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
Glynn Nicholas and Gretel Killeen - His and her versions of our lives. Holden Street Theatres
Glynn Nicholas and Gretel Killeen have not worked together for decades. Now in Adelaide with a double act, one can’t quite say they are working “together” so much as sharing the bill. It’s a two-act show divided into two performances following a delightfully quirky joint introduction.
The overarching gag is ageing. Both performers describe the pain and pleasure of increasingly epic life experience: Killeen with a self-denigrating tongue in cheek and Nicholas with raw confessional honesty.
Killeen has the stand-up comedy thing down pat. She must be among the best female stand-ups on stage in Australia right now. Her routine in this show is throw-back-your-head, laugh-out-loud funny. Her delivery style is oh, so casual. Almost incidental. It’s so nicely woven that one is barely aware of its careful construction. And she is gifted with that rare attribute, the witty off-the-cuff response. Hence she can afford to be fearless in audience interaction. She will always have a good come-back. She uses the audience constantly as a reference point, asking if people have had this or that experience, often rhetorically but always lowering the fourth wall and engaging directly. On the opening night at Holden Street, this was a tall order, literally. The house was packed to the rafters. And the massive audience loved her, rightly.
There is something delicately simpatico about her shtick while at the same time edgy and frank. She tells tales of looking for love, of the perils of parenthood, of the ageing body, embarrassing moments, living with celebrity and, of course, her amazing psychic powers.
Nicholas is Act II. He’s an engaging performer, beloved of Adelaide audiences. He has the best impish eye in the business. For this show he does a by-request revival of his old Channel 9 satiric creation, Pate Biscuit, now re-named Pat. Out of more than a quarter century of retirement, the hand puppet, Bongo, is as hilarious as ever and together they deliver an outrageous Story Time. Thereafter Nicholas picks up his guitar and sings I am a Mess; a strange song which parodies misery and preludes Nicholas’s accounts of mistakes and failed marriages. It is bare-heart stuff peppered with wonderful throw-away lines.
Now living back in Adelaide caring for aged parents, Nicholas says he has found new zest for life in the highly nuanced world of the Argentine Tango, and suddenly the audience is listening to a fascinating dissertation on the tango which is to be followed by a demonstration with, as luck would have it, a very beautiful and seasoned tango dancer from the audience. Pity Nicholas never asked her name. She had style. He rewarded her with a lollipop, an old trademark gesture from his famous Rundle Mall busking days.
It’s not what one expected but then again, what did one expect? Something different. And it is.
The performers close the show with I Got You, Babe - and a very acceptable Sonny and Cher harmony is revealed along with some anarchical improvised lyrics. Killeen has a marvellous voice. Oh, why do we discover this almost as an afterthought? Ah, but it’s promising content for another show.
#NiceNight #LotsOfLaughs #GrabaTicket
Samela Harris
When: 12 to 20 Jan
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
Produced by Andrew Kay and Liza McLean. Presented by the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust. By special arrangement with Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures. Festival Theatre. 3 Jan 2019
How on earth can they pull it off? That’s the question we’ve all been asking. And why would anyone attempt to put an Alfred Hitchcock action movie on stage?
Of all the things to choose, a movie famous for a chase by crop-duster through cornfields seems the most technically absurd.
But the mistake potential audiences have been making is in a literal expectation.
First qualification for adoring this way out-there, brilliant piece of theatre is familiarity with the original film. If you haven’t seen it, the play will amuse but confuse.
The second qualification for revelling in the night’s entertainment is to be able recognise that the whole thing has an almighty tongue in a gigantic Hollywood cheek. It is a daring parody and also a sophisticated homage.
The plot follows a case of mistaken identity when advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill is abducted by thugs and swept into a sinister world of crime and espionage. The story scoots about in trains and planes from New York, through Chicago and Indiana, to its climax at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota. Along the way, there’s love with the mysterious fellow traveller Eve Kendall.
Carolyn Burns’s adaptation preserves the integrity of the movie beautifully, sustaining the quippish nature of the Hitchcockian dialogue. There’s a light-hearted edge to the most perilous of circumstances. And, of these, there are many; shootings and conspiratorial meetings, chases and more chases.
It’s no plot-spoiler that the tale climaxes on the face of Mount Rushmore. The plot spoiler would be to reveal how Simon Phillips and his team have replicated this. The joy of the show, or one of them, is the ingenious and hilarious ways in which scale and filmic effects are achieved. It’s oh, so simple and yet oh, so ingenious. Oh yes, and oh, so funny.
