Gilded Balloon & Redbeard Theatre in assoc. with Holden Street Theatres. Holden Street Theatres. 14 Feb 2018
Oh, Syria. Poor Syria. Your anguish cries from your war-torn walls in strident artwork. Graffiti is the voice of your people. Nameless they must be. Hence, Nameless is the name adopted by one graffiti artist, a brave and passionate young woman, single-mindedly painting anonymous political protests against the Assad regime.
She’s angry. She’s defensive. There is no soft place in her world. On stage in Adelaide, she is embodied by London-based actress Avital Lvova who swiftly will be recalled as the award-winning star of Henry Naylor’s Angel in last year’s Fringe.
This year, Holden Street Theatres is presenting the fourth of Naylor’s powerful agitprop Arabian Nightmares series about the Middle East. Borders follows The Collector, Echoes and Angel. All have sprung immediately to critical acclaim with Naylor now ranked among the most important playwrights of our times.
This play is divided into two perspectives - that of Nameless, sticking to her paint guns in the savage street life of her brutalised homeland, and that of an ambitious British photo journalist called Sebastian Nightingale who scored a fabulous early career break in capturing a rare and best-ever image of Bin Laden. His subsequent career is less show-stopping and, as jaded old foreign correspondent John Messenger reminds him, he does not have the grit for the field. His forays into world trouble spots come under the auspices of celebrity humanitarians such as Angelina Jolie or Bono and thus does his photo career veer into star studies and his own stardom, much to the disdain of the old journalist called Messenger.
This conflict allows the playwright to editorialise, so to speak, on the state of modern media, on the loss of true news coverage and journalistic integrity to the endless, slavish reportage of celebrity gossip. It is another great cultural casualty of our times and Naylor nails it.
Graham O’Mara plays the two media figures, each captured with professional perspicacity. O’Mara is a most exquisitely nuanced actor. He radiates a star quality of his own.
Directed by Michael Cabot and Louise Skaaning and set austerely on a dark stage, the action evolves alternating in his and her worlds, each confronting crises, one suffering the indignity of gender disrespect, of rape and incarceration, the other the indignity of professional soul-sellout. Oh, and Lvova’s rape scene! Oh, how its agony sears into heart and soul and, of course, the poor woman’s suffering is exacerbated when she finds that she is pregnant.
The audience is wondering if and how these worlds may intersect. Well, intersect they do and it is a magnificent and spectacular climax.
Samela Harris
5 stars
When: 16 Feb to 18 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Molly Taylor in association with Holden Street Theatres. Holden Street Theatres. 14 Feb 2018
I never really thought of thanking the driver when I leave a bus or tram of the public transport system until I visited Vancouver and heard the locals do it (Canadians are worldly renowned for their politeness) and my wife and I earnestly aped this courteous habit. Love Letters..., however, takes gratitude to a whole new level. And Molly Taylor makes a good case for gushing thankfulness in her self-presented show commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland, which premiered in the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012.
Molly told me that everything in the narrative is true. Molly meets her soul mate and is compelled to write love letters to her beau throughout her interstate tour. Giddy with love, Molly further muses that fickle chance alone cannot be responsible for the timely arrivals and departures that determine the course of her life - there must be someone to thank. When you put it that way, bus drivers are pretty bloody important. And even after love once again disappoints, she pursues the various public transportation agencies to contact the drivers who drove her destiny.
Molly wrote a picturesque and poetic script - in a low mood, she described that her "city became a cemetery of memories." Alternatively, she quickly soars with enthusiasm, bubbles over with love, and becomes giddy with gratefulness. Molly shows dogged determination and resilience in her quest, and wins us over to her thesis. There are inspiring messages: you didn't get to where you got without help, and the only ordinary people are the people you don't know.
Molly, thank you for reminding me of these things through your heartwarming journey and exceptional storytelling ability.
David Grybowski
4 stars
14 February 2018
When: 14 Feb to 1 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Unpolished Theatre in assoc. with the Pleasance Theatre Trust. Holden Street Theatres. 14 Feb 2018
Behind the decaying concrete walls of those hideous London tower blocks, there’s thwarted lowlife festering in cramped quarters. Life is tough. The people are tougher. Or so their facades must make the world think.
They’re muscly and aggro Cockneys . They pick fights in the pub and never have enough dosh. They’re strutting, angry and bent on crime. This world as depicted in Elliot Warren's play Flesh and Bone is latter day Kray Brothers territory albeit that only Terry is the thug. Brother Reiss is gay and afraid to come out to Terry. Girlfriend Kel is hard-bitten and crass. She works the phone sex lines for cash. Granddad is a squalid old loser in his dressing gown, a nasty old thing. They’re all rather nasty. They are loud and vulgar. And, of course, so is the play.
It is high-energy and bellowing high volume.
It is not for everyone. People with sensitive ears or delicate sensibilities are hereby warned. And a fairly graphic masturbation scene is not the go for children.
But the message this new and award-winning play is conveying is that urban lowlife is just as much a timeless constant in poor communities as are the rats that share their slums.
Warren elevates this sense by alternating the play’s torrents of profanity with Shakespearean eloquence.
Most strikingly of all, betwixt and between the choreographed violence and domestic vulgarity, he gives each character a mighty soliloquy.
Therein, Alessandro Babalola playing Jamal, the huge black neighbour, presents a couple of performance vignettes of breathtaking power and beauty. Showstoppers. Here is a magnificent actor working with a terrific piece of scripting. As the stereotypically intimidating chip-on-the-shoulder criminal, he unveils a depth of vulnerability and innocence which is as beautiful as it is deeply moving. For this actor’s performance alone, Flesh and Bone is a must for serious theatre goers.
