Adelaide Festival. Windmill Theatre Company and Imaginate Theatre. Old Queen’s Theatre. 2 Mar 2019
Once upon a time, Baba Yaga was a sinister and ugly old witch from a Slavic folktale who was prone to eating children and lived in the forest in a house which teetered about on chicken legs. She came from the era of Struwwelpeter and Hansel and Gretel when terrifying tales of cannibalism and child abuse were considered very nice for young minds.
We’re all a bit more sensitive and PC these days, and so is Baba Yaga, since the Windmill and Imaginate creatives have given the old witch a “reboot” into modern idiom.
Now, from deformed and smelly old hag, she is an exotically glamorous eccentric with special powers, an insatiable hunger, and a bent for jelly babies. Instead of living in the swampy forest, she dwells on Floor 101 of the Poultry Park Apartments tower block. It’s a pretty austere place with myriad repressive rules, most importantly about noise. Every sound the poor receptionist makes is amplified and she is harangued by angry tenants calling for silence. Of course, Baba Yaga is another contributor to the din and when the receptionist goes up to Baba's lofty world, she becomes embroiled and thrown into strange and dangerous predicaments.
The design team has come up with a very compact and simple set of deceptive sophistication. Windows pop up allowing for the videoed faces of assorted tenants and, beside the reception desk, is a simple elevator projection which enables Vaselina, the receptionist, to ride to the heights of 101 and, like Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, even beyond. Baba Yaga’s world with its sacred cactus flowers and amazing jungle is all vivid animation and video projection. It is clear and effective. While Vaselina is attired in a strange puffy hooded fashion confection, Baba Yaga is in strident yellow with a shopping basket hat and multi-coloured accessories. But it is her dramatic eye makeup and the madly expressive mouth with its savage gash of lipstick on which the focus falls.
Elizabeth Hay, a little shrill in her assumed child’s voice, is every inch the innocent abroad as she falls into Baba Yaga’s thrall, a nice performance. But Christine Johnston steals the show. She is the show. She creates a big, big character, untamed and dangerous, yet funny and creative. Hers is a powerhouse performance and her vocal range is truly astounding.
One is not sure the original Baba Yagas would recognise this 2019 embodiment as one of their own. She is the mischievous mystery hag de jour starring in a delectable concoction of theatre for the young.
Samela Harris
When: 2 to 6 Mar
Where: Old Queen’s Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Festival Theatre. 2 Mar 2019
Adelaide Festival directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy knew that the festival is bereft without a headliner opera, and they have given us some doozers: Barrie Kosky’s Saul in 2017, Armfield’s own Hamlet last year, and presently Mozart’s The Magic Flute directed by Suzanne Andrade and Barrie Kosky.
Barrie Kosky, currently artistic director at Komische Oper Berlin, is regarded by many as the most creative and inventive opera director today. But for those old enough to party in 1996, he is fondly remembered for his Red Square after-hours entertainment venue in the festival of that year. Who in attendance will ever forget the dueling Caterpillar excavators, or the dancing Mini Morrises - choreographed to classical music and lit like a disco? The wunderkind from Melbourne was only 29 years old at the time and the youngest-ever Adelaide Festival director.
Except for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the entire Magic Flute production - including soloists, chorus and conductor, Jordan de Souza - is imported from the Komische Oper and has already played in 22 countries and wowed half a million people.
Komische is German for comic and The Magic Flute is exemplary of Kosky’s flamboyant and colourful style. New to Adelaide audiences will be his collaboration with Suzanne Andrade. Andrade and Paul Barritt co-founded 1927, a British theatre company leading the world in integrating theatre, music and animation. Whereas opera was brought to animation in Looney Tunes’s What’s Opera, Doc? in 1957, the cartoons are bought to the opera in The Magic Flute. The fairy tale concerns young lovers who must pass tests in order to live happily ever after. Just like today, they must attain wisdom and beauty, or they die.
The entire set is only a couple of metres deep. It is basically a screen for projected animation with a few revolving platforms at various levels resembling statue plinths for the singers. The whole effect is mind blowing. Anything is possible – pink elephants lounging in giant martini glasses, forests of flowers, mechanicals and clocks, anything of whimsy and fantasy can be conjured and disappeared in a blink. It makes one giddy; someone described it like drinking ten cups of coffee. Queen of the Night, Christina Poulitsi, delivers her crystal-clear soprano in the guise of a giant leggy spider. The animation is perfectly timed with arias, singer interaction, the lighting and orchestra. Cute things, like petting a cartoon cat, or threatening things, like thrown knives are conjured. Just when the wow factor is about to wear off, the narrative commands a whole new ravishing scenario.
The animation is charming in that it’s obviously all hand-made and is influenced by silent film. Metropolis machinery, clocks and a Buster Keatonesque Papageno lovingly played by Joan Martin-Royo. Villain Monostatos becomes Nosferatu. All dialogue is transcribed to printed words that sail from the speaker. Notes fly out of instruments.
