superbly emphasised in this play, among the many aspects of the cruelty and misery of war. Adam Tuominen and Oliver de Rohan play the two Americans in fairly ruthless and maybe clichéd depiction of the worst of human behaviour in occupation. Both are powerful performances from fine actors. Indeed, this high standard is hallmark to the production. It’s a gruelling play and Fagan has cut no corners in creating moments of desperate fear and hysteria. They are balanced by the dissertations of the characters in their living and un-living worlds, most particularly, the tiger who is poignant and funny and wise and, oh, so unknowably dangerous.
Good set by Tony Clancy, terrific sound by Sean Smith with striking Arabic hip hop tracks. It’s a fine production of a cerebral anti-war play. It is long and overly wordy, but a must-see just for the sublime tiger-tiger-burning-bright performance of David Grybowski.
Samela Harris
When: 9 to 22 May
Where: Little Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Adelaide Youth Theatre. 24 Apr 2021
Wow. Just wow. From the moment the orchestra - guided by Music Directors Serena Cann and Ben Francis - strikes up the overture and Willie Wonka (Oscar Bridges) struts on to the stage twirling his cane, you know you’re in for a treat. And what a treat it is.
Roald Dahl’s much loved book is brought to life on the stage by a remarkable cast of young (and very young) actors, singers and dancers in a production that is world class. Before you can grasp the enormity of this production, a full chorus high kicks its way onto stage in full Broadway look and style. And so it continues through the show, with the ensemble delighting the audience at every turn.
A couple of tech hiccups early with missed lighting cues and a bit of muddy sound are quickly corrected, and the tech crew are off and running. Lighting Designer Jamie Rayner has nuanced this well, and Craig Williams on Lighting and Special Effects nails it with some spectacular digital back screen projections. The venue is more an auditorium than a theatre; it’s a bit cavernous for the production but in these COVID days it certainly fit the bill in terms of capacity and staggered seating. Well done.
Young Charlie Bucket lives in poverty with his parents and grandparents. Grandpa Joe tells him stories of the great days of the now closed Wonka Chocolate Factory. When Wonka announces it is re-opening with a competition which invites five lucky children on a tour, Charlie lucks out, finding enough money to buy a Wonka Bar and claiming one of the golden tickets. The other children are dispensed with one by one, with the Oompah Loompahs, Wonka’s assistants, singing about their appalling behaviour. Good, kind Charlie is the last kid standing, and inherits the factory from Wonka.
There are two casts for this show; this night the ‘Gum’ (as opposed to the ‘Candy’) cast were performing, but judging by the calibre of artist performing this night, either would be worth seeing.
Oscar Bridges is a perfectly dry witted Willie Wonka, singing and dancing his way through the production with consummate ease, dropping in the odd bon mot that thankfully went over the little one’s heads. Harrison Thomas is just delightful as the young Charlie and the two play off each other most entertainingly.
The stage is kept relatively clear (to fit in the huge all singing, all dancing ensemble!), with Charlie’s home (hovel) depicted by a loft bed with kitchen beneath, firmly set to one side of the stage. The grandparents were all set atop the bed, with some very cute flatulence humour. Grandpa Joe (Benjamin Gray) manages to shake off his age remarkably quickly, and joins in on the general hoe down with great gusto.
The gold ticket children push the caricature to the edge; the glutton Augustus (Nicholas Latella), ridiculously spoiled and Insta influencer Veruca Salt (Zahli Linke), chewing gum fiend Violet (Zoe Kerr) and mobile phone addict Mike Teavee (Shae Olsson Jones) and their parents do not disappoint, delighting the audience with their appalling behaviour.
The absolute highlights are the ensemble chorus, brilliantly costumed and choreographed by Jayden Prelc (assisted by Tayla McDougall)and just when you think it can’t get better, out come the Oompah Loompahs – just brilliant!
At two and a half hours plus on a Saturday night, it might have been touch and go for the five year old’s attention span. No problem; he was riveted to the stage from the get go (apologies to those around us, he knows the story well and his commentary was less than hushed!).
Congrats to Adelaide Youth Theatre on this very professional and entertaining production.
Arna Eyers-White
When: Closed
Where: Influencers Theatre
Bookings: Closed