Return Fire Productions. Dunstan Playhouse. 5 Feb 2019
Seniors were so keen not to miss a moment of Senior Moments that three quarters of an hour before curtain, the Playhouse foyer was utterly jammed with balding old gents in check shirts and groomed grey grannies in floaty tops. It was like swimming through geriatric jam to get to the box office. But, there is one big plus about a full house of early birds. As front of house staff avowed, late comers were not interrupting this show.
Senior Moments is a nice, meaty piece of old-fashioned revue theatre. It is 90 minutes of skits about old people and getting old. That cast members are reading their lines from scripts seems perfectly normal. Much of the show is about forgetfulness. It is also about changing values and political correctness. Making the point about political correctness turns out to be politically incorrect. But old people remember old fashioned bigotry which seemed devoid of rancour. They are puzzled by today’s extreme sensitivities. One of the best skits of the show is focused on this theme. It is called No Need and it consists of those two beloved Australian stars, Max Gilles and John Wood, sitting at a bar table pondering the way in which people simply did not talk about sexual mores and gender issues back in the 1950s. There was “no need”. It is a profound piece of observation and, of course, it comes with a punch line. There are plenty of those, not all equally terrific, for that is the luck of the draw in revues.
But what a fabulous cast. There’s the eternally vivacious Benita Collings, the living legend of Play School. In this show, they parody Play School as Old School, of course. Everyone has grown up. Benita conducts proceedings from a lectern. A scatter of skits ensues.
Distinguished stage and TV actor Russell Newman is there with, oh, what a lovely voice. Kim Lewis is the sparkling, leaping youngie among the oldies. But there also are two actual juveniles, Christian Barratt-Hill and Emily Taylor, playing everyone’s offspring. They support nicely and also stay discreetly in the background.
Onstage more than anyone else is musical director, Geoff Harvey. He’s an octogenarian these days and looks so very frail that one thinks he is just going to drop onto the keyboard, until he tinkles those ivories. Whacko. He keeps up a demanding musical accompaniment throughout the show and also, just for a bit of flair and virtuosity, he plays two substantial medleys.
Of course, it is John Wood and Max Gilles who steal the show. Both have magnificent voices. Max may have aged but his comic timing hasn’t. And, oh, it is so long since the State Theatre days when the magnificent Wood regularly graced our stage. He plays the naughty septuagenarian and he gets to tell some dire groan jokes. He’s on the ball and a generous performer and he does not refer to notes. The production, directed by Angus FitzSimons in a dignified, conservative style befitting the seniority of its stars, has been written by FitzSimons and his old radio/tv scriptwriting partner, Kevin Brumpton. One imagines they also wrote the program. It is a hoot and a very worthy free souvenir of a night of giggles and guffaws for all those early bird audience seniors who have probably forgotten all about it by now.
Samela Harris
When: 5 to 7 Feb
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
STARC Productions. Bakehouse Theatre. 24 Jan 2019
50 years ago, man landed on the moon and the musical Hair was encouraging people to drop out and get high and the philosophy of free love inspired open relationships.
Neil Simon’s 1969 three act take on this cultural moment, Last of The Red Hot Lovers, holds up extremely well today and not just because couples have been having affairs since forever. Simon’s writing seeks to understand how social forces shape this dynamic, bending and twisting primal humanity against social constructions of ‘faithful’ relationships.
What’s driving 23 years happily married Barney (Marc Clement), and the three women he initiates first meetings with in hope of starting an affair, to make such a move? Needing something new? Fear of missing out? Illicit thrills and spills?
Director Tony Knight deftly manages Simon’s magnificent three acts, each a rich, power packed playlet in its own right, while successfully developing the grand challenge of the piece - Barney’s slow, almost indistinguishable growing awareness of why he’s always seeking ‘something’ in another.
That imperceptible growth gradient comes into play thanks not just to three brilliantly written female characters on the page Barney encounters, but their fully realised social, emotional and sexual humanity in performance by Stefanie Rossi.
Elaine, Bobbi and Jeanette span the social spectrum of Barney’s lived world and desire/fantasy. They challenge it too. Because by meeting with Barney, they’re admitting to a need they feel compelled to action by. For different reasons. Reasons Barney has serious difficulties consciously acknowledging. None of these women have a problem with their choice to meet a married man in his Mothers’ apartment. Issues, yes. Honestly expressed. For Barney. In the too hard basket.
This conundrum is expressed in dialogue and performance with great gusto, humour and deep compassion.
Simon’s goal of uncovering and exploring the truly human, pained, impassioned and newly aware scope of relationship possibility/impossibility is profoundly rigorous, yet emotionally open. Marc Clement and Stefanie Rossi’s richly honest performance ensures this gets through to an audience.
Electric night at the theatre, almost three plays for one ticket experience.
David O’Brien
When: 23 Jan to 2 Feb
Where: The Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com
Pelican Productions. Murray Performing Arts Centre. 19 Jan 2019
How do they do it?
Pelican Productions with their annual Theatre Camp manages to groom up hundreds of stage-struck Adelaide children and turn them into creditable, and often top-notch, performers.
Jen Frith and Kylie Green’s Pelican and Spotlight enterprise has been going for fifteen years and each year, ta-da, there’s a sensational professional concert turned out with not one but a series of casts ranging over two weekends of performances.
Lighting, costumes, sound, music, props, cues: it’s not exactly MGM's budget but it is pretty darned slick with masses of children of all ages finely honed into choral and choreographed routines. And, oh, the high energy.
