The Circus Firemen

★★★1/2

Adelaide Fringe. Ukiyo, Gluttony. 1 Mar 2020

Two guys, the brothers Angus and Matilda, comprise the Circus Firemen, whose show is aimed squarely at the children and family market… this Sunday morning session was a willingly raucous full house. We’d been promising the kids we’d see this show for a couple of Fringes now, and they didn’t disappoint.

Four and six year olds hoot with laughter at some of the more obvious slapstick (‘my ladder is the wrong way around’) but there were long spaces which cried out for more. Even in a short one hour show, young kids in particular quickly lose interest, and the longwinded recruitment of audience member Reuben was merely filler, I’m afraid. Too much talk, too many thoughts iterated then reiterated, then restated: “I hope you survive the trick, Reuben.” One would have expected these guys to be able to read an audience better by now.

But the firemen turn in some great tricks, the ubiquitous juggling – up to seven clubs (skittles) in the air at one time, some exceptional balance and ladder tricks, and some tricks aimed directly at the adults in the venue. The kids who helped in the reviewing process agreed (unsurprisingly!) that the juggling with chainsaw and two sharp knives was the highlight of the show.

And it was. My only real complaint – as expressed above – was that there were too many slow spots in such a short performance.

Alex Wheaton

When: 1 to 15 March

Where: Ukiyo, Gluttony, Rymill Park

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au

The Will To Be

★★★★1/2

Mark Salvestro & BCauseARTS. Bakehouse Theatre. 29 Feb 2020.

Written and performed by Mark Salvestro, The Will To Be is a touching story of self-discovery. It is about a university English literature lecturer named William O’Halloran who has lost his job because he is having an affair with a student whom he is assisting to prepare for a role in a student production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In 1962 – as now – an affair between a teacher and a student is a ‘no-no’. But it’s worse than that. The student is male, and in the 1960s homosexual activity is a criminal office punishable by imprisonment. William is spared that. He is simply ‘let go’ from his university post, which, according to his termination letter, is “an act of mercy” in deference to the esteem in which he is otherwise held.

Roll the clock forward to right now and Sydney’s Mardi Gras is celebrating gay pride for the whole world to see. Despite such public celebrations, members of the LGBTIQ community still confront prejudice and difficulties sometimes unwittingly aided and abetted by government actions. Pride is about knowing one’s self worth. It’s about confronting one’s vulnerabilities and having the courage to be one’s true self despite the obstacles.

This is exactly what William O’Halloran ultimately does, but even now, as then, it takes enormous courage.

In a fifty minute long spell-binding solo performance, Mark Salvestro is William O’Halloran.

The story telling and acting is exquisite. We feel his nervousness, his pain, and his excitement. Having just been dismissed, William is packing up his office and he speaks directly to the audience and invites us ‘in’ to his world. He explains how the affair started, his initial resistance, and the subsequent moments of self-discovery. There are flashbacks to his own student days and to when he first met his wife, to him ‘coming out’ to his wife, and to him making love with Henry, the student he is coaching. We are never in doubt as to what time period we are in – the text does that beautifully – and there are attempts to make it clearer through lighting changes, but they are unnecessary. Salvestro makes it crystal clear where we are: a slight shift of his body, the set of his head, a perfectly-timed and executed change of gesture.

William is a repressed man, and he is anxious. He doesn’t really know himself and Salvestro exquisitely portrays William’s hesitancy and nervousness. Words cannot really do justice to his stagecraft. One almost aches – sharing William’s pain – while watching Salvestro’s performance

Highly recommended.

Kym Clayton

When: 24 Feb to 7 Mar

Where: Bakehouse Theatre

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au

The Doctor

Adelaide Festival. Almeida Theatre. Dunstan Playhouse. 29 Feb 2020

Applause does not come instantly as The Doctor’s cast line up for the curtain. The audience is suspended, still in the grip of the play. And then it leaps to ovation. What a tour de force by an actress! What a mighty beast of an unsettling play. 

