Theatre Republic. Ngunyawayiti Theatre, Tandanya. 12 Dec 2020
There is no outside world. There is no covid, albeit covid seating in the darkness of the Tandanya Theatre.
There is only one reality and it is ghastly, ghostly, grotesque, and yet sublime.
The Bleeding Tree is a sensationally brilliant piece of contemporary Australian theatre and its creator, playwright Angus Cerini, sits up there in genius territory.
This is a work unlike anything one has ever seen in the vast diversity of theatre.
It is a huge black poem.
It is exquisitely penned, deeply complex, rich and yet voiced from the coarse tongue of the underclass.
It is a tale of the last straw. A mother and two daughters dwelling somewhere, nowhere in a parched, remote Australian flyspeck town, have lived their lives beaten and abused under the brutal thumb of a violent drunk. One night, he rolls home in yet another thuggish and vindictive rage and the three women rise up and kill him. One daughter “knocked his knees out”. One “conked him on the head”. And, the mother “shot that house clown through the neck” with a shotgun. “I think your father’s dead,” quoth she.
And then, the psychological and social reverberations of this justified crime all are expressed through the three women, either in the voices and characters of visiting outsiders or in their own troubled triumph.
Thus do the actors segue with seeming ease through the transitions of time and character, voicing the contrasts with striking credibility. While Corey McMahon’s excellent Theatre Republic cast carries the interchanges of characters with artful conviction, in the end of the day it is the script they are “gifting” to the audience.
Therein, Cerini articulates the characters in wild and wayward rustic tense and grammar and in literary lyricism which does not compete with the country culture he is depicting. It is potent, poetic, profound, and yet devoid of pretension. One is immersed in wonderment at the nightmarish black beauty of it all. One even sheds a tear or two at moments of surprising poignancy.
There is no playwright to whom Cerini can be compared. This play is something unique and it deserves the many awards it so far has attracted, and then some.
Cory McMahon has taken this extraordinary literary phenomenon and given it the calculated unhurried pace it needs to liberate the beauty of its macabre poetry.
The audience barely moves a muscle, so stilled is it in focus on such an unusual experience.
It emerges from the tight 55 minutes bursting with commentary on the ugly wheres and hows of domestic violence and why is it that so often, especially in Australia, the rationalisation that it is not one’s business means the no one intervenes until it is too late.
This production is a triumph for director Corey McMahon and also for the cast: Elena Carapetis as the exhausted mother with Miranda Daughtry and Annabel Mattheson as her haplessly complicit daughters.
Not only but also, composer Jason Sweeney taps into the ether of pure excellence with a soundscape which is beautiful, subtle, and apposite.
This has been a much interrupted production thanks to the perversities of Covid19 but it now emerges not only as worth waiting for but as an award-worthy and unforgettable theatrical sensation.
Samela Harris
When: 9 to 19 Dec
Where: Ngunyawayiti Theatre, Tandanya
Bookings: trybooking.com
Adelaide College of the Arts Acting, Design and Technical Students Stables Theatre, TAFE, Light Square. 4 Dec 2020
It is exceptional that The Barefoot Review reviews student productions, but this was an exceptional production.
Hence, this brief notice to salute the 2020 graduating students and alert the world to a shining new batch of theatre makers. Their production has emerged against the odds of broken rehearsal times and covid restrictions and delays. In so many ways, it is sad it does not have a longer run for not only does it showcase the graduates but it introduces the work of the rising star among American playwrights, Samual D. Hunter. He is Idaho-born and this play is set in Idaho, albeit in a stereotypical American chainstore, this one called the Hobby Lobby, one of those vast box stores selling eye-watering arrays of paints and craft nicknacks. Interestingly, it is owned by a family of far-right Christian conservative Trump supporters.
The play is a dark comedy of sorts. The plot concerns a man who has fled from northern Idaho and association with a murder scandal in the evangelical church to which he belonged. He sought this particular store in a quest to meet and to create a relationship with his teenage son.
The action takes place in the store’s staff room, recreated to low-budget perfection by the student design team. It could be any staff room, anywhere, but not so much the staff or the high-stress, high-expectation store manager, Pauline. She’s a chip off the American cultural block and Juanita Navas-Nguyen embodies her with utter conviction and buckets of talent. She brings the stage to life and credibility to the character.
With superb focus, Josh Barkley plays Will, the on-the-run super-Christian whose beliefs gradually are revealed through extracts of the so-called novel he is writing as a blog. It is about The Rapture.
The phenomena of extreme religion, retail ruthlessness, mental health, hopes and dreams, and family relationships all devolve from the interactions in this bland staffroom. It is a very taut and clever 85-minute play.
Mikayla Rudd’s character, Anna, a bookish and dysfunctional retail worker, is catalyst to many of these extrapolations with Rudd delivering her as a wide-eyed, ingenuous enthusiast, battle-scarred by an unsympathetic society. It is a wonderful performance.
