Unseen Theatre Company. Bakehouse Theatre. 16 Apr 2016
Cordial, stimulating, and above all funny, The Wee Free Men is a rare stage adaptation that more than lives up to the standard set by its creator, author, the late, Sir Terry Pratchett.
A radiant roller-coaster jaunt of colour, exposition and fantastical incidents, Pamela Munt’s stage version of Pratchett’s first Discworld novel to feature Tiffany Aching (Josephine Girogio), is almost as entertaining as the book. And though a lot of that comes down to the show’s intrepid direction, it’s also due to the main attractions. In this adaptation that’s not the clever and satirical dialogue, but the eccentricity of the fine ensemble and the delivery of the humorous lines.
Here’s the thing about fantasy on stage: it’s usually far superior or a good deal shoddier than real life. The action in this production is inflated; exuberant slices of satire that begins with a simple knock-knock joke and ends with sprawling whopping wedges of laugh-out-loud humour. Emotionally, though, it’s not rational, but it is as funny as it gets.
Munt devises and adapts the group’s productions, and it consistently works. She also has the knack of finding performers who seamlessly transition between multiple characters, in scenes that are by turns animated and affecting.
A not-by-chance meeting in a tent leads to a magical adventure. A teacher, Miss Tick (Alycia Rabig) - who is also an undercover witch – educates a new student, Tiffany Aching, on the meaning of witchcraft. The stuff of nightmares threatens the world, and when Miss Tick goes for help she leaves her toad familiar (Hugh O’connor) to assist Tiffany. But Tiffany isn’t helpless; she’s armed with her trusty frying pan, and aided by the Nac Mac Feegle—aka the Wee Free Men—a clan of vicious, hard-drinking, claymore-wielding, six-inch-high blue men. When the Faerie Queen (Elaine Fardell) kidnaps Tiffany’s baby brother Wentworth (Aimee Ford), the want-to-be witch heads into fairyland to rescue her sibling. With cries of “Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna' be fooled again!” and “They can tak' oour lives but they canna tak' oour troousers!” the Nac Mac Feegle Pictsies help their new hag, fight ferocious hounds, headless horsemen and the sinister Queen of the Elves herself.
The show is an absolute riot of comedy and resourceful staging, as Tiffany leads us through a series of set pieces in the weird locations where, one by one, the naughty Pictsies dispose of the real and imagined enemies with brute force, ignorance and comic invention.
Pretty much all of the action is a scrumptious treat – from the Benny Hill style chases to the sheep-stealing, fight scenes and an amusing death scene. It overflows with appealing performances and comic charm. It's a gorgeous little play that is beautifully executed with a story that will have you smiling throughout. Don't miss it! Or there will be a reckoning! Crivens!
Stephen Davenport
When: 16 to 30 Apr
Where: Bakehouse theatre
Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com
State Theatre Company SA with Sydney Theatre Company and Flinders University. Dunstan Playhouse. 15 Apr 2016
Geordie Brookman's singular directorial gift is an ability to realise complex states of transition in the significant life moments of a character. It is done in such a way as to embrace not just the unseen minutiae of evolving emotions and reactions but equally, shifts in the specific world that the characters inhabit.
Brookman is a director who digs deep, seeking the last shreds of complex understanding to be found in a text.
Sue Smith’s Machu Picchu seems material perfectly suited to Brookman. What could be more challenging than making comprehensible the confusion, anger, pain and complete disruption following an accident resulting in paralysis, as happens to husband Paul (Darren Gilshenan) while driving with his wife Gabby (Lisa McCune)? The destruction of physical, emotional, professional and personal foundations of security and identity is an immensely overwhelming experience. What is to come from it?
The sense of disjunction between the depths of complex subconscious transition Brookman seeks to bring to life in performance - superbly utilising Jonathan Oxlade’s sparse, sterile hospital ward set and Geoff Cobham’s nuanced and symbolically evocative lighting - is disturbingly at odds with Smith’s naturalistic text; sporting humorous support characters excellently realised by Elena Carapetis, Renato Musolino, Luke Joslin and Annabel Matheson.
Smith is the renowned writer of The Leaving of Liverpool, Brides of Christ and Mabo, and her exploration of how Paul, Gabby, friends, and family deal with trauma in Machu Picchu is in itself a beautiful thing. We are taken from the present to the past and back again in a series of monologues and exchanges between Paul and Gabby in which the longings of the past and achieving them clash violently with the death-like present paralysis. Darren Gilshenan’s performance is rich in depth, matched by McCune’s.
