Friday Five: More Theatre

These are brief reviews of five theatre productions I have seen recently

1. Jane Eyre - shake & stir theatre, The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre: In the spirit of full disclosure I must point out that Jane Eyre is one of my favourite novels, along with Animal Farm, a play of which shake & stir produced last year - review here. Jane Eyre matches the production company's enormously high standards - the pyrotechnics on the set alone (I'm assuming you know the story so this is no spoiler) are worth the price of admission. The new adaptation featuring original music (written and performed live on stage by Sarah McLeod) is simply outstanding. Nelle Lee plays the titular role with passion and repression from the derided young girl to the dignified mature woman she becomes, guided by her impulses, values and strong sense of inner strength. The three other actors play all the other roles with complete conviction; the blend of Gothic Romance and contemporary gender insights is absolutely perfect and so true to the novel it has instantly become one of my favourite experiences. 
2. Pygmalion - Tempo Theatre Inc., Belconnen Community Theatre: Often overshadowed by the opulent musical, My Fair Lady based upon it, Pygmalion is arguably George Bernard Shaw's masterpiece. Tempo's version is true to the intentions of the socialist polemic, indeed, Peter Fock stands out as Alfred Doolittle railing against middle class mortality rather than as the too-often-seen portrayal as a commitment-shunning buffoon. Adam Salter gives Henry Higgins the necessary academic confidence and boyish glee in 'his' achievements in passing off the flower girl, Eliza, as a well-bred young lady after his elocution lessons, while leaving no room for mature sentiment - this is usually balanced by the gravitas of Colonel Pickering, which is absent in this production. The young man, Thomas Cullen, brings gentleness to the role but removing the title of Colonel changes its focus entirely, with insufficient direction to compensate. The highlights of the play are embodied in the women. As Mrs Higgins and Mrs Pearce, Elaine Noon and Joan White respectively are delightful, providing a calm dignity and reasoned response to Higgins (and, in one scene, to a flimsy set failure). Meaghan Stewart as Eliza Doolittle is stunning, willful, fierce and vulnerable; determined to be her own woman and not a creation of Higgins' to be put on a pedestal or shut in a museum. The audience is with her from the beginning, and contemporary concerns about women's rights in society and their treatment by those in traditional male professions merely accentuate our sympathies.

3. Arsenic and Old Lace, Canberra Repertory Society, Theatre 3: Joseph Kesselring's 1939 farcical black comedy is probably more alluded to than it is seen - most people have heard of the two seemingly sweet spinster sisters (Abby and Martha) who have taken to murdering gentleman lodgers and burying them in the basement. In Canberra Rep's production, the smiling assassins are the perfectly harmonious duo of Alice Ferguson (the acerbic grand dame who plays it straight) and Nikki-Lynne Hunter (who gives it a gloriously dizzy and ditsy turn). Their art critic nephew, Mortimer (a frenetic Jack Shanahan), has to deal with the increasingly odd events while trying to decide whether to marry the girl next-door (Natalie Waldron, who deserves more than yet another looks-in-lieu-of-character role). The cast is rounded out by Robbie Matthews as the barmy brother who thinks he is a former Aussie PM, Rob de Fries playing the murderous nephew brother whose plastic surgery conceals his identity, and Kayla Ciceran as the alcoholic accomplice who performed the operation.  Director Ian Hart acknowledges the script is outdated and attempts to modernise it by setting it in contemporary Queanbeyan, hence the Aussie PM reference rather than the original Teddy Roosevelt, and Jonathan is now meant to resemble Freddy Krueger rather than Boris Karloff (who actually performed the role in the original stage play). Not all of the updates land, however, such as Hart's awkward approach to gender diversity in casting or the Fawlty-Towers-esque anagram gag adds an unnecessarily creaky element to an otherwise excellent set (Andrew Kay once again with a deft and professional touch). The timing is uneven and efforts to overcompensate frequently fall flat in a desperate stretch for unobtainable laughs. 
4. Emerald City - Free Rain, ACTHUB: David Williams' 1987 satire of men behaving badly is all about the dialogue. We are harangued with debates about the merit of art - celluloid and literary - and the inherent differences between Sydney and Melbourne. Sydney, with its unsubstantiated promise of fulfilling dreams is the Emerald City of the title, while Melbourne is for urban intellectuals who are motivated by morals rather than money. If you want to hear 'characters' discuss these topics at witty and acerbic length, you could do worse. The actors all excel in the limited range their characters are constrained to demonstrate, and they deliver the dialogue with excellent clarity: every word could be heard, and there are an awful lot of them. Designers have clearly had nostalgic fun with set and costume (Cate Clelland and Fiona Leach), as it's all chic decor and keen angles combined with silk shirts and sharp suits, while director Anne Somes has softened the edges with sartorial metaphors - her subtle use of shoes is inspired. These people are unpleasant, but it is even more disturbing to acknowledge how 80's ambition seems tame in an environment where the bully boys have moved on from verbal sniping to willfully disregarding laws, contesting elections and invading countries. Who knew we would ever look back on the 'greed is good' mantra as the good old days.
5. Urinetown - Heart Strings Theatre Co., Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre - Yes, it’s a terrible title; yes, it’s truly awful subject matter; yes, it’s utterly ridiculous, but Urinetown is a lot of fun! The band are great; the voices are outstanding and the deceptively simple-looking choreography and staging are spectacular. I'm so glad that Ylaria Rogers has finally brought this dream to life. As a self-identifying non- musical theatre fan, I found this to be an unexpected surprise. Is there any other kind? It self-referentially (and reverentially) mocks the genre of musical theatre (particularly Broadway) and parodies specific musicals: I didn't get all the allusions but Les Mis, West Side Story and The Threepenny Opera were obvious even to me, and the song Run Freedom RUn, brought me out in a cold sweat with a flashback to singing Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat, but it could be any gospel-inspired show-tune. I also recognised the Our Town 'narrated by the stage-manager' trope, but my theatre-going companion didn't, and he loved it anyway. So there really is something for everyone. 

