Review: Cock

Cock
MTC
13 February 2013
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 22 March
mtc.com.au

Cock immediately demands attention and begs for jokes that are too easy. Yes, this Cock satisfies and I'd go for the ride again. Now let's move on.

First seen in 2009, the title of UK writer Mike Bartlett’s play brings expectations before a word is spoken. Some are met and more are dismissed as far more than cock comes to play.

Twenty-something John has been with his partner for seven years. On what seems to be a regular break, he meets someone else and falls in love. What causes the most shock for the scorned partner is that John’s new love is a woman. With a definite assumption that a choice must be made between the two and that John must define himself by the gender of his lover (as declared by the father who  comes to dinner), the tug of love is on.

While trying to make gender a non-issue in love, Bartlett’s writing dips (and occasionally plunges) into the stereotypes it’s trying to avoid: girly woman want romance in Paris and babies, gay men act like girls. But this is what makes this work so engaging. With neither lover being likeable enough to care who wins John (who’s neither a cock nor cocky), it forces its audience to question what’s going on rather than cheer for a winner and a happy ending.

But enough of the writing. It’s always great to see good newish writing on our commercial stages, but it’s more exciting to see new realisations of these works.

Leticia Caceres’s direction is exquisite and she’s created a production very different from the ones that brought attention to this play. She lets her actors (Tom Conroy, Angus Grant, Sophie Ross and Tony Rickards) bring themselves to their characters as she deftly controls the dark humour to build the so-awkward tension to its inevitable breathless breaking point. And she works with her co-creators to make something that Bartlett may never have imagined as he wrote it.

There’s Missy Higgins’s original music adding the emotional pull that’s not in the script, but it’s Marg Howell’s design (with Rachel Burke’s lighting) that brings so much to the stage and invents a world far from the propless bare stage asked for in the script. The Fairfax’s semi-circle stage is covered with huge white pillows that highlight the brightly mis-matched costumes while looking part-giant-bed and part-padded-cell. It makes for unstable ground that, as they are moved, support and cover, become walls, define arenas and continue to confirm that Howell is one of the best designers on Earth.

Cock's not as confronting, and more conservative, than as its title implies. All puns intended, it’s a softer, more gentle and far funnier work, which might have been a very different play if it weren’t called Cock.


Photo by Jeff Busby.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Out of the Water

Out of the Water
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
7 February 2014
Red Stitch Theatre
to 8 March
redstitch.net

Red Stitch have opened the year with some of the best performances I've seen there.

Out of the Water is by US writer Brook Berman. With parallels to The Odessy, with its journey home disrupted by sirens, it captures the unease of early middle age that's fuelled by the palpable pain of what's missing or what might have been.

Polly (Kate Cole) is in her later 30s and leaves New York for a funeral, one of her dead mum's husbands, where she meets Graham (Brett Cousins), her nearly-forgotten step brother, who never left the same conservative Illinois town. They're not related and there are drunken sparks, but Polly doesn't expect Graham to turn up in NY or that his 17-year-old daughter with a Jesus crush, Cat (Emily Milledge), would follow.

With a story ostensibly about family and fidelity, there's fear of movie-of-week melodrama, but it's quickly dismissed as director Nadia Tass embraces the overt theatricality of the work and ensures a tone that lets the humour be dark and the subtext speak loudly, as the lovers say everything except what they want to.

The lighting design (Jason Bovaird) creates texture and more spaces than the design, but this cast could perform in a concrete bunker and still make us care.

Too often at Red Stitch, actors put their performances before their characters; not in this case. Cole and Cousins make the attraction between these broken and not-especially-likeable people felt as much as it's seen, and their toeing of the not-incest-but-not-Facebook-status line makes for a tension that's only momentarily broken with frantic – and hot and honest – sex.

Their contrast is Cat, who wants to bring her dad home but gets caught up in the excitement of being in NY, finding a perfect first kiss and wondering if falling in love is as wonderful as ice cream. Milledge (who last year came to attention in The Rabble's Story of O and Room of Regret) finds endless hope in this teenager who knows she should be hurting and understands what her dad is going through far more than Graham does himself.

With the year starting with such complex and complete performances from a cast who work with an awareness that makes them feel like they really are family, I'm excited to see what Red Stitch  – with new Artistic Director, Ella Caldwell – bring us next.

This was on aussietheatre.com.

Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

Review: Evolution, Revolution and the Mail Order Bride

Evolution, Revolution and the Mail Order Bride
8 February 2014
fortyfive downstairs
to 16 February
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Performer–composer–singer–writer Zulya Kamalova's Evolution, Revolution and the Mail Order Bride is three stories about three women that explore how the suppression of the feminine affects evolution, a revolution and a mail order bride.

Kamalova is a remarkable talent. Her voice is like an indulgent homemade caramel that no one can say no to, she lets her characters be their unique selves, and her music made me feel a bit like it was the 1920s and she was contemporary of Kurt Weill. Her composition is more personal and broader in style to Weill (and she writes her own lyrics), but he was the first composer I thought of when I heard her four piece orchestra (Erkki Veltheim, Charlotte Jacke, Justin Marshall and Donald Stewart).

Director Maude Davey has brought as much meaning as possible to the piece by working with a complex design (Adrienne Chisholm) that sprawls around the fortyfive downstairs carven like a lost op shop in a forest and creates some mesmerising visuals with projections (Michael Carmody) and lighting (Katie Sfetkidis), but, for all that is beautiful and complex about it, there's little sense of story in the interwoven lives.

Telling us what happened isn't a story. Telling us what you believe isn't a story. This work seems so intent on being a lesson (that's explained on the poster and told to people who are already on side), that it's difficult to find a way to care about and connect to the characters and their lives because their plot is so controlled.

Kamalova enchants with her songs and music, but maybe there's enough character, emotion and heart in every song to share what needs to be told without the explanatory monologues.

Photo by Sarah Walker.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Mini review: Special Victim

Special Victim
Ash Flanders
14 February 2014
Hares and Hyenas
to 22 February
facebook.com

What do you do if you're scared you won't get enough Valentine's Day attention? Ash Flanders invited a bookshop full of friends, relatives and strangers to spend the evening with him to avoid seeming needy.

After the overflowing audience love of his first solo show, Negative Energy Inc, he got the gang (musician Dave Barklay and director Stephen Nicolazzo) back together to make a show for Adelaide's Feast festival last year. The result was Special Victim and Melbourne finally gets to cut that special love heart into their flesh this and next weekend at the ever-lovely Hares and Hyeneas bookshop in Fitzroy.

While Negative Energy Inc was about coping with a career that wasn't swimming in the big pool, things have changed for our Ash, but that hasn't changed his attitude or his obsession with special victims: those of the Law and Order kind and those who bring it on themselves.

It's not as revelatory as his first show, but there are still songs, wigs and stories about life with Heather (mum) and Daniel (partner) – and there are trips to Geelong and Adelaide that are as frightening as trips to Geelong and Adelaide can be.

And it is Ash, so it's fucking hilarious.

And he wears a white, be-sparkled jump suit and stilettos. What more do you need to know? Apart from it may be his last performance before being Hedda Gabbler at Belvoir Street in June.

February review previews

Cock

MTC

13 February 2013

Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne

to 22 March

mtc.com.au

Cock immediately demands attention and begs for jokes that are too easy. Yes, this Cock satisfies and I'd go for the ride again. Now let's move on.

First seen in 2009, the title of UK writer Mike Bartlett’s play brings expectations before a word is spoken. Some are met and more are dismissed as far more than cock come to play.

Twenty-something John has been with his partner for seven years. On what seems to be a regular break, he meets someone else and falls in love. What causes the most shock for the scorned partner is that John’s new love is a woman. With a definite assumption that a choice must be made between the two and that John must define himself by the gender of his lover (as declared by the father who  comes to dinner), the tug of love is on.

...

The full review is on AussieTheatre.com and will be here in a few days.

Evolution, Revolution and the Mail Order Bride

8 February 2014

fortyfive downstairs

to 16 February

fortyfivedownstairs.com

Performer–composer–singer–writer Zulya Kamalova's Evolution, Revolution and the Mail Order Bride is three stories about three women that explore how the suppression of the feminine affects evolution, a revolution and a mail order bride.

Kamalova is a remarkable talent. Her voice is like an indulgent homemade caramel that no one can say no to, she lets her characters be their unique selves, and her music made me feel a bit like it was the 1920s and she was contemporary of Kurt Weill. 

...

The full review is on AussieTheatre.com and will be here in a few days.

Out of the Water

Red Stitch Actors Theatre

7 February 2014

Red Stitch Theatre

to 8 March

redstitch.net

Red Stitch have opened the year with some of the best performances I've seen there.