The rest of the cast also is adept and powerful and, throughout this play, right in your face. “In your face” is the description from many audience members. Olivia Brady as Kel looks a bit like a new gen Lulu and, indeed, has a lot of the heart and edge of that beloved English star. Kel is the classic used female in a male domain. It is such a coarse household, but she holds her own in the cup of tea territory and, with a cute bedroom sex scene, shows that in there somewhere there is a kernel of love with the rough and tough Terry, played to the cunning Cockney hilt by the playwright. The yearnings of the gay brother are classic and perfectly expressed in the performance of Michael Jinks. As for Grandad, played by Nick T. Frost, he is the product of a life of hard core underworld. He makes us shudder.
It is not entirely new to assert that even the lousiest hoodlums have hearts and hopes beneath their crude and cruddy lifestyles. But the way in which Warren has used the language in its highest and lowest forms gives this idea a potent foundation and this work a brave originality.
Samela Harris
5 stars
When: 16 Feb to 18 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Therry Dramatic Society. Arts Theatre. 8 Feb 2018
One can only marvel at the work Sue Wylie must have put in to sing appallingly with such absolute skill and acuity.
She’s a good and experienced singer but for this role she has to become expertly tone deaf.
She is portraying the world’s worst opera singer, Florence Foster Jenkins.
Foster Jenkins’s terrible singing generated a cult following in America in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Everyone wanted to hear her jarring off-key stridency, so much so that thousands were turned away from her 1940 Carnegie Hall concert. While people jeered and sneered at her operatic ineptitude, she remained blissfully confident of her talent.
She’s a wonderful true life story, complete with handsome actor boyfriend and loyal accompanist.
Peter Quilter’s bio script presents a sweetly sympathetic picture of the singer though it's overwritten and at times the dialogue is leaden.
But the main character is tailor-made for Wylie at this stage of her career.
She plays it proud, unhurried and sublimely obtuse, and, when she sings, she truly hits those wrong notes. She gives it her ear-piercing all. She hams it up just enough to make it funny. But as one is laughing, one is wondering how on earth she can do it and still keep a voice for talking.
She gets to make some spectacular entrances in well-wrought replicas of Foster Jenkins’ fanciful costumes, not least of them the white angel with working wings.
The first night audience did not need encouragement to get into the spirit of the performance and every terrible aria was met with whoops of cheering acclaim.
Wylie is very well supported by Stuart Pearce as her handsome English actor partner/manager. He’s charming and simpatico. Jock Dunbar hits all the right notes as Foster Jenkins’s patient pianist. It’s a sterling performance with a good American accent. Jenny Penny plays Foster Jenkin’s darling dippy friend, Dorothy. She has a lovely voice and manner and does a very good line in whirlwind dithering. Laura Antoniazzi’s specialty is rampant tantrums in Italian. She plays the maid to the hilt and then some. Last but not least, Therry stalwart Julia Whittle storms the stage representing American musical appreciation standards to call for a stop to the rampant success of the world’s worst opera singer. It is always good to see Whittle onstage and she makes a nice meaty meal of a small role.
There are some elaborate and ingenious Olie Wiebkin sets in this offbeat show. Lighting and look is good although it is imperative that director Geoff Brittain tightens up or trims some of the tediously slow dialogue segments.
The tale of Florence Foster Jenkins is gloriously unlikely. It makes an audience marvel as well as laugh. As presented by Therry, it is strangely touching. It mocks and moves at the same time. And as for its star, Sue Wylie, she is very good at being very bad.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 17 Feb
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com or 8294 7907
Zest Theatre Group. Victor Harbor Town Hall. 2 Feb 2018
It couldn’t be more ambitious. A major modern Broadway musical produced by a regional amateur theatrical society.
Yet Zest has pulled off a triumph.
Not for the first time, this Victor Harbor-based company has found talent resources of sufficiently high calibre to carry such a major production.
Lily Van Rhoda is a mere schoolgirl - and yet she has the goods to give the great Kristin Chenoweth a run for her money in the role of Galinda, the good witch. Van Rhode is a pitch-perfect petite powerhouse. With a big Broadway voice, she charms, she can act and she is funny. She will go far. Far.
Then there is Bec Pynor as Elphaba, the wicked witch. Pynor is a music graduate now doing a teaching masters at Flinders. Not even the gruesome greenface can impede the strength and emotional integrity of her characterisation let alone the artistry of her singing. She’s superb.
Naturally, Zest does not have the budget and facilities of the big musicals' world but with a wealth of hard work, talent, determination and the backstage sophistication of Graeme Mountstephen it has embellished this production with good costumes and some sterling effects. Elphaba’s elevation to the gods is breathtakingly spectacular.
The plot is Gregory Maguire's Wizard of Oz prequel idea of the two witches going to school together and becoming friends. There’s lots of back story, love interest and characters familiar and new - from the Wizard of Oz himself to a powerful sorceress called Madam Morrible. Stephen Schwartz has written the music and lyrics from the Winnie Holzman book. It is not the easiest music in the world.
While most of the supporting cast has a good handle on its complexity, cues and scene changes are the weak spot in the show and there are a few pregnant pauses.
Zest producer and mainstay Terry Mountstephen plays the prominent role of Morrible and brings not only seasoned maturity to the cast but also the pleasure of her fine stage voice. Michael Harris as the old Wizard is sometimes less audible but a good presence. Molly Peier develops nicely as Nessarose, the wicked witch’s crippled sister with Josh Harvey and Tom Richardson providing good support as the two main male love interests.
Then, under Peta Bowey’s efficient direction, there is the cast of thousands - a terrific chorus and dance troupe.
All told they’re a keen and hard-working cast.
Put together with the star quality of the principals, the show is quite an accomplished treat.
Samela Harris
When: 2 to 11 Feb
Where: Victor Harbor Town Hall
Bookings: trybooking.com