Friday Five: Best Theatre of 2021

A Slightly Isolated Dog perform Don Juan

Following on from last year, it was still difficult to see much theatre over the last twelve months, what with COVID shutting down shows with moments to go, and the arts industry in a perilous position. I did manage to see approximately 20 productions this year, however, so I am able to list my top five, with honourable mentions.

5 Best Theatre Productions I Saw in 2021 (in alphabetical order):

1. Animal Farm - shake & stir theatre co., The Playhouse: This is an absolutely fantastic interpretation of one of my favourite novels. People are falling over themselves to draw parallels between the Trump administration and the propaganda within the play, but it remains as firmly rooted as ever in Orwell’s concerns about communist doublespeak. The ensemble of actors portrays all the anthropomorphised animals with excellent gestures and expressionism, maintaining an outstanding physicality throughout. The set is bleak and brilliant in equal measure. Lighting and sound blend artfully into the overall presentation and despite the grim truths of the production, there are still laugh-out-loud moments - the hen rebellion is dealt with humour until it suddenly isn't, and the transformation of beasts into men and back again is wry and poignant. A teacher of year eights (13-14) said her class went to see it and were disappointed that it didn't feature real animals. I never thought I'd say this, but sometimes theatre is wasted on the young.



2. The Appleton Ladies Potato Race - Ensemble Theatre, The Playhouse: Written by Melanie Tait, this charming, heartfelt and positively affirming play provides five great roles for women and a story that is both specific and universal. The small country town of Appleton is disturbed when returning resident and new GP Penny Anderson (Sharon Millerchip) discovers that the famous Potato Race awards $1,000 prize money to men and $200 to women. As she takes on the organisers, the competitors and the spectators she comes face to face with those who want change and those who see no problems with the way things are. Director, Priscilla Jackman teases out all the niggles, nuances, resentments and rejections as the characters try to understand and accept each other for who they really are. It's as like a fusion of Made in Dagenham with The Dressmaker served with an added side of potato puns.
3. Don Juan/ Jekyll & Hyde - A Slightly Isolated Dog, Bicentennial Hall, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre: Pretending to be a famous French theatre troupe – ‘We are very famous’ ‘And very French’ – gives this Kiwi ensemble of five actors the perfect opportunity to have fun with flamboyant stereotypes and outrageous accents. Theirs is a modern and collaborative approach and they encourage photos, which they then later share through their social media channels - direct marketing for the non-traditional theatre goers. Through a mixture of audience interaction (nothing confronting), song, dance, visual interpretations (a boat tossed on a stormy sea is a cardboard box on a tarpaulin, shaken about by the audience), and a voice distortion box, one night we learn a different side to Don Juan from any we had previously known. Another night, they bring bring their seemingly chaotic but totally controlled performance style to the story of Jekyll and Hyde. All of the ensemble get a go at being the man with a dark side within (‘but he pushes it down’) donning a wig and glasses to play the evil alter-ego, but their physicality is more important than their props and they literally embody character acting. The sound and lighting production is excellent and the timing is superb – it takes a lot of hard work to make something look this effortless, and they are a joy to watch. Both this and the previous offering are conducted in traverse staging, drawing the audience into the unfolding drama in a non-confrontational manner; the performances are short and leave the audience laughing and wanting more – they are a triumph.