The Greatest Show is a huge operation, a very long concert featuring scenes from Pippin, The Greatest Showman, Gypsy, Catch Me If You Can, Fame, Madagascar, Mean Girls, Cats, and Mama Mia!
Each show is expertly frocked up to suit and given the right backdrop and lighting. So it really is a cavalcade of best-ofs which gives myriad young hopefuls the training and a chance to shine in front of large audiences.
Behind the scenes is a massive team of tutors in voice and movement; some of the city’s best choreographers and costumiers.
On stage are the names of tomorrow.
On Saturday’s matinee, shimmering stars were Finn Green, Zoe Foskett, Emily Downing, Angelique Diko, Jasmine Huynh, Eve Green, Hayley Thomas, Maddie McNichol, Ella Spiniello, Lluka Wadey, Cooper Jones, Mitchell Zilm, and Katerina Angione. They are going places. They showed musical and stage maturity beyond their years. And they were not alone. There are so many vivid young singers and dancers in the mix that only the program could contain their names.
Three of them actually brought the house down - Lluka Wadey, Zoe Foskett, and Finn Green.
But, just looking at the dance ensembles and their precision and timing, their beautiful spirit and diversity, and just listening to some of the grand choral harmonies, one has to acknowledge Pelican as a really important foundation and forward-moving force for the arts in South Australia.
We must only hope our Festival State sustains an arts department, an arts budget, and an arts industry to nurture and employ them.
Please, Mr Marshall.
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: Murray Performing Arts Centre, Westminster School, Marion
Bookings: Closed
Neil Croker and The Prestige. On national tour. Entertainment Centre. 17 Jan 2019
A bio-musical based on the life of the beloved South African anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela would seem to be a tremendous idea, but musicals are a tough genre. Despite all the good energy in the world from a vigorous song and dance cast, this touring production struggles to find its mark in a sea of earnest good intention.
The great man’s life is sketched out in episodic scenes and expressed through torrents of terrible rhyming couplets. Good voices sing out the night, sight, right, fight lyrics blighted by a very average score valiantly well played by Michael Tyack’s fine band. The talent is all there on stage, working so hard. But the result reminds one of school musicals. It’s all so ingenuously derivative; Jesus Christ Superstar meets Stomp, minus memorable tunes.
Fortunately, as the second act evolves, there is an emerging gestalt and a sense of the triumph of the people and the calm endurance of Mandela, aka Madiba, is communicated.
Through much of the action, he is depicted while enduring his incarceration, elevated behind a screen and illuminated like an icon. This is quite effective and Mandela’s impersonation by Perci Mooketsi rises above much of the bad script to give him the presence and sense of human grandeur that Mandela deserves. Mooketsi’s delivery of the song, Invictus, is a moving high spot of the show.
Mandela’s life story and the fight for freedom in South Africa are threaded together in rap by the very lithe and sinewy David Denis as Narrator. He adds a Michael Jackson physicality to the show, along with some tumbling and likeable good spirit. Choral harmonies are strong also, and some marvellous voices emerge particularly from Ruva Ngwenya, Blake Erickson, Tarisai Vushe, Barry Conrad, Madeline Perrone and Tim Omaji.
There’s a lot of fierce or triumphant fist-waving amid the foot-stamping choreography which, despite the African leggings and caps, has something of an Irish feel to it. There are ambitious anthems and lots of action but Madiba the Musical can’t shake the amateurish formulaic structure and clichéd script. It is the loving zeal and sheer vitality of the hard-working and talented cast which bring Madiba to life, and the benign presence of Mooketsi symbolising one of the great men of our time.
Samela Harris
When: 17 to 20 Jan
Where: Entertainment Centre
Bookings: madibamusical.com.au
Butterfly Theatre. Wheatsheaf Hotel. 16 February
There’s savagery and there’s savage reality in the business of art and money making in London, circa 1980s; Thatcher’s bloody Britain and all that. Novelist/spy Graham Greene (Brant Eustice) is grappling with debt, a baby, avoiding spy life and too much booze all in a desperate attempt to survive. So deep in he goes, he conjures the likes of Christopher Marlow and William Shakespeare (both by Leah Lowe) for help.
Greene’s profoundly difficult, ugly conundrum of a spy/artist life is at the very heart of Allen’s script. How does surviving a dangerous past and future pan out with the devil, in so many forms, after your neck?
Director Brant Eustice’s production is savagery dressed in rich, deprecating humour and engaging liveliness which never lets up. The balance of literary in-jokes for the Shakespeare scholar and the mix of danger in the 1980s and 1600s worlds is simply but effectively executed. The cast is totally in command of their roles and has an absolute ball on stage playing with the material. Leah Lowe’s dark and deadly Marlow is as tantalising as is her delightfully wimpy Shakespeare stuck on his Italian play in service to Greene. Jay Somers’ Cutting Ball is a stand out performance in the style of a mischievous Shakespearean Puck-like character in which all the deadliness of Allen’s script is tautly contained and released ever so carefully.
In a trio of roles, Cheryl Douglas offers wonderful supporting balance to the production, and an especially wicked, knife ready companion to Marlow as Mary Firth.
Here’s first class pub theatre you can depend on for the good stuff.
David O’Brien
When: 15 to 24 January
Where: Wheatsheaf Hotel
Bookings: trybooking.com