Michael Coppel, Louise Withers & Linda Bewick. Adelaide Festival Centre. Festival Theatre. 11 Oct 2018
The Plaza renovations may be creating ugliness and stress on the outside but inside the Festival Centre there is nothing but unadulterated joy and good spirit. Mamma Mia! is in the house and the house is bursting with happiness. This show does not get a standing ovation. It gets a dancing, bopping sing-along ovation as it thrills with a stream of high-energy encore numbers. And the cast seems to be as happy as the audience it has just enchanted. It’s an audience-cast love affair devolving from a show which is all about love affairs.
Of course it’s all pure corn, a well-worn story woven around a songbook of dear old Abba hits.
Sophie invites to her wedding three men who had affairs with her mother in the hope of identifying her father. The mother is aghast and the men perplexed as they work it all out amid a bevy of colourful wedding guests and island locals. There’s a torrent of favourite Abba songs and, in the case of this production, some absolutely gorgeous spirited choreography.
Few people have not seen the film and its sequel and millions more have seen the musical. The program stats rate it at 60 million so far and its popularity is not waning. It was the feminine spirit of Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus’s songs that inspired Judy Cramer to create the show and after its opening in London in 1999, it has just gone on and on sweeping around the world. Now a new generation is lapping it up.
The Australian principals are very well cast. They are maybe not familiar to Adelaide theatre goers, most of them having achieved their career profiles in the television world. It does not take long for them to establish their characters and bring together the comic and emotional core of the show. There are lots of laughs and a little bit of misty-eye as well as an old fashioned moral to the story.
Sarah Morrison plays Sophie, the young bride-to-be. She has all the goods, voice, high energy and a pleasant persona which comes across. But, of course, her character and her song list is outweighed by her mother, Donna, who is performed by Natalie O’Donnell. It is a huge role with big numbers, quite exhausting, but talented O’Donnell powers through tirelessly. Donna’s two Mamma Mia Super Trouper girlfriends are a particular key to the show. The old friends, Tanya and Rosie, are the comic magic of the plot and Alicia Gardiner and Jayde Westaby flesh them out with vivacity, musical richness and utter hilarity. If anyone steals the show, it is Westaby, long, lean and lithe and blessed with exquisite comic nous. She is one of those rare performers who effortlessly connects with the audience. Gardiner, however, has the to-die-for voice. She’s Australia’s latest Big Mamma.
Ian Stenlake makes a hero’s meal of the handsome ex-lover Sam. His performance breathes romantic tension onto the stage and he can certainly belt out an Abba song. As the other potential fathers, Josef Ber and Philip Lowe, balance out the fun and games with their humorous old-lover-boy characters while Stephen Mahy is all muscles and good looks as the modern-day fiancé. Sam Hooper is the acrobatic fool of the show, the tumbling funny Pepper and everyone loves him. His island mates are well-wrought and their dance in flippers is one of the highlights of the night.
The ensemble work is suitably fabulous, whether it’s the huge cast popping out of the doors and windows of the taverna or out there en masse doing a big number. There is lots of complex choreography and planning in those numbers and wherever one looks, there’s some comic business going on. Behind the Greek taverna scene, Michael Azzopardi has a fine band pounding out the good tunes. And it’s all simply jolly good fun. It’s a ticket to downright feel-good, and as the world is turning right now, it comes as a precious tonic.
Samela Harris
When: 11 Oct to 18 Nov
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Matt Grey. Holden Street Theatres. 2 Oct 2018
Here is a man who wanted to make a career out of his love for computer games by putting them on stage with jokes.
He did it once and it was a hit.
Now, after a five year break and the birth of a son, he’s done it again. And it’s definitely another hit.
Game On 2 is just loads and loads of gorgeous geeky fun.
Several computer games with brilliant high-tech graphics are on today’s zeitgeist with the young, Fortnite at the peak of things right now. Of course, it’s a high-tech online game with sophisticated graphics.
Matt Grey’s show is absolutely the antithesis; it's utterly low tech. It’s nothing more than a Power Point presentation, the slides being images of computer games with commentary from Matt.
It’s no ordinary commentary. Matt has the loudest of loud voices. He said his mother complained about it. But now it’s his tool. There is no ignoring him. Not that you’d want to. He’s rambunctiously amusing and downright fun. He knows his games and he knows the players and the culture.
He tests the audience on games, setting up a Boogie bomb which means the kids have to jump up and do specific Fortnite jiggling dance routines. The kids know them and are thrilled to do them. He engages with them and summons kids and parents onto the stage to participate. Sometimes it’s a bit rough-house.
His Pokemon routine is rough and it is possibly the best time a kid could ever have in a theatre. Truly. With his wife dressed up in an inflatable Minion costume, he equips three boys from the audience with a seemingly endless supply of blow-up balls which they hit out into the audience whence they are to be thrown at the hapless costume creature. Balls fly in all directions. Everyone is leaping and throwing and bumping the balls around, the kids on stage ensuring that they all fly back into the audience. It goes on, riotously loud and exuberant until, eventually, the poor yellow giant Pokemon subsides onto the floor soundly vanquished.