4. A German Life - The Gordon Frost Organisation, The Playhouse: Robyn Nevin delivers this fantastic script by Christopher Hampton as if she were born to play this role. Brunhilde Pomsel is an unassuming woman with good shorthand skills who, almost by chance, came to work in Joseph Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry. She survived the war and its aftermath (after five years in prison) and now, near the end of her life and in a nursing home, she recounts what she recalls of those days. The sparsely furnished room for an elderly resident throws up echoes of incarceration while projections of Nazi rallies, mass evacuations, ruined cities and concentration camps, are starkly presented in black and white on the walls for all to see. It is disturbingly intimate and asks us to question how much we think she knew (every time she denies knowledge, she stumbles over her words or questions her receding memory) and what would we honestly do in her situation. Neil Armfield directs one woman to capture our attention throughout the running time, and the play raises many questions about personal responsibility, communal culpability and the veracity of memory. She opines, "Nowadays, I don’t think people would be stupid enough to fall for the kind of nonsense we fell for. All that hot air, I don’t think you can get that past people anymore.” Well, the audience all felt uncomfortable at that moment - apart from the smug ones who missed the point.
5. Milk - The Street, The Street Theatre: I believe the theatre is a forum for sharing stories; exploring the past; questioning the present; and preparing for the future. ‘Milk’ does all of the above with superb staging and atmospheric sound and lighting featuring pivotal moments in liminal spaces. If Dylan Van Den Berg wrote this as an ode to his daughter, she is one very lucky human. We stand with you. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of the land on which we live.

Honourable Mentions to:

• Carpe DM - Canberra Youth Theatre, Gorman's House: A bold, thoughtful and intelligent new work as past of a project with Canberra Youth Theatre's Emerge Company. Devised works exploring contemporary themes can be a little self-indulgent, but the moments of honesty and reflection make up for the understandable cliches as young people think they are the first to ever have these thoughts.
• The Governor's Family - Canberra Repertory Society, Theatre 3: Plaudits to Rep for taking on this confronting work. It's not often a community theatre company with a traditionally conservative audience would program a play tackling themes of cultural appropriation, gender diversity, incest and political revolution.
• The Stranger - Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres and Bare Witness Theatre Company, Ralph Wilson Theatre: Outstanding work by Christopher Samuel Carroll to command the audience with a one-man show and deliver fresh insight to a work of existentialist nihilism. Considering I detest the original novel by Albert Camus, I was impressed beyond all expectations at the translation, staging and performance. Chapeau!

Christopher Samuel Carroll standing on a beach staring at the sea in a production of The Stranger

Friday Five: The Shows Go On

As mentioned in a previous post, I am trying to see as much theatre as I can, dependent on my other commitments, and I shall try to report back (in chronological order of viewing).

