James Watson & Paper Mouth Theatre. RUMPUS Theatre. 16 Sep 2021
The Triumph of Man is a new play written by local playwright James Watson who is honing his craft through a Masters in Writing for Performance at NIDA. In his short career he has been quite active with a number of works already under his belt that have been aired by University of Adelaide Theatre Guild and at the Adelaide Fringe. James is the recipient of a State Theatre Company of South Australia young playwrights award and has several works published on Australian Plays Transform.
The Triumph of Man is essentially a farce in two acts, with each coming in at around one hour. It is expansive in its conception and addresses a number of uncomfortable ‘truths’. The story focusses on how the fictional dictator of a fictional nation keeps his regime intact through the secretive suppression of dissenters and by spreading his propaganda through performances of a play he has written. He kidnaps two foreign actors to lead the performances, which may sound absurd but is in-fact, informed by real events surrounding South Korean filmmakers Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee who were kidnapped by Kim Jong in 1978 and forced to make propaganda movies for the North Korean regime. There are of course less dramatic examples in history of artists being used for political purposes such as Guy Sebastian being paraded by PM Morrison to help spruik the federal government’s bungled arts rescue package. Sebastian later expressed his embarrassment at being used “as a prop”.
The Triumph of Man explores how the arts and particularly the performing arts can be (and are) exploited for political purposes. This of course is not a novel idea and has been explored many times before, and this play doesn’t really add to that canon. The particular story line about the kidnapped actors is however new and fertile territory for exploration, but Watson doesn’t perhaps make as much of this as he might. The story line frequently crosses over into previously travelled territory and becomes cliché. This has the effect of reducing the potential impact of the narrative and slows it down.
Director Mary Angley identifies the absurdist aspects of the script and capitalises on the manifest abilities of the acting ensemble to milk these moments for what they are worth, but the sprawling text doesn’t easily assist in identifying reasonable bounds. Interestingly, Reggie Parker’s (mostly) excellent soundscape occasionally juxtaposes quite dark and foreboding sound sequences with lighter moments in the play. This has the effect of leaving the audience responding to questions that the music perhaps should not be asking. The lighting plot and set are simple and never distract from the play itself.
Arran Beattie is excellent as one of the kidnapped actors. His portrayal includes a carefully balanced mix of humour, fear, hesitancy, and resignation. Christian Best plays the other actor in a more naturalistic and underplayed manner, and as such demands to be listened to in a different way. Grace Boyle plays the dual roles of Ivana and Erasmus with much energy and expression, but frequently becomes ‘shouty’ as Erasmus, which is uncomfortable in the RUMPUS performance space. Ellen Graham as Axelle crafts a compelling character. We feel her rage, anguish, and pain. Poppy Mee also plays dual roles, and as Artemon she oozes authority and foreboding. Yoz Mensch also essays dual roles, and clearly delights in playing the role of the dictator giving a balanced mix of menace and unhinged mania.
The Triumph of Man is a wild ride, with twists and turns that both please and irk.
Kym Clayton
When: 14 to 26 Sep
Where: RUMPUS Theatre
Bookings: rumpustheatre.org
Flying Penguin Productions with Brink. Bakehouse Theatre. 17 Sep 2021
A thrill runs through the theatre as the lights rise on David Mealor’s production of Glengarry Glen Ross.
It’s an impeccable opening moment set in a booth in a Chinese restaurant with a backdrop of aptly symbolic red curtains. It is downstage, close to the audience in the Bakehouse Theatre. Two men occupy the booth. One drinks Scotch. The other eats noodles. And, almost before the first breath, the power games begin, not just from the David Mamet plot but because of powerhouse performances.
Rory Walker plays salesman Shelly Levene, and he’s on a downward spiral in a very dodgy real estate company. Desperate and dishevelled, his huge tie loose and awry, he is running off at the mouth and scrambling for support from the sleek new boss. From his first rushed utterances, it is clear that Walker is inhabiting this character to the depths of his contemptible essence. He is so credible that watching him feels quite voyeuristic. It takes less than a moment to recognise that this is a superlative performance; one which is sustained and developed as the play evolves.
Across the table, the boss who clearly gained his position from some form of nepotism, responds to Shelly’s pleas with smug superiority. Bill Allert portrays this ugly manager with an aura of supreme self-satisfaction and an impressive repertoire of quince-faced expressions.
Mamet sets up the characters with three of these across-the-table interactions so that one understands the tensions - the business principle of salesmen competing for top sales and a Cadillac prize, with the hapless losers facing dismissal. It’s a cruel field, counted out on an office blackboard and controlled by the boss who provides precious “leads” to the prospective sales. It is all based on the playwright’s own experience in this predatory world of dodgy real estate dealers.
Hence the shameless wheeler dealing of the characters and the charming duplicity of the top dogs, notably Richard Roma who gains a larger-than-life embodiment from the remarkable Mark Saturno who devours the stage in a tour-de-force performance.