There’s another rowdy audience game which is performed with peculiar toy guns and foam bullets. Everyone is supplied with this weaponry. The audience has to emulate the Battle Royale game and save the world by shooting the big baddie who is Matt behind a Donald Trump mask.
Then there’s Granny Theft Auto with optional story endings and Medicare Operation wherein kids with tongs take turns in removing organs velcroed to Matt’s overcoat.
Kids and dads get to star in the hour-long show. Matt doesn’t let them get away with anarchy, though. He keeps everyone in good check, strict as well as fun. He has found the balance.
He peppers the show with anecdotes and gamer chat but, while it is a real buzz for the young gamers, it is also engaging for the rest of the audience. This geek is inclusive.
It’s a feel-good show for young and old, and while the older of Barefoot’s two kid critics described it as really interesting, exciting and entertaining, the younger one, who had had her moment in the spotlight on stage in Matt’s dice story game, simply said:
“Can we go again tomorrow?”
Samela Harris
When: 2 to 5 Oct
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: trybooking.com
Gilbert and Sullivant Society of SA. Arts Theatre. 28 Sep 2018
Wow.
One is tempted to leave it at that, one giant, breathless exclamation as a response to this show.
G&S, under the direction of David Sinclair, has turned on a mega musical production of extraordinary excellence. The Phantom of the Opera is simply sensational.
The Arts Theatre is almost bursting at the seams with the scale of the thing. It is big. The sets are huge and tucked in behind them on the stage is nothing less than an excellent 22-piece orchestra. The resulting sound is mighty. Then there is the ensemble cast of thousands with endless costume changes, big numbers, dance routines and crowd scenes. And they’re all good.
As for the principals and support performers, they’re downright classy; good voices and good characterisations.
Adam Goodburn's Phantom is up there with the big names. He is simply magnetic. It’s a tour-de-force performance with the range of that rich tenor voice complemented by Goodburn’s accomplished acting skills. He’s everything the Phantom is meant to be and then some. And he’s working with Serena Martino-Williams who is pitch-perfect as Christine, a divine soprano who also brings the deeper expressions of acting ability to a performance. Everyone falls in love with her. Jared Frost as Raoul is perfectly cast also, and seems born for the role. He has a lovely stage presence.
Then there are the character players bringing the strange old love story to life. David Visentin is an entertaining delight as Monsieur Gilles Andre, with Rod Schultz strong as Monsieur Firmin. Jessica Muenchow is a heavenly Meg with Kaylene Graham an impressive Madam Giry and Jamie Jewell, also the show’s choreographer, delightful as Don Atillo. Monique Hapgood, James Nicholson, Nicholas Munday, Lance Jones, Brad Martin - applause, applause.
Then there’s the speed and discipline of the production crew which clearly goes like the hammers behind the scenes to make all the scene and costume changes, the smoke and spectacular special effects in this renowned old Lloyd Webber musical.
G&S has a long record of fine productions, always gleaning impressive musical talent, but here it has outdone itself and the resulting thunderous standing ovation from the packed house is absolutely its due.
Samela Harris
When: 27 Sep to 6 Oct
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: gandssa.com.au or 8447 7239
A Belvoir production presented by State Theatre Company. Space Theatre. 28 Sep 2018
Directed by Australian stage luminary Judy Davis, this production has been highly anticipated, coming as it does with a wake of glowing reviews from its runs in the Eastern States.
It stars Davis’s husband, the very distinguished Colin Friels, along with award-winning actress Alison Whyte and Adelaide’s most beloved actor, Paul Blackwell, an impressive line-up.
The play, written by the late Irish playwright Brian Friel, is a tough call for actors and audiences because it consists of a series of intense monologues through which three characters tell of the same experiences from their different perspectives.
It is presented in The Space on a raised corner stage wrapped in a splendour of clouds by way of Brian Thompson’s very elegant set. Light in the clouds changes according to the dynamics of the narrative. It is a beautiful, subtle and effective device.
Friels appears as Frank Hardy, an Irish conman, who travels Ireland, Scotland and Wales performing miracle cures. Squeezed into a scruffy and ill-fitting old suit, he tells of his travels, of the country halls and highways, the hopeful believers and the towns, the towns, the towns. He rolls endless inscrutable Celtic place names off the tongue as his traveller’s mantra.
His accent is an Irish meld with a hint of the north.
Friels is a joy to watch. Director Davis would seem to be keeping this character constrained to underplay, but Friels’ every physical movement has extraordinary timing and finesse.
Whyte, with a shock of unruly red hair, depicts his wife Grace looking back on the Faith Healer’s travelling heydays from a grim little London flat years later. She’s a broken woman, drinking herself to death and reminiscing about her fall from an educated background, disgraced by marrying this “mountebank”. She loved him so and tied herself to his crooked path. He had such charm and charisma, but often it was not for her. She did as he bade, even when it meant never mentioning the gut-wrenching stillbirth of their premature child out in the fields somewhere.