5 Shows Seen So Far This Year:

1. Animal Farm - shake & stir theatre co., The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre: This is an absolutely fantastic interpretation of one of my favourite novels. People are falling over themselves to draw parallels between the Trump administration and the propaganda within the play - but it remains as firmly rooted as ever in Orwell's concerns about communist doublespeak. The ensemble of actors portray all the anthropomorphosised animals with excellent gestures and expressionism, maintaining an outstanding physicality throughout. The set is bleak and brilliant in equal measure. Lighting and sound blend artfully into the overall presentation and despite the grim truths of the production, there are still laugh-out-loud moments - the hen rebellion is dealt with humour until it suddenly isn't, and the transformation of beasts into men and back again is wry and poignant. A teacher of year eights (13-14) said her class went to see it and were disappointed that it didn't feature real animals. I never thought I'd say this, but sometimes theatre is wasted on the young.
2. Don Juan - A Slightly Isolated Dog, Bicentennial Hall, Queanbeyan: Pretending to be a famous French theatre troupe - 'We are very famous' 'And very French' gives this Kiwi ensemble of five actors the perfect opportunity to have fun with flamboyant stereotypes and outrageous accents. Theirs is a modern and collaborative approach and they encourage photos, which they then later share through their social media channels - direct marketing for the non-traditional theatre goers. Through a mixture of audience interaction (nothing confronting), song, dance, visual interpretations (a boat tossed on a stormy sea is a cardboard box on a tarpaulin, shaken about by the audience), and a voice distortion box, we learn a different side to Don Juan from any we had previously known. It is engaging and great fun for a cold mid-week night, reminding us why we need to get back into performance spaces.

3. A German Life - The Gordon Frost Organisation, The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre: Robyn Nevin delivers this fantastic script by Christopher Hampton as if she were born to play this role. Brunhilde Pomsel is an unassuming woman with good shorthand skills who, almost by chance, came to work in Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry. She survived the war and its aftermath (after five years in prison) and now, near the end of her life and in a nursing home, she recounts what she recalls of those days. The sparsely furnished room for an elderly resident throws up echoes of incarceration while projections of Nazi rallies, mass evacuations, ruined cities and concentration camps, are starkly presented in black and white on the walls for all to see. It is disturbingly intimate and asks us to question how much we think she knew (every time she denies knowledge, she stumbles over her words or questions her receding memory) and what would we honestly do in her situation. Neil Armfield directs one woman to capture our attention throughout the running time, and the play raises many questions about personal responsibility, communal culpability and the veracity of memory. She opines, "Nowadays, I don’t think people would be stupid enough to fall for the kind of nonsense we fell for. All that hot air, I don’t think you can get that past people anymore.” Well, the audience all felt uncomfortable at that moment - apart from the smug ones who missed the point.
4. Jekyll & Hyde - A Slightly Isolated Dog, Bicentennial Hall, Queanbeyan: And we're back for more from A Slightly Isolated Dog who bring their seemingly chaotic but totally controlled performance style to the story of Jekyll and Hyde. All of the ensemble get a go at being the man with a dark side within ('but he pushes it down') donning a wig and glasses to play the evil alter-ego, but their physicality is more important than their props and they literally embody character acting. The sound and lighting production is excellent and the timing is superb - it takes a lot of hard work to make something look this effortless, and they are a joy to watch. Both this and the previous offering are conducted in traverse staging, drawing the audience into the unfolding drama in a non-confrontational manner; the performances are short and leave the audience laughing and wanting more - they are a triumph.
5. Little Girls Alone in the Woods - Canberra Youth Theatre, Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre: The Bacchae by Euripides is an ancient Greek drama which has captured imaginations for years, and lent itself to many interpretations as playwrights, authors, composers and directors seek to assign meaning and moral to a tale of violence, cynicism, divination and control. Among others Joe Orton, Caryl Churchill, Ingmar Bergman, Brian De Palma, Wole Soyinka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustav Holst, Thomas Mann and Henrik Ibsen have pondered the dichotomy between protection and imprisonment. Morgan Rose views the cult and legend of Dionysus through a feminist lens as her play suggests that young women are disappearing into the wilds of the woods to cavort and rebel against the confines of the patriarchy. Luke Rogers directs this version with a large cast of varying ability, and he is adept at playing to their strengths. Some of the ensemble work is excellent as the actors work together with both movement and voice, but when they try to stand out and compete against each other, it becomes discordant and incomprehensible. Whether they are lounging about in a study group preparing for exams and completing assignments on their laptops, or play fighting in pyjamas with pillows, they portray the messiness of youth that some adults try to streamline and corral. Change, transition, adolescence, questions and exploration can be uncomfortable for those who want to control, such as the police force who issue tagging bracelets that all females must wear for their own safety, to prevent them from going astray. The staging is bold with a man-made metal cage-like structure hinting of capture and confinement from a prison to a zoo, and as the action spills off the set into the audience space it suggests that our wilderness could either be part of the problem or a solution. Sound and lights are incorporated well to highlight some of the more confrontational aspects of isolation and power imbalance, although the musical ending doesn't pack the punch that perhaps it hoped it would. In general, this is a highly promising piece of work that delivers a deliberate sense of unease.