The Doctor is an English work that has been “very freely adapted” by its director Robert Icke from  Professor Bernhardi,  a 1912 play by Viennese doctor/writer Arthur Schnitzler. Then and now, it is a play about medical and religious ethics. And, in its modern incarnation, it is a searing indictment of a society overrun with political and moral agendas, a world of endless self-righteousness and inflexible beliefs. At the end of the day, the play’s primary message boils down to a single word: “compromise”.

It is staged with eloquent austerity, with a vast curved wall and, centre stage, a lone trestle table and benches which rotate ever so slowly to the accompaniment from aloft of subtle but highly articulate percussion from drummer, Hannah Ledwidge. Centre rear sliding doors open onto the corridor world of a busy hospital, doctors in white coats hurry to and fro and converge around the table in meetings with Professor Ruth Wolff, The Doctor. The issue is the impending death a teenage girl with sepsis brought on by an incomplete home abortion. Wolff obstructs the entry of a Catholic priest summoned by the girl’s parents to give last rites. Wolff is in authority and believes that the priest’s appearance would shatter the girl’s sense of hope and panic her into a fearful death. Wolff is a secular Jew adamantly dedicated to science and her role as a doctor and she has no time for any form of religious claptrap. And so the issue of rights erupts. The medical staff divide on religious grounds and thence on racial grounds. Wolff sticks to her guns. The girl’s grieving father, utterly agonised in the genuine belief that his daughter has ended up in purgatory, swears revenge. A hospital corridor confrontation becomes a media focus. Suddenly, identities slide sideways and characters who were white are now identified as black and male becomes female. And the audience must juggle these unlikely switches along with bioethics and conflicting moral certitudes. A disgraced Wolff must defend herself to a smug panel of self-righteous minority groups: right-to-lifers and religious scholars. There’s quite an enlightening lecture on the “woke” movement from one of them. They want her to compromise her beliefs and her identify while they, of course, will never give sway. Audience members writhe in their seats, containing the urge to speak out as they witness the slaughter of sacred cows.  

It is riveting theatre, both in its cerebral content and in its sublime production. It is what festivals are for. Not that we don’t have wonderful theatre here, but this is a major work with a massive cast. It is creme de la creme. As for Juliet Stevenson in the principal role, hers is a performance of the most profound power and commitment. She commands the stage even through the interval, and for two and three quarter hours leaves it only momentarily. There are times when she makes the boundaries of life and theatre blur and one almost believes she is, indeed, Professor Wolff.   

And thus does Stevenson and her moveable feast of fellow cast members deliver a breathtaking gift of theatre and a wealth of grist for the wheels of thought.

Samela Harris

When: 29 Feb to 8 Mar

Where: Space Theatre

Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au

Requiem

Adelaide Festival. Festival Aix-en-Provence & Adelaide Festival. Festival Theatre. 28 Feb 2020.

Requiem is not only a performance of Mozart’s famous mass for the dead. Director Romeo Castellucci has augmented it with other lesser known compositions by Mozart and bookended it with two anonymously composed plainchants. For those who know and love Mozart’s Requiem, the interpolators are immediately obvious as soon as they heard. But, there is a coherence to the augmented work and it becomes more than just a tribute to the dead: it becomes an homage to the ever changing cycle of life: birth to death, creation to destruction, evolution to regression, order to chaos.

Castellucci’s Requiem is audacious and has to be seen to be believed. It is ingenious in its conception, and astounding in its performance. The core to its success is the use of striking visual imagery, a lot of which is created in front of our eyes, literally: the large white light boxed stage is abstractly painted by members of the cast; the stage is scattered with soil out of which emerges early man; a forest setting grows; distinctive costuming poses questions but with no obvious answers; an abstract crucifixion; a car wreck and crash victims. Over this graphic celebration, Mozart’s music plays and the Requiem is sung in Latin and German. When one bothers to read the surtitles, one’s mind inexorably tries to draw connections between the images on stage and the sung text. One’s conclusions do not matter. It is ultimately a very personal experience and is driven by the human mind striving to make meaning, as it is wired to do.

