By and with Jonathan Biggins. State Theatre Company of SA with Adina Apartments and Soft Tread Productions. Dunstan Playhouse. 20 Apr 2021
What a canny, cunning piece of theatrical Australiana. Writer and performer Jonathan Biggins developed his Paul Keating take-off as skits in the brilliant Sydney Wharf Revue which far too occasionally has made its way to Adelaide.
Now here comes his Keating, from revue vignette to fully-formed character.
Once upon a time, Paul Keating strode the political landscape, a truly interesting politician, witty and perceptive, an autodidactic polymath. Looking at that stylish man, it was hard to believe that he left school at 14. Until he told us, of course. He was never backward in coming forward,
Now he strides the stage in a very different incarnation but oh, what a tonic for the tired Australian political spirit he is as manifested by our artful satirist. Oh, how we have been needing what this man is giving us at the Dunstan Playhouse. Oh, thank you Mr Biggins for the glorious gusts of laughter, the snide snickers, the nostalgic titters, the gasps of shock, and the reassurance that once there was a fleeting streak of cultural depth in The Lodge.
In case anyone has forgotten, or was not yet born, designer Mark Thompson has reminded audiences of the world of Keating with a positively luscious office stage set, its red-ochre walls laden with gilt-framed Keating iconography, portraits of Napoleon, Cook, even a Gainsborough. And clocks, of course, European polished wood furnishing, a record player, and a white screen for an old-fashioned slide show.
Biggins embodies our former Prime Minister by adopting his stance, his head tilted slightly forward, his torso with an angular stoop. And, of course, he is a picture of upmarket formality in a classic business suit, crisp white shirt and a tie. As he evolves his characterisation, in mind’s eye the resemblance seems to grow and Biggins becomes more Keating than Keating. Except when he doesn’t. The last thing one expects of that dignified politician is that he should break into song and dance routines. But, with a burst of limelight, suddenly he’s Putting On The Ritz. Biggins is quite a mover, as it turns out. And the several musical numbers add an element of unexpected exuberance to the show. It is not to be forgotten that, while we may associate Keating with Mahler, he was a bit of a rock-and-roll entrepreneur in his early days and a zealous Tom Jones fan. Indeed, catholic were his tastes and Biggins weaves among them in an expertly crafted bio show.
Of course, he’s preaching to the choir. The audience is hungrily responsive and, oh, when he lets go at Scomo and the litany of Australian Prime Ministers who came before, the barbs of satiric wit are merciless, and wickedly apposite. It is a superbly scripted production, sometimes profane, sometimes profound, always erudite and stylish, just like Keating.
Its opening night standing ovation is almost not enough. ’Tis a joy of bloody cleverness.
Samela Harris
When: 20 Apr to 1 May
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
STARC Productions. The Bakehouse Theatre. 16 Apr 2021
Our protagonist, Thomas Novachek, played by Marc Clement, has had an unsuccessful day auditioning lead females for his play based on a 1870 novel entitled, Venus In Furs, by Austrian Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Interesting factoid: fellow Austrian and psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing applied the new term “masochism” – derived from Sacher-Masoch’s name - to the sexual anomaly “because the author Sacher-Masoch frequently made this perversion, which up to this time was quite unknown to the scientific world as such, the substratum of his writings.” Of course, Sacher-Masoch had some personal experience with the phenomena. Have I your interest yet?
There is an apocryphal story that a young and unknown Barbara Streisand came into an audition room, bumbled around and acting like an airhead, took her chewing gum out of her mouth and stuck it under the stool, sang her heart out, retrieved the gum and left. They didn’t know what hit them. The audience gets this same sensation when Stephanie Rossi creates a sassy and vivacious Wanda Jordan who bursts into Novachek’s funk for an unscheduled audition, late at night, during a thunderstorm. She is a hurricane in high heels and for a large part of the play sports more of her luxuriant natural curls than covering clothes including the eponymous fur.