Friday Five: Five (More) Theatre Outings

I have been on more theatrical excursions of late, so here is a brief summary of some of the shows I have seen:

Dracula by shake & stir theatre co

1. Hamlet at The Phoenix - advertised as 'A staged reading of an edited Hamlet by William Shakespeare', this is Cameron Thomas and a group of his mates reading sections of an extremely abridged Hamlet in a pub. As one would expect, there are drinks between acts, which means things get a little loose towards the end, but as the audience do too and pretty much everyone dies anyway (you can't possibly call that a spoiler!), it seems to fit the theme. Some of the actors are much better than others (inasmuch as some of them can actually act), and some sound like they are reading it for the first time - which, they might well be, as rumour has it that someone pulled out on the day of the performance. Live music from Cameron Ewens on keyboard throughout keeps things moving along nicely, and the actors swap characters along with their hats, which provides some humorous moments. There isn't a lot of depth or complexity (Fortinbras and the notion of restoration of order to Denmark is entirely absent) but it is fun and fast and not at all furious.
2. Dracula produced by shake & stir theatre co. at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre - Shake and Stir once again bring sumptuous production values to the stage. The design and technical elements are faultless with a multipurpose revolving set and truly atmospheric sound and lighting. The adaptation honours the original book, eschewing some of the more schlocky aspects of later incarnations. While the darkness is ever-present, however, the fear and tension is absent, which may be because Old Creepy Dracula (Nick Skubij) seemed to morph into The Terminator, and I kept expecting him to say, "I'll be back."
3. The Iliad Out Loud & Abridged at The Street - Three people (William Zappa; Nick Byrne; Chrissie Shaw) read an adapted version (by William Zappa) of Homer's Iliad over the space of nine hours (that's three hours a night). They don't interact with each other or the audience, and harangue us with details of ships and battles, misogynistic Gods and rampant masculinity, while percussionist Gary France hits things in the background. They all have beautiful voices and bring out the poetry of the repetitious language, which was always meant to be spoken aloud rather than read in isolation. There is a strong appeal to school groups and university scholars, of which there are probably many in Canberra, who want to feel worthy. This is theatre for radio; best listened to while doing chores about the house.
4. The Play That Goes Wrong produced by Lunchbox Theatrical Productions Pty Ltd at The Canberra Theatre Centre - The fast-paced, critically well-timed production provides a really enjoyable night out. There are laughs a-plenty in the first act, which feels like comedy; fewer in the second, which feels like farce. Strangely enough, I've never enjoyed watching women trying to upstage each other while fighting in their underwear (it's just not funny, although many men seem to think so), but the stage crew logistics were superb, and the risk-assessment necessary is mind-blowing. The acting is all highly-stylised and unsubtle (co-writer Henry Lewis credits The Art of Coarse Acting, Monty Python and Laurel and Hardy, so that's hardly a surprise) and the story (of who murdered whom and why) becomes increasingly irrelevant as theatre tropes come flying from all directions, along with the props and set itself. 
5. A View from the Bridge produced by Canberra Repertory Society at Theatre 3 - Director Chris Baldock gives Arthur Miller's classic the 'bigger-than-Ben-Hur' treatment with a set that upstages itself, built from pallets and netting to represent the wharves where Eddie works. It is superbly lit and dominates the action (too much in places, where more intimacy would be welcome) but is awkward at times with actors struggling up and down gangplanks and crashing through flimsy wood in an alarming manner. The young leads are excellent and the relationships between the immigrant Italian bothers Rodolpho (Alexander Chubb) and Marco (Chris Zuber) are compelling and affecting. As Catherine, Karina Hudson is delightfully fresh and conflicted as she struggles to understand her uncle and aunt, and their attitudes to her burgeoning maturity. Less impressive is the central relationship between Eddie (Knox Peden) and Beatrice (Karen Vickery), which is too combative and lacks any hint of the warmth and affection Beatrice claims to miss. Nuances of text and movement are swamped by over-gesticulations, shouting and the chorus of (largely ineffective) actors who remain on stage throughout, patronising the audience's intelligence by miming the action. The production is bold, brave and bombastic, but bigger isn't always better. 

The Play That Goes Wrong by Lunchbox Theatrical Productions