The set, devised by director Simon Phillips and Nick Schlieper, is a series of large layered grids, clearly suggestive of celluloid film frames. They rise and drop according to the depth of scene involved. Doors and windows, rooms and open space are achieved according to their use while a huge screen provides backdrop with all manner of projected images. At wings to the stage are little boxed-off special effects “studios” where much of the visual magic of the show is created.
Lights and mirrors.
What is old is new again.
The audience is captivated from the word go, or, should one say, the many words of the witty introductory credits. In themselves, they raise spontaneous applause. There’s another round on recognition of a classic Hitchcock cameo. Blink, and you’ve missed it, just as in the suspense director’s movies.
The costumes are superb, just as they were in those schmick days of Hitchcock’s good taste. Fifties folk were smart dressers and their fashions are back in style. In the principal role is Matt Day, as slick and handsome as was Cary Grant in the film. Day captures the qualities of the old movie star in gait and manner. Beautifully. Amber McMahon in a massive blonde wig, mirrors the ice maiden elusiveness of Eva Marie Saint’s performance in the film. Her accent is a little mysterious but, oh, how she uses those big, wide eyes.
There’s a cast of thousands portrayed by the other eleven actors in a miracle of quick costume changes. They people the stage as myriad film extras, strutting, hunching, limping dashing in an endless array of garb and characterisation - from chilly pedestrians and railway staff to auction house elites and vicious goons. The comings and goings are choreographed to the split second to loud, wild movie music, some of it original, some composed and sound-scaped by Ian McDonald.
This is action-packed theatre.
North by Northwest was Hitchcock’s great cinema achievement. Now, as a loving pastiche, it belongs to Simon Phillips.
It is a blockbuster of vivid anachronism.
Samela Harris
When: 3 to 20 Jan
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
The untold story of the witches of Oz. Adelaide Youth Theatre. Arts Theatre. 23 Dec 2018
Wicked is AYT’s 30th production since its formation in 2010 and it shines with the gloss of a very successful evolution. The company was devised by Emma Riggs and Kerreane Sarti to stretch the wings of upcoming Adelaide thespians. It is a serious business, the cast and crew investing in the experience surrounded by teachers and seasoned volunteers. In the case of Wicked, it is airing two whole casts in alternate performances under fledgling directors. This means a company of 80 plus. The logistics alone is daunting. The result, however, is superb.
It is hard to find a weak spot in this mighty production of the weird and wonderful Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman musical, based on a Gregory Maguire novel, which ponders a backstory to the Wizard of Oz. The story goes that Oz’s two witches, the good Glinda and the wicked Elphaba started out as schoolmates. Hence spring the big choreographed and choral numbers in school uniforms as well as wild green scenes as the Emerald City comes into the picture. There’s an appeal to contemporary young in the issues of besties and boys and fashion, loyalty and cruelty, clothes and magic. Glinda would be very much at home as a contemporary teen vlogger.
AYT’s rendering of the show is something of a grand spectacle. Against some simple, brutalistic base sets which enable tiered central action, the production is a feast of vivid lighting and perhaps a bit too much smoke. The costumes are sensational. They scream big budget, no corners cut.
The huge cast is uniformly focused and immaculately drilled through myriad great big scenes. Beneath the singing and dancing is a huge orchestra which musical director Jennifer Trijo has managed to keep perfectly balanced against the stage vocals. Indeed, with body mikes, the sound levels of this show are absolutely schmick.
Then there are the voices. Courtney Sandford plays Glinda with a pure, bright Broadway voice which can hit glass-shattering notes with seeming ease. It’s a funny and vivacious characterisation she delivers, too.
Naomi Crosby has to work greenface as the wicked Elphaba. This does not undermine her commanding stage presence nor the power and beauty of her voice.
The surrounding principals give commensurately classy support: Deon Martino-Williams, Mark DeLaine, Erin Sowerby, Issie Minello, Kristian Latella and Zoe Foskett.
It is a three-hour show with some lengthy and difficult songs. But the production does not pall. The audience, largely of AYT teen peers, is enthusiastically engaged from woe to go, leaping up at the end to respond with a standing ovation.
Asked after the show how many marks they would give this theatre experience, one group of girls put their heads together and then announced “ten and a half out of ten”.
That says it all.
Now, if only the government could revive the Festival City’s arts industry with proper funding and give this wealth of youthful talent a future in the business.
Samela Harris
When: 20 to 23 Dec
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: Closed