He is one of the layers of excellence David Mealor has achieved in this splendid production. He has audience eyes glued to Christopher Pitman, sad and funny as the over-the-top conspiratorial agent, Dave Moss, against the frightening despair of his colleague George, as so vividly portrayed by Nicholas Garsden. James Wardlaw plays the hapless sucker, James Lingk, who has fallen for the fast-talking real estate dealers. Poor Lingk is trying to weasel out of the deal. As smarmy Richard plays swings and roundabouts with him, the audience cringes in recognition at the entire phenomenon of the power of smooth-talking conmen. It hits a raw and universal nerve - one of the reasons that this 1980s play has maintained its relevance.
Desperate measures by frustrated salesmen result in the police being called in to the business, in which capacity Chris Asimos plays the one blameless outsider, a policeman investigating a break in at the office. The power of good carries a gun, of course. This is America, in which context the cast uniformly do their raging and moaning in impeccable American accents. And, to their ghastly tan plaid socks, they are besuited to the period.
The slick professionalism of this Brink and Flying Penguin productions presentation is completed by the finesse of Tom Kitney’s lighting and Quentin Grant’s soundscape. Not for a moment forgetting Kathryn Sproul’s set design which not only recreates a classic Chinese restaurant scene but, with astonishing flurries of movement in the shadows and masked spectres of US presidents of yore, transforms the stage into a smoky 1970s downmarket office complete with slow-moving ceiling fan and, of course, the crucial chalk board on which the destinies of the real estate agents is marked out.
One way and another, David Mealor and his team have achieved the complete package in this production.
One might give it five stars and then some.
Samela Harris
When: 17 to 25 Sep
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com (Season Sold Out)
The Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 3 Sep 2021
It’s a highly “Americana” play. Indeed David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People is a highly “Bawsten” play set, as it is in Boston’s rough old Southie district and playing class divides with posh Chestnut Hill. It’s also a play about racism, homophobia, and disability, so it ticks lots of boxes.
Hence its acclaim when it hit Broadway with Frances McDormand earning a Tony Award in the lead role of Margaret.
Of course, that is a hard act to follow for a non-professional theatre company in Australia, but under Nick Fagan’s determined directorship, The Rep has pulled off a more than adequate production.
It requires just a bit of patience from the audience since the play opens with a scene-setting interaction in which single mum, Margaret, played by Rachel Burfield, is sacked from her Dollar-Store job by her old friend’s son, played by Curtis Shipley. This scene occurs in the un-arresting OP corner of the stage and, while it forms a broad socio-economic introduction to the story, it is very wordy and its performance needs a bit of pace and punch.
Thence, Richard Parkhill’s lighting moves on to the next of the several Brittiany Daw's sets lined up across the stage.
This one is a kitchen. Therein, Margaret and her Southie girlfriends, played by Lyn Crowther and Cate Rogers, are laying further gossipy foundation for the plot. But, again, the anchor drags. The audience begins to worry. This is slow.
Then, as the lights move right to the last of the sets, an unassuming little medical office, the play leaps into life, and it does not look back.
Nicholas Bishop is onstage. He is playing Mike Dillon, the old Southie boy made good, Margaret’s old boyfriend who, say her friends, may be able to open doors to give her the job she so sorely needs to pay her rent and take care of her retarded daughter. That Mike is now a paediatric endocrinologist who has specialised in early births passes neither by, albeit the significance is laid gently upon the audience. It is all about class distinction. The privileges of family and support are ping-ponged between the characters. Margaret, a feisty voice for the underclass, plays passive aggressive games with the formerly smug specialist eventually eliciting an invitation to his birthday party, to be hosted by his young wife at their salubrious Chestnut Hill address. The play then moves through displays of abrasive class inferiority and insecure class superiority. When Michael cancels the party, Margaret decides that this was just his way of uninviting her to the party. She turns up to crash it - to find, not only a quiet couple with a sick child and a cancelled party, but her old boyfriend now married to an upper crust black woman. Furthermore, the black woman is open-hearted and charming. Thus ensues the most interesting and exquisitely tense of domestic scenes, played out upon a fairly bland multi-level bourgeois set, but reaching somewhere towards the ilk of Virginia Wolf and then veering elsewhere. Plot threads draw together. Tensions are released. Performances rise to the occasion.
Nicholas Bishop delivers a masterly underplay of the Boston boy-made-good - his subtle expertise lifting the rest of the cast and the entire feel of the play. Enter Rhoda Sylvester, playing the doctor’s black wife, and the production lifts yet further with a compelling swing of the pendulum.
So, from an underwhelming beginning, this Nick Fagan Rep production, delivers as a rather thrilling and satisfying night.
Samela Harris
When: 3 to 11 Sep
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Finegan Kruckemeyer. Festival Centre’s InSPACE Program & Control Party with Country Arts SA and Brink Productions. Space Theatre. 2 Sep 2021
When art and theatre collide.
Its title and promotional precis would suggest that this work is of a linear nature. What unfolds, however, is a voyage into existentialism amidst a wonderland of hypnotically beautiful music and eloquent production values.