Rossi, Clement and former Head of Acting at NIDA, Tony Knight, director of this little ripper are a tried and true trio of the stage – this being their eighth production together. Tony Knight is a Jedi Knight of theatre and paces the pair through an unrelenting – nearly exhausting – rocket ride of changing status and hierarchy reminiscent of Sleuth. As auditioner and auditionee sensationally read the saucy play, Novachek succumbs to his play’s goddess’s appeal and Sacher-Masoch’s kind of fun. Clement’s face as playwright Novachek light up with excitement at Rossi’s Wanda’s virtuosity and creativity with Novachek’s script, yet Novachek is curiously inoculated against her sexual charms, save his slow boil submission to her. The acting is simply marvelous – breathtaking really. Clement has his earnest Novachek but also his subconscious to reveal. Rossi’s Wanda is herself an act designed to do Novachek’s head in. American playwright (the real playwright) David Ives’s intelligent play takes the Classicist theme of goddess worship into the ambivalent world of kinky sex to examine the challenges of gender equality we face today. And Rossi, Clement and Knight did exactly that in a most graphic, provocative, salacious and entertaining way. Bravo!
PS - Knight and Rossi need to review their program bios. Knight writes that Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune was STARC’s eighth production (actually it’s Venus In Fur if you include Toyer) and Rossi says that STARC’s first production was last year (actually it was 2018).
David Grybowski
When: 7 to 17 Apr
Where: The Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: Closed
University of Adelaide Theatre Guild. Three nights only. 16 Apr 2021
In the best of times, staged readings are wonderful fun. During the worst of times, a staged reading is positively inspirational since it gives all the joy of a wonderful play with half the rehearsal and production stress.
Thus is the Little Theatre dressed up in some colourful Russian-motif posters with lots of chairs, a table, and a crude bedroom setting on the mezzanine. Actors are clad in this and that, casual garb suggestive of their characters. They carry scripts but many of them seem to need no more than the odd glance. They are well prepared under the direction of Alexander Kirk who, most significantly with Lilia Nadyrshine, translated the five-act comedy from the Russian. While this critic has never experienced the play as a Russian speaker, the impression conveyed by this new translation is one of extreme perspicacity. The script is full of life, acerbic wit, and irony and the cast successfully imparts it for the most part. It is a huge cast, twenty or so, and some performances are uneven. Where they are good, they are wonderful. Where they are not, they are endearing. So it’s a win-win of good spirit.
The play also is known as The Government Inspector or The Inspector General and, in performance since 1836, its plot is fairly familiar. Rural township authorities go into over-the-top damage control when they believe that an inspector from the central government is in their midst to uncover their petty corruptions. They mistakenly target a nefarious visitor and the outcome is a mayhem of lies, vanities, bribery, and foolishness.
Of the swarming cast, Brian Knott is outstanding as the town governor. It’s a frenetic part but Knott’s skills and that superb voice rule the stage. Alejandra Arbe Montoya asserts a diabolically commanding presence and a good grasp of comic timing as his vain, vapid, bullying wife, while Camilla Wolf-Barry reels in the audience's sympathy with her embodiment of the wide-eyed and gullible teenage daughter. Nicholas Elborough plays the mistaken identity visitor delivering mercurial mood changes and artful dodginess. Then there are the lesser roles which produce some delicious characterisations, notably Simon Lancione and Emma O’Connell-Doherty as the busybody landowners and April Slomiany is delectably devious as the sneaky postmaster. Worthy mentions include Philip Lineton, Jack Robins, Phil Grummet, Geoff Dawes, and John Rosen.
Clearly, it is hard to harness such a large cast for a long run, but this is a lovely, spirited and highly entertaining reading and it would have been good to see a longer season.
Samela Harris
When: 15 to 17 Apr
Where: The Little Theatre
Bookings: Closed
David Venn Enterprises. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 10 Apr 2021
Adelaide’s Her Majesty’s is host to the opening of an Australian tour of an all-new showing of The Wedding Singer. The romantic comedy first sang as a movie in 1998 with Adam Sandler in the eponymous role and the theatre version premiered on Broadway in 2006. The South Australian premiere was at the Arts Theatre in 2008. The current offering is a cracker whiz-bang all-Australian professional production out of Melbourne.
Robbie Hart (had his heart robbed) is a happy singer at weddings in the 1980s in New Jersey across the river from New York. The vamp he was going to marry dumps him at the alter and he is supported by his two band members, his Grandma, and most importantly, a very cute waitress at the wedding venue named Julia. She is supposed to marry a Wall Street wolf but blind Freddy could see it’s not solid and Robbie and Julia fall in love without them knowing it. All these characters and more, except the wayward wolf and Robbie’s ex-, help Robbie and Julia get to where they need to be. It’s a boy-meets-girl tale under a canopy of loud guitars and wailing synths.