Teddy, the faith-healer show’s dogsbody promoter and factotum, describes this tragedy in harrowing detail. Paul Blackwell, with his impeccable eye for comic nuance, brings Teddy to vivid, loveable life. He’s slugging down beers, philosophising about “talent" and telling of the good old travelling-showbiz days: the woman with 200 performing pigeons, and his own wonderful bagpipe-playing whippet. Teddy’s third-party account puts into context the story versions as told by the oft-quarrelling husband and wife. He’s both entertaining and, in the end of the day, oh, so heartbreaking.
This production is very sleek and aesthetic but in the proportions of The Space, one wishes that the action could come down stage a little more. Perhaps it would be good to see the play in a more intimate space.
But it is a powerful and brave piece of theatre about the different ways people share the same experiences and the svelte professionalism of its presentation was met with serious approbation by its Adelaide opening night audience.
Samela Harris
When: 28 Sep to 13 Oct
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
House of Sand in association with State Theatre Company of SA. Old Queen’s Theatre. 21 Sep 2018
From time to time the term “tour de force” leaps forth in the theatre.
And, here it comes again to describe Terrence Crawford’s performance in the revival of Stephen Sewell’s 1980s play, Welcome the Bright World.
For all the fine work surrounding this production, it is Crawford’s triumph in a role he is re-inhabiting after a NIDA student production some 35 years ago.
Welcome the Bright World is a fierce foray into science and politics set in an era when computers were still clunky and office-based, and print-outs emerged as great sheafs of perforated sheets. Here we have two physicists desperately chalking out mathematical equations in the quest for the truth quark, now known as the “bottom" quark. The play is set in Germany between Wiesbaden and Berlin. The senior professor is a German Jew. The academic for whom he comes to work is a former Nazi. Around these principal protagonists are family and authority. The family descends into despair as the daughter’s beliefs swing towards anarchy and the physicists have trouble keeping their fidelities in line.
The play’s content sprawls through science, politics, religion, philosophy, culture and history, a great sweeping swathe of Sewell as we so well recall him from the 80s heyday. And, we may reflect, many things remain much the same in the ethical carnage we have come to know as politics.
It is a good thing that director Charles Sanders and his House of Sand company are magnets for bright young audiences since such samples of serious Australian theatre are wholesome grist for the cultural-future mill.
And being young probably helps audience members when it comes to sitting in the Old Queens. For all the loving attention to its restoration and use as a vibrant venue, it remains cold and physically hard going. House of Sand has supplied knee rugs which help, but beware of the nice little wedding chairs moving backwards and their rear legs slipping into the tier gaps. There were a few distracting moments for audience members discovering an awkward sinking feeling on opening night.
But, the play’s the thing and Sanders has embraced the great white cavern of Queens with a brilliant spectacle of production effects. Black and white projections bring heavy rain to great high windows accompanied by a clever omnipresence of rainy sound. It feels soothing, moody and strangely prescient. Indeed, Mario Spate’s overall soundscape for this production is nothing less than stellar. Owen McCarthy’s lighting plot, similarly, is vivid and thrilling, albeit occasionally erratic on opening night.
With the backing of State Theatre’s set and costume expertise, the production sings finesse born both of practicality and ingenious use of venue. Family living area, office and student apartments are represented on two dais stages which flank the centre opening of the Old Queen’s performance space, the back wall of which has been pleasantly transformed into a garden patio setting. The gaping high window is illuminated to frame actors for dramatic moments, particularly in the opening and closing scenes. Large clear perspex screens, cleverly edged by lights, are rolled onto the stage for the mathematical calculations of the two scientists. They work brilliantly, the actors’ faces clear and close as they dash out their symbols on the faux blackboard surface. Calculations are reiterated by projector on the back wall from time to time. The performance area is always busy with visual enhancements of the action. It even works as an art gallery as one of the characters’ has an exhibition. She is Anat Lewin, a photo artist, much conflicted and wife of the principal scientist Max, and she is portrayed with admirable emotional balance by Jo Stone. Her best friend is beautiful Fay of the stiletto heels and compassionate presence, aptly embodied by Anna Cheney. Their relationship is strained by the dubious mores of their spouses and the hormonal attachments of the Lewin daughter, Rebekah. In her first professional role, Georgia Stanley gives powerful presence to the character of Rebekah and also that of Max Lewin’s young mistress. Roman Vaculik depicts the younger scientist, Sebastian, with a certain degree of European panache, fleshing him out into states of desperate ambivalence when required. It is a strong characterisation and it is a strong cast. Patrick Frost delivers the ominous ex-Nazi bureaucrat, Dr Mencken, with a core of ice, contrasting this role dramatically in the cameo role of the dying dad with dementia. Last in the lineup, Max Garcia-Underwood is sleek and slick as the sinister factotum Herr Heintz.
Sewell writes epic plays with meaty roles for actors and in this case, the part of Max Lewin is nothing less than an entire herd of Charolais for Terrence Crawford. He soars from gentle soul to shattered madman. And, even if it’s not one’s favourite play, it brings towering performances in a very snazzy, professional production from the talented Charles Sanders and his House of Sand team.
We can only look forward to what they bring us next.
Samela Harris
When: 21 Sep to 6 Oct
Where: Queens Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au