The adopted-out son , Alex, is a seriously disturbed teenager whose piques and fits are an acting challenge well achieved by Benjamin Tamba, while Clement Rukundo makes a very strong and spirit meal of the anarchical and arty ‘brother’, Leroy.
All of the above were directed with expertise by Chris Pitman, assisted by Taylor Nobes with lighting designed by Kultha Hier. And, all of the above produced an absolute treat as a piece of well-wrought, relevant, contemporary theatre.
Adelaide’s theatre future is in good hands.
Samela Harris
When: 2 to 4 Dec
Where: Adelaide College of the Arts
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 4 Dec 2020
It seems the old Rep is old no more.
Throughout the lockup, The Rep bravely experimented in online productions, including a really delightful series of staged radio plays. Now with its first live audiences limited to only 54 and carefully covid-distanced, it has re-opened the doors of the Arts Theatre with a very old play and given it a whoosh of youthful vigour.
It is a humble, very low budget scratch production which is offbeat for a Sheridan period piece. Those old post-Restoration comedies of manners usually have flamboyant costumes and lavish sets. Here, there is just a plain curtain and a door with the players carrying chairs, sofas, and assorted set pieces on and off stage. Even the costumes are a bit all over the place, albeit they are colourful and suggestive of the characters. If there is to be a big tick in the appearance department, it goes to Annie Smith, the production hair stylist. In some ways she is star of the show. The women, uniformly, have aptly fanciful period hair styles with Mrs Malaprop as piece de resistance, especially when she appears with, of all things, a model yacht as a jaunty fascinator.
The Rivals is a beloved old Richard Brinsley Sheridan play, much performed since it first hit the stage the 1700s and much celebrated for its creation of the aforementioned character, Mrs Malaprop, whence comes the word “malapropism” for her incessant use of just the wrong word. Since she prattles this deceptively sensible nonsense, she is a demanding character to portray and The Rep did well in casting Kate Anolak who carries off with glorious authority the woman’s torrents of pretentiously almost-eloquent banter.
There are many delicious performances in this production directed by Matthew Chapman. Standout is Guy Henderson as Acres, a well delivered and refreshingly comic portrayal. He’s a joy to watch. A dandy dandy! Patrick Clements, also, delivers some lovely reactive comic moments in the ambivalent romantic lead as Sir Anthony Absolute. Don O’Donnell as poor Faulkland, the other romantic protagonist, has an earnest studiousness about him and a good stage presence in his quest for the heart of the lovely Julie. As sweet Julie, Emily Currie provides a strong and agreeable characterisation and a good, well-modulated voice. Alison Sharber, complete with gorgeous tiny poodle, utterly smothers the stage in glamour as Lydia Languish while the inimitable Matt Houston makes the complete contrast as the oddball rustic, Sir Lucious O’Trigger. Lindsay Dunn gives Sir Anthony Absolute a sense of perplexed earnestness and, indeed, the play’s cast is generally a pretty well-honed machine against the odds of no budget and minimal preparation time. It is colourfully completed by Jess Wolfendale, Rebecca Kemp, Philip Lineton, and AJ Bartley.
Director Chapman might have a word with some of the cast members, the women particularly, to control a tendency to shrillness.
But, the overall spirit that this cast engenders is one of zeal and youth and it is good to see such a young audience at a Rep production. Truly, there seems to be a new broom and, out of the plague, a spirit of ebullient positivity - which augurs well for 2021.
Samela Harris
When: 3 to 6 Dec
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: Season Sold Out
State Theatre Company of SA. Dunstan Playhouse 28 Nov 2020
Ripcord director Mitchell Butel stated to the Saturday night “preview” audience that if the chequerboard seating at the first play in Her Majesty's was first class, tonight’s audience may consider itself “platinum”, so incredibly distanced was one audience member from another. The director’s words were under laid by theatrical anxiety that engendering laughter to far-distanced people was famously difficult. Laughter itself is infectious. To make things even more uphill, 99 per cent of audience members had the supplied surgical masks over their faces, this being a prerequisite of attending live performance in the time of covid.
Well, you may be able to muffle a laugh but you can’t suppress it. When the silly business of Ripcord gets up and running, the laughs and guffaws find their way forth.
Ripcord is a rather sweet play of redemption by David Lindsay-Abaire. It’s a well-worn classic theme of Grinch versus Pollyana, but depicted in the shared room of an American retirement home with two actresses of the calibre of Nancye Hayes and Carmel Johnson, it can’t really miss the mark.
Certainly not with Butel’s direction and Ailsa Paterson’s designs. This is a show with dazzling production values. The basic set is an expansive room for two, really airy and elegant with a picture window onto a verdant world at one end. This handsome set splits for scene changes and the revolve transforms the stage into the other-worlds which distinguish the life perspectives of the two old gals. There’s a wild and fanciful house of horrors and, hilariously, an aircraft and scene of plummeting sky divers, key to the play’s title, of course. Oh, my, funny is an understatement.