Christian Charisiou and Teagan Wouters absolutely smash it as our adorable heroes. They beautifully play Robbie and Julia’s small-town honesty and raw emotions. They are just so comical-tragical and sweet! It’s hard not to cheer at the finale as you so much want this couple to connect.
Robbie’s band members, played with goofy earnestness by Ed Deganos and Haydan Hawkins, make an unlikely and humourous hook-up. Deganos does a lovely lady boy of the Filipino flavour and Hawkins does a hard rock bass player feeling trapped in but committed to this unremarkable trio. Nadia Komazec makes Julia’s cousin and co-worker a chewing gum chopping party girl extraordinaire, and Stephen Mahy’s Wall Street junk bond trader looks impeccable and impregnable. His booming vocals in All About The Green would scare any lefty. Kirby Burgess was a knock out as the aforementioned vamp. While everyone dances with flare and precision, Burgess’s number in Act II is a lesson in athleticism. Bravo! Grandma in the hands of Susan-Ann Walker foils the shenanigans of the younger generation with some apple tea wisdom, and Walker’s interpretation of rap is a hoot.
The ’80s dress code and hair-dos take you back if you have ever been there, or maybe it looks like a fancy dress party if you are too young. The staging is brash, bright and kinetic, and the rock/pop/heavy metal music when featured is loud. The women have high emotional quotients, and the men are affable buffoons. Some would say nothing has changed.
Director Alister Smith has unleashed a dazzling revival that is funny and engaging from beginning to end. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 10 to 24 Apr
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: theatresonline.com.au
Windmill Theatre Company. Space Theatre. 10 Apr 2021
Not a word has been spoken and the children have already started giggling. Standing in front of them, Eddie (Nathan O’Keefe) peers into the gloom. He’s wearing fluoro running shorts, a silver reflective vest, leggings and sandals. A white teddy in matching vest, who turns out be Lucky, is strapped to his backpack. Yes, he looks ridiculous, and the kids love it.
Eddie is clearly a city guy, and he’s very unhappy about the fact that the city is big and noisy, and he desperately needs some sleep, so he’s come bush to get a good night’s sleep. Will he get it?
Hiccup! was written and directed by Jude Henshall and Ellen Steele, and they have succeeded brilliantly in producing a contemporary Australian puppet show for children. Tamara Rewse’s muppet-like characters are immediately endearing, and the audience is captivated from the get go, initially by Eddie, and then by Quokka, Koala and Emu.
Quokka (animated by Chiara Gabrielli) wants to go the city. He loves shiny, shiny things and there is lots of them in the city. He wants Emu (Nathan O’Keefe) to go with him, but Emu is an inventor, and he’s right in the middle of something right now…
Which turns out to be quite useful, as the peaceful bush idyll is suddenly punctuated by Hiccup! as Koala (Lachlan Micklethwait) frightens the trio on his 273rd (give or take) day of extremely loud hiccups. There follows a series of attempts to rid Koala of his hiccups so they can all get on with, respectively, collecting shiny things, building inventions and getting some sleep.
Jonathan Oxlade has designed a stunning set, all ochres, pale greens and greys; trees and shrubs with fan blades, rocks with candy stripes and far off hills. Eddies ochre tent is tucked into the rocks and the clever use of internal lighting allows Eddie (O’Keefe) to seamlessly duck in and out of the tent and reappear as Emu.
A bit of a wobble with the follow spot is soon forgotten as the Chris Petridis lighting design brings us the outback stars and the crisp moonlight. And are they fireflies at the end?
The cast has the timing down pat as they bounce off each other, and they’re clearly having fun as they put their puppets through their paces. Perhaps sometimes a little much, as occasionally the focus is pulled from the characters onto the puppeteers, but for the most part it works well.
There’s some nice audience participation with some call and response rock and roll – all in the name of medical intervention, of course! The cast get to show off the fact that they can sing, and sing well, with songs by Ross McHenry.
Windmill has worked hard over the past year with their Windmill At Home program as a response to COVID-19, but it’s just so lovely to be back in the theatre seeing these fabulous children’s works first hand. And the kids thought so too.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 7 to 18 Apr
Where: Space Theatre
Tickets: bass.net.au