One meaning is however patently clear. The span of human existence – right from its evolutionary precursors – is associated with creation, technical accomplishment, and eventual destruction. From the start of the performance to its conclusion, a sequence of words are projected across the rear wall of the stage box that name things that are now extinct – things from the natural world, things from the man-built world and, philosophically (and troublingly) things that might become extinct (such as “me”, “the word me”). It’s a disturbing list, with some things very close to home. The final projection was ‘28 February 2020’ — the date of today’s performance.

The production ends with the destruction of the entire set: a metaphorical end to the world. It is an awe-inspiring and breath-taking sight to behold. It simply must be seen. And out of death and destruction emerges new life, and the conclusion is a touching beautiful moment.

The programme notes suggest that Castellucci has a lead hand in nearly every aspect of the production: direction, set design, costume and lighting design. His hyper creative mind has enacted a unity and lucidity on the entire production.

Choreographed movement by Evelin Facchini is a key production element, with everything carefully staged. The ‘dance’ is not precision balletic movement – it is not meant to be. It is suggestive of changing mood, intention, and sophistication. It is highly effective and communicative – it adds to the whole, it does not try to become a focus in itself.

There are numerous ancillary non-singing cast members taken from local ranks who contribute to crowd scenes that make provocative and powerful images. They are sometimes naked but their (and the audience’s) modesty is protected by the strikingly executed chiaroscuro lighting.

The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra plays at its customary high standard (with the minor exception of some modulating horns in the opening bars). Conductor Rory Macdonald sets a comfortable pace that allows the very fine chorus to create and maintain the most beautiful of tones. Nothing is rushed, and everything is exquisitely articulated.

The four international principal soloists – Siobhan Stagg (hailing from Australia), Sara Mingardo, Martin Mitterrutzner, and David Greco – sing with great control and no affectation or unnecessary embellishment. Like hand in glove, their individual voices perfectly suit the music. Boy treble Luca Shin is angelic, and sustains musicality and clarity even in the softest moments.

The costuming is highly effective, and ranges from unisex monochromatic outfits to colourful folk-styled costumes, and abstract forms that, on occasions, suggest alterative interpretations for the sung text. Again, this production is very much about individuals grappling to create their own meaning and not being confined to the traditional interpretation of the text.

The genesis of Mozart’s Requiem is surrounded in controversy: how much of the music is actually Mozart's? Mozart was commissioned to write a Requiem mass, but died before he could finish it. It was then worked on by Joseph von Eybler and subsequently completed by Mozart’s student and assistant Franz Süssmayer. Mozart’s wife then passed it off to Count von Walsegg, who commissioned the work, as Mozart’s own work. Ironically, Walsegg was most likely intending to pass off the piece as his own composition to commemorate the death of his wife!

When Mozart died he had completed only the first six movements of the work, the eighth and ninth, and a fragment of the seventh out of a total of thirteen sections. The extent to which Süssmayer relied upon Mozart’s instructions is not precisely known, and a number of alternative versions of the Requiem have been subsequently developed by musicologists (e.g. Prof Michael Finnissy in 2011), but the Süssmayer version is the one most often performed, as it was tonight.

Regardless of who wrote what, Beethoven is reputed to have said that ‘If Mozart did not write the music, then the man who wrote it was a Mozart.’ High praise indeed. It is a fascinating story, about which much gloss was added in the acclaimed 1984 film Amadeus.

It has been suggested that even though Mozart’s Requiem was commissioned, he wrote it as if it were his own requiem, for he knew his health was failing, his death was imminent and this would be his last composition. This perhaps explains why it is thought the dying Mozart gave Süssmayer detailed (verbal) instruction– one final struggle to finish it and ‘get it right’. Perhaps Castellucci had this in mind as he conceived the staging of his version of the Requiem: that we as a species write our own Requiem (and that of other species and things), wittingly or unwittingly, but in the end it is really beyond our absolute control.

This production is pure theatre, and it is magnificent.

Kym Clayton

When: 28 Feb to 4 Mar

Where: Festival Theatre

Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au