It is not like anything else.
While it springboards from the story of a traveller lost in Finland who joined a search party looking for herself, in reality it explores the nature of the lost soul and of the struggle of the human heart to survive the inescapable otherworld of grief.
It is certainly not a light night’s entertainment. Nor is it perfect. Yet, it is a work of art.
In truth, it devolves around the life of Mount Gambier actress, Sarah Brokensha, a farm girl whose spirit was almost lost at sea with the death of her father. This is symbolised early in the production by a tiny white sailboat moving across a dark expanse of the stage which strangely shimmers under a layer of clear plastic. It is also represented by a sparkling snow-cone cupped in the hand of the actress and, as the white ruched curtain drops, is placed on top of an old farmhouse refrigerator which symbolises home and safety and icy numbness. Just in case its significance is missed the fridge bears the magnetic letters GRIEF.
Above the raised dais at the back of the stage is an exquisite floor-to-ceiling painting of Finnish forest while upon and around the dais are piles of folded blankets, symbols of home, warmth and comfort. It is Wendy Todd’s design, and it is a layered profundity of metaphors. She has yet more to offer in her lighting plot. She doesn’t miss a trick. It is a lighting tour de force.
Meanwhile, Brokensha takes the audience through a torrent of words on what might have been a too-gruelling emotional journey were it not for the music of Mario Späte. Composer Späte performs on stage, softy illuminated beside vocalist and musician Paige Court. At first, the soundscape makes one think of Bjork but then it evolves and rolls, pulses, speaks, hums, and wanders into angelic realms. It is its own lovely poetry and one finds oneself lost in it - or maybe finding oneself. Just as with the play. For, with the ever-lyrical lines of playwright Fin Kruckemeyer, the script powers, occasionally too heavily, through a gamut of often desperate emotions as Brokensha struggles against the icy demons of loss of loved one, loss of place and loss of identity. One blesses Späte for giving relief to all this self-exploratory anguish.
However, all is not darkness. Brokensha breaks the trials of her female experiences into separate versions of self to offer, perchance, optional resolutions. She changes persona by putting her hair up and down. She breaks the fourth wall and plays with the audience to raise a smile. And, bless them all, she brings her character through the ordeals of darkness and into the present where love is not made of suffering alone.
Director Daisy Brown evokes a passionate performance from Brokensha. The quest for self is one of life’s great challenges and, indeed abstractions. Hence, The World is Looking For You is a very ambitious and exhausting work - but perchance the impression it makes may be indelible.
Samela Harris
When: 1 to 4 Sep
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Therry Theatre. Arts Theatre. 19 Aug 2021
If ever the legendary Ole Wiebkin created an atmospheric and powerfully detailed set, it is this one, filling The Arts Theatre stage with rough timber bunkhouse and barn and even beautiful California night scenery. Indeed, if ever a good set is well lit, it is this one by Richard Parkhill.
But, despite a diligent cast, things just did not coalesce on the opening night of this new Therry production.
Perhaps it was the script, loaded as it is with archaic American 1930s vernacular.
John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men depicts the ill-educated itinerant battlers struggling against indigency in the 1930s depression years. The actors laboured as much with the sentence structures as with the accents. Perhaps this is why Geoff Brittain, a seasoned director with a fine track record, could not push the pace of the performances in what already is a long and wordy play.
It is a heart-rending tragedy of brutality and loyalty, of yesteryear’s racism and sexism, of a harsh time when hope was as fragile as a moonbeam.
Fortunately, the gruelling sorrow of the story is conveyed and the audience cannot help but be moved, especially at the death of the one hapless female in the tale, the lonely floozy married to the boss’s bullyboy son. Spoiler alert, if there can be such a thing for an old and famous story, but, she perishes accidentally at the hands of the giant simpleton, Lennie. Therein, Ashley Bell’s death scene enactment is truly the performance highlight of the night; a bravura demise.
One gains empathy for poor Lennie through Stuart Pearce’s performance. His character's slow and basic articulation lends itself to the accent and he copes better than most. Leighton Vogt as his caring companion, George, struggles with the Americana but is good with the characterisation. Kym Clayton seems most at home as the civilised member of the brutish bunkhouse bunch on Steinbeck's hellhole ranch with Adam Schultz deliciously despicable as the horrible boss-boy, Curley.
Among the pack, John Rosen is always reliable and Robert Donnarumma , James Fazzalari support enthusiastically while Philip Lineton, screechy as poor old crippled Candy, brings the house down when he drags the huge fake sheepdog on stage with him. Newcomer to Therry is Christian Best who plays the marginalised black farm worker. It is a nice performance and, having come from Kentucky, he has no trouble at all with the accent.
Ray Trowbridge’s choice of folk music is pleasant but the loud off-stage sound effects of snorting horses is puzzling. There are a number of puzzling aspects to this production and one hopes that, as it runs into its season, everything will come together.
Samela Harris
When: 19 to 28 Aug
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com