Adelaide Fringe. Alison Bennett. The Bakehouse Theatre. 3 Mar 2017
Trade is a newish work of collaborative and physical storytelling devised by Hurrah Hurrah of Sydney. In the first half of the show, trade refers to hedge funds - you give your life savings to a bunch of young people who seem pretty smart and they offset long and short positions in financial markets and try to make you a profit. The team was inspired by a French trader who lost billions in rogue trading as a consequence of the global financial crisis of 2016.
There have been several movies on this theme - The Wolf Of Wall Street, The Big Short, and Margin Call come to mind - but I have never seen it abstracted, physicalised and satirised like this mob has done. Using only office partition frames, power dressing and financial buzzwords, Hurrah Hurrah take us into the cocaine-fueled, hubristic world of big swinging dicks, except most of them are women. Having myself been a share broker at one time, I guarantee you they have nailed it, producing a bevy of very funny physical metaphors.
Of course, the whole things crashes and the finance team morphs into an even more cynical version of the original. The creative team successfully tackles the issues of responsibility, yet shows that greed has no bounds and our vigilance against these vultures cannot end, because really, nothing has changed. A definite go see.
David Grybowski
When: 27 Feb to 4 Mar
Where: The Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Schaubühne Berlin. Her Majesty's Theatre. 3 Mar 2017
Schaubühne Berlin hail themselves as "one of the most important theatre companies in the world," and have shirt fronted former Adelaide Festival audiences with their audacious productions of Ibsen's Doll House, in 2006, and Tennessee Williams's Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in 2008. Thanks to director, and artistic director of the company since 1999, Thomas Ostermeier, there is a definite theme of high energy edginess mixed with a forensic examination of the darker recesses of the human mind. And Shakespeare's Richard III is a great mind to explore.
This production is a barking mad German shepherd compared to the pet rock versions I have seen in the past. The action commenced explosively with a wild party, accompanied by a descending curtain of glitter and live ear-splitting discordance, celebrating the ascension to the throne of Richard's brother, Edward IV. Amused, Richard whispers with conversational tones into an ever-present microphone suspended from above like some malevolent presence the "Now is the winter of our discontent" speech, outlining his malignant Machiavellian aim to capture the crown for himself. It is through this delicious concoction of intimacy and cacophony that Ostermeier draws you into the regal intrigue like a moth to a flame.
Film star Lars Eidinger is not the miscast old bearded man seen in the Festival's dated publicity. Eidinger's physically contorted Richard III prowled the stage with the anxiety of a cornered bear. Richard humiliates his underlings and woos the widows of his victims with an evil charm. His lack of shame turns your stomach and then he reverts to the audience and brags about it, within and outside of the script. Eidinger even charms the audience - he is before us, entirely naked save for a strapped-on hunch pad over his shoulder, and yet we believe he is the misshapen Richard III.
Unfortunately, not even Ostermeier could prevent the wordy middle third of Richard III from being mildly soporific. After all, it is Shakespeare's longest play after Hamlet. For those who love the audio lyricism of Shakespeare's writing and also are not conversant in German, you are left with the tremendous visual effects of this production and the incredible verbal delivery and physical work of the performers. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 3 to 9 Mar
Where: Her Majesty's Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Festival of Arts. Barrie Kosky. Festival Theatre. 3 Mar 2017
The wunderkind returns, his lustre gleaming with decades of polish. And, 20 years after his time as Adelaide Festival artistic director, he brings to us from Glyndebourne the gift of Saul.
It is the jewel in the crown of the Healy/Armfield 2017 Adelaide Festival - the grand European operatic experience which will lodge itself in the city’s cultural memory like The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Death in Venice, Peter Brook's Mahabharata, Voss, Nixon in China, The Roman Tragedies and, oh, Pina Bausch, Pina Bausch…
It is an opera so visually sumptuous, one imagines that all the Dutch Masters had been unleashed upon the stage with swans and great dead carcasses amid towers of flowers. The women of the grand State Opera chorus are clad in gorgeous Georgian dresses, faces whitened, wigs fanciful. The opening tableau is simply a feast for the eyes
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But first, the ears. Beneath the stage, the ASO is mellow-tuned and fulsome to the ear. The overture is a joy. Close the eyes. It is a musical conversation from the mind of Handel. And then from the pitch darkness of the stage, gradually, the monstrous severed head of Goliath is revealed, huge and bloody, mouth agape.
A traumatised David appears with his slingshot, his torso ravaged by battle with the giant. And the narrative is sung, full of thanks and celebrations by the people for his feat. Saul, long hair swinging on his back, struts amid his people and offers his hapless daughter’s hand in marriage to the victor. It is his second daughter Michal who loves David. And his son, Jonathan.
And the story unfolds with Saul sinking into terrible psychotic episodes which even the love and comfort of his people cannot assuage. He is consumed with pathological jealousy of David and seeks his demise.
The libretto is delivered in surtitles so that we may fully grasp the beauty of its language.
One does not catch the every word when sung in choral force but, oh, when Stuart Jackson sings, there is not a consonant let alone a syllable unclear. This ample English tenor, white-faced and flower-crowned, undulating his great arms and waving long High Priest talons on his fingers, sings with a breath of heaven.
The cast is crème de la crème with fine opera singers, Mary Bevan, Taryn Fiebig and Adrian Strooper as Saul’s offspring, Merab, Michal and Jonathan. The dancers are eruptions of joy - fleet, fanciful, funny with shades of Pina Bausch in their Otto Pichler choreography.
David is embodied by Christopher Lowrey and his counter tenor voice is yet more celestial. His first sung note is so pure and extended one can almost see it heading to the heavens.
