Adelaide Fringe. Louise O’Dwyer. The GC. 4 Mar 2017
Never base your identity on your job, is advice often handed out. Interestingly, for performing artists, that’s a bit of a bind, given so much of who they are is actually bound up in that core sense of being one, and so much of the self is expended in being so.
Louse O’Dwyer’s smooth running 50 minute one act piece allows her to offer an audience of non-performers the unique experience of being on the end of the question every actor hates at stages of their lives. “How’s your acting going?”
A series of friends, relatives and side player characters pop up to give their momentary take on that actor friend or relative, and it’s not really very pretty, if at times delightfully funny.
From the harshness of a caring rellie at a family BBQ, to the unseen, unheard director auditioning Louise, it becomes brutally clear how little anyone really cares for or understands this acting thing.
The sweet irony of an actor creating a series of characters – who represent experiences in which said actor’s whole sense of self respect as a human being is overlooked because they’re an actor – is not easy to ignore.
O’Dwyer’s creations are quirky, fallible, cracked people, delivered with disciplined restraint. What animates all of them is an unfailing desire, conscious or not, to actually care about or understand the actor in the same way they might ask in earnest of someone else, “how’s your career going?”
Think about that.
David O’Brien
When: 28 Feb to 11 March
Where: The GC (The German Club)
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Anya Anastasia. Royal Croquet Club. 2 March 17
Roguish femininity never came in such a beguiling and wit rich mere hour package.
Anya Anastasia was at once Marilyn Monroe, Marie Antoinette and and a ‘demure’ Jane Austen like romantic as she seduced, traduced and spun her audience’s minds, that their hearts might be hers – with some sincere, deep eyed lilting, and pressured passion.
In an evening of love between herself and an easily love struck audience her command was everything. We joined her in an apocalyptic love party in which the dangers of the present were forgotten that we might, together, love.
The genius in the work - as always with an Anastasia creation - is wit, in physical performance, and word, which spins against cliches by substituting stock observations with eye opening, unexpected quirkiness (referencing clichés, nonetheless).
As our paramour sought out her perfect lover, railed in angered sadness, he was not to be found. An audience member is teased and loved here and there and pounced on as a hopeful romantic conquest, one got the sense that either we (the audience) are in love, or she’s too needy for us?
Supporting and blessing the performance was a superb, jazz band who added support in their role as living, breathing scenic extras. Their rich, vibrant genre-crossing musical capability is executed with such calm restraint, yet confident hard-core attitude that it made for a complete, passionate, humorous, sexy evening.
David O’Brien
When: 2 to 19 March
Where: Royal Croquet Club, The Blsvk Forest
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
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