Humour is well used in both its black and light hearted forms and while warmly embraced by the audience, problematically, what has eventuated is a reliance on formulaic storytelling, a kind of safety net in which the audience is aware of where they are being taken on this journey, yet simultaneously able to experience some sense of comfortable wonderment at Paul and Gabby’s inner transformation. Brookman’s direction redeems as much as possible this element of disappointment ensuring a production of worth is being offered. Is it in part because Smith, in drawing on her experience of being diagnosed in 2010 with cancer, has only been able to brave exposure of remembrances as inspiration for the text so far, given the still recent date of diagnosis?
Only time can answer that.
David O’Brien
When: 13 Apr to 1 May
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 14 Apr 2016
The Elephant Man's rare deformities defied 19th Century medicine and, from being a curiosity show exhibit, he was to spend his latter years charitably sequestered in a London Hospital. If he was a curiosity in his day, he remains so in our day, his fame perpetuated on stage and screen.
This Bernard Pomerance play has been drawing audiences since the 1970s, a new generation just as fascinated as the old with the strange and sad life of this cruelly-burdened young man. He was only 27 when he died.
In this beautifully-mounted production, director Megan Dansie has eschewed prosthetics but depicted the deformities of John Merrick through photographs and medical drawings projected lecture-theatre-style on the back wall. The play takes the form of a compassionate documentary and, as the doctor who took Merrick under his wing gives a clinical description of the physical phenomena which beset Merrick, actor Robert Bell clad only in undershorts, contorts his young body - first the face, screwed asymmetrical and awry, then the limbs, the left hand limp and disabled, the right holding a small cane, one shoulder lifted high, the head bent to one side, a hip raised, spine curved, a leg bent up so that only the toe touches the floor... Suddenly, he is pitiably deformed.
It is a compelling transformation.
Of course, his speech is not as terribly muffled as was that of the real Merrick but Bell achieves a sense of impediment while also projecting enough of his own beautiful actor's voice to fulfil the communications required of the play. He takes the character from desperate inarticulate victim, when first encountered at the hands of the sideshow manager who steals his money and abandons him, to the closeted man in his hospital "home" with his model-building occupation and an array of society people who offer him a hand of kindness.
It is a nicely-wrought development, logical and convincing. And, it is a superb performance all round by that outstanding young actor, Robert Bell.
Designer Robert Webb has produced a striking set with a raised and raked circular platform on one side of the stage and an office-cum-home arrangement beside it. The projected images behind complete a quite elegant effect, albeit the actors seem to struggle to and fro across the rake.
Steve Marvanek ably carries much of the dramatic weight of the play as Frederick Treves, the doctor who saves Merrick from the doom of abandonment and who becomes both his protector and his friend. Sadly, in the 1880s, there was no real understanding of Merrick's condition or anything that could be done. Even in his shelter of the hospital, he remains a curiosity. Treves, however, sees aspects of himself in Merrick and, the play asserts, everyone who meets Merrick is to find some form of mirror in his plight.
They are paraded in their Victorian glamor across the stage to meet the city's great curiosity and he is to find ever greater yearning for normality from each engagement. Thus the added pathos of the play emerges.
The two principals are well supported by Dansie's strong cast - Georgia Stockham, Tony Busch, Thorin Cupit, Philip Lineton, Sharon Malujlo, Patrick Marlin, Nicole Rutty, Jon Scholten and Jamie Wright.
In all, The Elephant Man is an intelligently-wrought and moving production, not without its moments of ironic wit.
And these six score years later, the Elephant Man still fascinates.
Samela Harris
When: 14 to 23 Apr
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Independent Theatre. Goodwood Institute. 8 Apr 2016
One can see that Denmark is on the skids the moment one enters the theatre. The stage is a huge, crimson disc with a rake like a hillside. Two medieval-style chairs sit beneath a shaft of cruel light. One can almost smell the impending doom. It's another brilliant Rob Croser and David Roach set which hints at the discipline and finesse which goes into an Independent Theatre production.
Hamlet is the longest of Shakespeare's plays but director Croser seems to have tightened it up so that its action thunders past. Swirling bursts of smoke reach out into the audience from this great raised stage. Actors shout and lines are fast.
Today's Hamlet is the acclaimed young actor, Will Cox. He is core to the current Independent ensemble. Wiry, almost gaunt of form, madness falls upon him swiftly. He strides the stage in a slap of bare feet, one trouser leg rolled up to emphasise that he is well and truly awry. He hollers and rails, sometimes right over the top. He's a nasty bit of work. But, when it comes to that great pinnacle of the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, he takes it lying down. It's a philosophically interesting angle which works well because that dramatic rake has lifted the actor into everyone's sight lines.