The scene changes are accompanied by Andrew Howard’s stupendous music and some snazzy lighting from Gavin Norris, expert embellishments which envelop the audience in a sense of spectacle.
Nancye Hayes is one of the great stars of the Australian stage and a mistress of song and dance. Here she plays an almost Dickensian sour-patch called Abby. She is as unpopular as she is antisocial. Hayes plays her with extreme restraint, using her dancer’s loose-armed posture to assert a faint hauteur. For the first half of the show, she’s just a pastel personality. Johnson, on the other hand, is larger than life, boisterous and utterly adorable. She eats the stage, balancing bursts of comic ham with the portrayal of a complex human being. She is complemented by Chris Asimos, athletic and compassionate in a laudable performance as Scotty the carer and aspiring actor. And, she has further over-the-top foils in her rather ga-ga, ever-loving daughter and son-in-law played by Jennifer Innes and Ezra Juanta. Completing the multi-tasking cast is the inimitable Nathan Page, at one minute manic and intimidating and, at the next, oh, so heart-rending.
Hayes comes into her own in Act II wherein the calculated conflicts of the two women reach crescendo, folly meets cruelty, and malice meets kindness. Here, one enjoys not only the play’s dramatic denouement but the phenomenon of two wonderful actresses in performances both giving to the audience and to each other.
Ripcord has not gone down in theatre history as one of the world’s greatest plays. However, it is a gift to older actresses and in this time of plague and concern for our oldies, it turns out to be an extremely timely choice by Butel as artistic director of State. It also showcases his directorial skills which are such that we can’t wait for whatever he does next.
Samela Harris
When: 28 Nov to 13 Dec
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability & Diverse Abilities Dance Collective, DADC (Singapore). Adelaide Festival Centre. 13 Nov 2020
There’s live performance and there’s live Zoom performance. No Strings and DADC have just pulled off both in an absolutely delightful international coup. Each company had a live performance group in situ, one in Singapore and one in Adelaide. But they merged as one interactive body via a Zoom collaboration.
Here in Adelaide, a live audience gathered covid-style in the Festival Centre’s Quartet Bar with the No Strings performers sitting beneath the giant screen whereupon they were joined by the Singapore performers. The theme of the event, apart from being a ground-breaking piece of new-tech international theatre, was an exploration of how performers with disability in two worlds have been coping with covid-19.
The show’s title is the answer. Same Same. Everyone, no matter where, has been going through the same weird and worrying experience of pandemic life.
The show’s creative director and host, Jeffrey Tan, interviewed the diversity of performers one by one, establishing their differences. They have different abilities, different interests, different family groupings, different cultures, even different colour preferences. But they all share new living conditions, particularly the hand-washing rituals. And there were 20 characters on the big Zoom grid, all miming hand-washing at once; quite an artwork if one looks at sheer aesthetics. But it was saying much more.
Tan and Adelaide’s Emma Beech liaise and direct from their venues, Beech guiding the likes of Zoe to perform a lithe, hair-flicking dance of liberation while Tan offers Jasprin in a bright red dress doing something of a lively Bollywood routine. At the end of the show, the Singapore crew is shown as a dance group while in Adelaide, performers swayed in harmony.
Tan has an exceptionally agreeable voice and demeanour. He is utterly inclusive and everyone shows loving patience with those who need a moment longer to get their words out. By the end of the Zoom hour, the strengths, skills, and characters of all the performers have been elicited and an extremely pleasing spirit of conviviality has presided.
And one feels one has come to know a bunch of interesting people from near and afar.
Tan said he devised this performance concept while brooding on the limitations that covid had inflicted on the theatre world. Partnering with No Strings’ Emma Beech brought forth the support of Arts South Australia and the Adelaide Festival Centre and, at his end, Maya Dance Theatre, the Singapore International Foundation, and Singapore Repertory Theatre. Also melded were the professional peers, Subastian Tan over there and Michaela Cantwell here. The whole endeavour grew in substance, strength, and authority; all of which showed when it came to the first of four public performances.
Sightlines in the Quartet Bar are nothing to write home about. Even in covid chequerboard configuration, sitting at the back of a large, flat room, one can’t see the protagonists at the front except via the Zoom screens. So there is a little bit of loss of involvement. Those at the front, however, joined in with the warm-up exercises and there was lots of arm waving. So, it speaks well of the spirit of the production and the hosting of Tan and Beech that such a warm sense of covid-era kinship is communicated.
This is a brave and beautiful use of the tools of the moment with a very positive and beautiful outcome.
Three cheers.
Samela Harris
When: 13 and 14 Nov
Where: Adelaide Festival Centre, Quarter Bar
Bookings: Closed