But then there is the passion of the baritone, Christopher Purves, as Saul. His is a mighty performance in every aspect of operatic drama. It is an exhaustingly strenuous performance delivered with utter physical and emotional commitment. From his meteoric moods, Saul undergoes the absolute meltdown. Thwarted and broken by his family’s refusal to destroy David, he crawls in spiteful secret to the arms of the exiled Witch of Endor, played by Kanen Breen with a touch of artful depravity. The witch is an underworld androgyny with pendulous breasts reminiscent of the Hindu witch Rangga. Saul begs her to deliver to him the ghost of Samuel and he takes succour from her. Milk drips from his mouth as he rises to the knowledge that he is to be defeated and that David will succeed him as King of the Israelites. And so it comes to pass.
The action takes place upon a steeply-raked black stage where a deep layer of finely shaved rubber gives the effect of black seaweed or sand. The performers can kick it up as they move, let it shower from their hands… They can bury one another in it.
It is just one of the marvels of the production. Joachim Klein's lighting is another. From Dutch master vivid to the gloom of the death fields. And there’s the marvel of the tabletop whence Saul’s head sticks out, surrounded by creepy scampering spider fingers.
It is such a contrast to the Hogarthian decadence and opulence of earlier scenes.
The Barrie Kosky aesthetics and his delicious artistic and intellectual audacity make Saul a vast, visual roller coaster of an extravaganza experience. There is a mad, Biblical narrative in there. But, with Kosky, it is also a window into psychopathology and love in its many aspects. Many threads lie beneath the surface to be unravelled as one reflects upon the grandeur of it all.
The audience rises to its feet and it shouts and whoops and claps until hands grow weak. Then it claps some more.
Bravo Barrie Kosky.
Thankyou Healy and Armfield.
Samela Harris
When: 3 to 9 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Photography by Tony Lewis
Essential Theatre. Holden Street Theatres. 2 Mar 2017
This snappy eighty minute Julius Caesar is brought to you by Essential Theatre - the same mob that have performed their excellent outdoor productions from their Shakespeare in the Vines program at Coriole and Sevenhill wineries for more than a decade. Having seen and reviewed a few of those, I knew I was in for another goodie, and I was not disappointed.
Everyone on and behind the stage - save Justin Gardam who contributed a fetching soundtrack - are women. Women who are pissed off that only one in four roles in Shakespeare are for females, and traditionally even those were played by men. Since Sophie Lampel and Amanda LaBonte run the company, they're gonna do it their way. And it worked a treat. Although I never got over the "her" pronouns and possessives instead of "his" and "him," the references to themselves as girls instead of men (why didn't they use women?), and Caesar potentially being a queen instead of a king, I loved the emotional values: sensually confusing when the "men" were feminine, amusing when they were women pretending to be men, and powerful when they presented sturdy androgynous characters.
Tick, tick, tick. Time is running out on Caesar and later, on the assassins. The narrative hewn out of the original is urgent and full of menace. Whispers in the corridors of power, collaborators regrouping and mutually bolstering their courage, the excitement of the kill itself, and the confusion over the change of leadership definitely reminded me of Australian federal politics since the Rudd dump of 2010. Peak emotional moments were complemented by Gardam's soundscape, effective lighting and a bit of theatrical magic. They had me in such a state that the murder of Caesar took my breath away.
Performances were not all up to the same standard, but the regal bearing of Helen Hopkins's Caesar convinced me from the get go, and Alex Aldrich played the chilling duplicity of Casca with a comical bent that invited close watching. Costumes designed by Aldrich looked like Salvation Army uniforms that would be at home in a Star Trek episode. Having your apron over your back instead of your front makes for a nifty cape.
I was enthralled with director Fleur Kilpatrick's tight, earnest, and most of all, intimate production of extreme clarity and crispness, with a genre twist. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 28 Feb to 4 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. The Garden of Unearthly Delights – Corona Theatre. 2 Mar 2017
Luke McGregor is a relative new-comer in terms of his career on the comedy circuit, and yet his comedic trajectory is something anyone would be proud of.
McGregor burst onto the scene in 2008 and his achievements since then include being a national finalist in Raw Comedy, winning Best Newcomer 2013 for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and appearances on television in series such as Rosehaven, The Time of Our Lives, Legally Brown and Utopia. He is also the creator of the six part documentary series Luke Warm Sex.
Needless to say this evening’s performance is completely sold out, and in true GoUD fashion we are all sandwiched into one of the not-so-cosy performance tents on offer. Venue qualms aside however, McGregor quickly has his audience in the palm of his hand.
McGregor endears himself to the audience with his nervous, awkward, anxious personality, captivating us in a way few other comedians can; one almost feels like giving the poor fella a hug. Despite his clear insecurities – not put on as part of the act – he possesses the bravery to do what few others can; stand up and talk about his own life.
It is almost therapeutic; for him and for us! McGregor isn’t always rolling-in-the-aisles-funny with his stand-up; but he is always very interesting to listen to. A great storyteller.
This particular performance takes place in the Garden’s Corona Theatre, and the seats to the sides are definitely not the best. Unfortunately on a warmer-than-usual autumn evening the audience on our side of the auditorium has to contend with the rumbling of the air-con, combined with speakers focussed closer to centre, and low mic volumes. It is certainly hard to hear.
Despite this, the bulk of the audience are raucous and certainly seem to be having a good time. The one-hour set, over in the blink of an eye, leaves many hungry for more.
McGregor is a very funny man, and in particular where the events of his television shows are set up to highlight and accentuate his awkwardness. His stand-up, if nothing else, is a great night of storytelling with a few laughs thrown in for good measure, and a very enjoyable evening’s entertainment!
Paul Rodda
When: 3 to 5 Mar
Where: The Garden of Unearthly Delights – Corona Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au