The supporting cast is tight; everything snappy on cues; a directorial sense of aesthetic ever-present in the plotting of the play. And among the strongest, out of the genre of song and dance theatre, rises Paul Rodda with a voice deep and rich and a delivery which sings of the King's English. He is an imposing Claudius. Bronwyn Ruciak partners him as Gertrude, aching with maternal restraint. Her death scene is truly heart-rending amid the chaos of conflict.
But it is Ophelia for whom the audience waits and Madeleine Herd does not disappoint. Exquisitely costumed in a simple, gold-edged gown, she brings to her mad scene the sweetest sorrow and despair. David Roach has never given a bad performance in his life. Here, as Polonius, he bestows his usual class and authority upon the production and, doubling up as the gravedigger, he performs from a very cleverly-devised cavity in the rake. It is here that Hamlet laments poor Yorik, caressing the skull, bringing forth effectively that thematic spirit of the frail mortal coil.
Sheldick Yarkpai embodies Hamlet's loyal friend, Horatio. His presence is fine and his voice beautiful, but his lines are hard to decipher. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are played by Jordan Carling and Jett Zivkovic in a well-foiled partnership. The actors doubled in other roles, with Zivkovic giving a notable performance as Laertes.
Independent's veteran, the beloved Allen Munn, plays Priest and Player King with smooth authority with Mark Mulders and Stephen Schofield as entertainers and extras.
And thus was Hamlet of 2016: striking in its magnificent lighting and design; beautiful in its finely-wrought costumes; and on the bombastic side in general tenor. Perhaps the shouting was too much. Perhaps the Shakespearean dialogue sometimes was gobbled. Certainly, as the players settled in to their parts and the opening night audience into those strange seats, the production found its feeling - desperate, wild, dangerous, and distressing, just as the author intended.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 16 April
Where: Goodwood Institute
Bookings: trybooking.com
Reader's Note: Paul Rodda is Editor for The Barefoot Review
Photography by Jacqui Munn
Therry Dramatic Society. Arts Theatre. 31 Mar 2016
American high society of the 1930s, tabloid journalists, champagne, love and politics. It's all in there, the ingredients which have kept Phillip Barry's romantic comedy regularly ticking over at the box office.
Therry has gone all-out in this production creating sets so lush, lavish and complex that the stage crew actually takes a bow after the big change. First, there is the grand formal sitting room of the Lord estate in Philadelphia, complete with antiques and art. Then, with the well-choreographed manoeuvres of a large stage crew costumed as domestic servants, the wall flaps are unfolded and a gorgeous trellised porch is realised. Credit for this starring set goes to director Kerrin White along with the late Vince Eustace, a Therry backstage stalwart for whom this was to be the last show. It makes a grand exit for a set designer.
Complementing this impressive achievement is Jason Groves' fine lighting design and a mass of generally terrific costumes.
Renowned for the lead role of this play back in the day was the Hollywood great, Katherine Hepburn. Interestingly, Lauren Renee, the young actress here playing the role of Tracy Lord, rates Hepburn as her great pinup and imbues her performance with an uncanny semblance of the late star. And, most engaging she is. She is among those onstage who do fairly well with the American accent, albeit with a few too many soft 'A's.
As Tracy's little sister, Dinah, Henny Walters gives another performance which shows that she is a vivid young actress who is definitely going places.
Meanwhile, Celine O'Leary as the mother, Margaret Lord, is a picture of sheer grace and staid elegance.
Generally the performances are strong, John Leigh-Grey and Ron Densley deliciously fusty as Uncle Willy and Sandy Lord respectively, James Whiterow imposing as reporter Mike and Brad Martin nicely pompous as the politician on the marital make. As the ex-husband, Dexter, Aaron MacDonald swans around with cardigan slung round the shoulders and is surprisingly touching, at moments stealing the show. Zoe Dibb as the Spy Magazine photographer is charmingly long-suffering with Roman Turkiewicz solid as Seth. The large cast is nicely rounded off by Daniel Malcolm as the fresh-faced young valet, Cherie Kennett as the maid, and whistling Stanley Tuck as Mac, the security man.
The production was smooth enough on the opening night and one hopes it may gain a bit more oomph as it runs into season. It is what Dame Edna would describe as "a nice night's entertainment".
Samela Harris
When: 30 Mar to 9 Apr
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com