Mozart and librettist Emanuel Schikaneder would be very happy with this vaudeville romp so well mortised with animation. Double bravo!
David Grybowski
5 stars
When: 1 to 3 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Music and Fun. Burnside Community Centre. 23 Feb 2019
This wonderful little show takes the audience on a lively musical adventure where we pack our bag, travel to the Zoo, and meet all the different animals that call it home. There is
lots of singing and dancing along the way, and the audience helps to save the day when a troublesome little monkey causes mayhem!
Presented by Libby and Carla Philips, this show is a great example of how you can engage and entertain children with little more than song and an interactive story. The minimalist set and cast are all that is required to keep their young audience on their feet, smiling, and participating throughout.
In a stroke of genius, this show is on at the Burnside Community Centre, which lets one bypass the hassle of getting small children to a city venue on time, and minus the heat stroke.
Best appreciated by the under-fives, A Day at the Zoo is a fun and stress-free opportunity to experience the joy of the Fringe with your pre-schoolers.
Nicole Russo
When: 16 Feb to 9 Mar
Where: Burnside Community Centre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Star Theatres – The Chapel. 1 Mar 2019
The Kokoda Trail is a defining gene in Australia’s wartime DNA, and Kokoda, written by Peter Maddern and performed by Jayden Marshall, is a recent contribution to the catalogue of dramatic works that ensure this moment in history is vividly remembered for what it was: selfless sacrifice by ordinary men in regrettably extraordinary situations.
The history the play depicts is well known and documented. Suffice to say, the narrative explores the concept of the ‘chocolate soldier’, military leaders deflecting blame when campaigns don’t turn out the way they wanted, privation, mateship, instinct to stay alive, and the general horror of war.
The play comes in at around seventy minutes and is written for a solo actor, so it’s already a tall order for the production to be fully successful: the script needs to be engaging, the direction tight, the acting accomplished, and the production elements honed and empathetic. This production is often successful in these individual aspects, but not fully convincing in marrying them together.
Writer and Director Peter Maddern’s program notes state the script has been shortened since it was first produced, but it merits further cuts. Some of the underlying themes, such as military decision making, are re-explored but without adding substantial dramatic value. Some of the descriptive and scene-setting sections of text are evocative but are not always supported by sufficiently engaging stagecraft, which at times becomes repetitive. A one-hander places additional demands on all production components: they need to fit together like a jigsaw, and the realisation of the whole depends on the potency of every piece.
Zac Eichner’s lighting design works well in the intimate space of the Chapel Theatre and evokes the near-helplessness and isolation that the Kokoda diggers must have experienced.
Jayden Marshall captures the initial wide-eyed adventure-seeking youthful brashness of Private Morris Powell and confidently transitions into a terrorised man who is desperate to stay alive against seemingly impossible odds.
A highlight of the production is the soundscape by Andrés Diez Blanco and Josh Williams. It greatly adds to the tension and atmosphere of the production.
The ending of the play is unexpected and dramatically shocking, and leaves the audience in no doubt about the futility and sadness of war. Jayden Marshall’s curtain call is all the more poignant.
Kym Clayton
When: 1 to 11 Mar. Continuing in Stirling until 16 Mar
Where: The Chapel, Star Theatres.
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival and Gravity & Other Myths. Scott Theatre. 1 Mar 2019
The physical theatre company, Gravity & Other Myths, is a big South Australian success story. Their show in the 2016 Adelaide Fringe, A Simple Space, so impressed the Adelaide Festival’s artistic directors, Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, that they offered them a gig in the big tent of the Festival the following year. And that show, Backbone, was so well received that they return to the Festival presently with the world premiere production of Out Of Chaos….
This is amazing and refreshingly different physical theatre performance. Director Darcy Grant aims to break down the barrier between the eight acrobats (that’s what they call themselves) and the audience, and this is accomplished admirably with insights into the performers’ thoughts through spontaneous interviewing by Grant himself. Local lighting designer Geoff Cobham dims a variety of illumination in creative ways rendering a pleasingly engaging and mysterious atmosphere. With the loose street clothing and free commentary, an illusion of attending an informal rehearsal and chatting with the performers is palpable. Yet, make no mistake; injury-defying tumbling is taking place with choreographed precision. Dance mutates into dangerous physicality and contests of wills. Who will last longer, the ladies in one-handed stands or a lingering uttered note. You will gasp and applaud with admiration.
Part of the simple approach of the troupe is that very few props are employed – a hoop number, and occasionally a lot of round tables. Quick jumps into shoulder stands are remarkable, but exchanging bodies between trees in a forest of triple shoulder stands is pretty outstanding. You share the trepidation of free-standing precariously three people high and the relief of having feet on the floor as the strong bottom rung. People are propelled and flying in theme with the company name – gravity and other myths – but must also be caught with only a net of absolute trust.
An outstanding ticket for the whole family. Bravo!
David Grybowski
5 Stars
When: 27 Feb to 6 Mar
Where: Scott Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au