Out of the Water is by US writer Brook Berman. With parallels to The Odessy, with its journey home disrupted by sirens, it captures the unease of early middle age that's fuelled by the palpable pain of what's missing or what might have been.

....

The full review is onaussietheatre.com and will be here in a few days.

Radio: RRR Theatre in Melbourne

I had a chat on RRR this morning about Melbourne's theatre scene.

Along with our lovely host Lauren Rosewarne, the panel was Caitlin Dullard (the new GM at La Mama), Tom Gutteridge (AD of Union House Theatre) and myself.

We talked about how theatre in Melbourne is unique, the impact of social media and whether reviews do impact on audience numbers.

Here's a link to have a listen (it starts at about 1:05)

http://ondemand.rrr.org.au/player/128/201402120900

MIDSUMMA: The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

MIDSUMMA
The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
Dirty Pretty Theatre and Theatre Works
31 January 2014
Theatre Works
to 8 February
theatreworks.org.au

If The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is glimpse at how filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder saw women, well, let's just say he was a dick. But Dirty Pretty Theatre have re-imangined Fassbinder's 1972 cult-favourite film, transporting the translated film script to now and bringing a new level of camp and understanding (and shoe porn) to what's often known as "that German lesbian S&M film".

Petra Van Kant (Luisa Hastings Edge) is a mid-30s successful fashion designer who's recently divorced, again, and is living in an expensive apartment with her assistant Marlene (Joanne Trentini), who silently dotes on Petra and is rewarded with atrocious treatment, the worse the better. When friend Sidonie (Nikki Shields) introduces Petra to 20-something Karin (Anna May Samson), Petra is instantly besotted and offers to create a modelling career for the very beautiful young woman – if she moves into Petra's flat and bed. And when Petra's at her lowest, Gabi, her teenage daughter (Fantine Banulski), and Valerie, her mother (Uschi Felix), come to celebrate Petra's birthday.

It's a ridiculous story about picture-perfect women who act on every whim of emotion, change their empty little minds in seconds, care only for personal satisfaction, and value themselves based on their sexual attractiveness and the power it gives them.

But this production isn't a copy of the film.

Director Gary Abrahams has turned up the camp and the melodrama to off-the-scale levels, but pulled away far enough to find a focus and distance that highlights the extremity while creating a genuine and disconcerting emotional connection to the characters.

There's little to connect to in the script – Fassbinder's women are as dimensional as a ripped out page of a fashion mag – but it's amazing what happens when the insubstantial is put into the hands of very good actors. For all their histrionics and external selfishness, the cast find a truth and honesty in their characters. By bringing them to the stage with so much more than was written – and never playing them as clowns – it's easier to laugh, or despair, at their emptiness because we know there's a world of hurt and frustration behind the behaviour.

But Abrahams has not gone so far as asking us to feel sorry for the rich beautiful white women, just to see them as more than the world they inhabit and to see this story as a reflection of how women and this world are often still seen.

And the stage creation of this world is something indeed. Romanie Harper's design – which creates even more space in Theatre Works by running diagonally – nods to the film and creates a locked-in apartment for Petra, where objects are chosen for their beauty/value rather than if they belong.

But it's Chloe Greeves's costumes that define the world of high fashion, endless money and mirror-fed narcissism. There were times when the frocks made me feel very fat and old, but I gently slapped myself for thinking so and went back to drooling at the unattainable pretty.

From Sidone's off-white, wide legged, bottom-defining pants with an emerald green silk shirt with three-quarter sleeves and peek of breast, to the ribboned-laced back of Karin's floral cocktail dress, to Valerie's over-jewed handbag and body-hiding sweeps of velvet, the detail of this design makes this world real – cheap knock-offs would have made it a joke. As all tower in glorious and very expensive shoes that force them to turn sideways as they step into the sunken living room, it's a world of accepted, welcome and chosen pain and restriction.

And who care's if you get to wear those shoes! Sure, I was wearing mock-Birk slip ons that make walking a breeze, but I felt the toe-bleeding, arch-aching, misshapen-foot joy of every step Petra and her women took.

Photo by Sarah Walker

MIDSUMMA: Standing on Ceremony

MIDSUMMA
Standing on Ceremony: the gay marriage plays
Ellis Productions
24 January 2014
Chapel off Chapel
to 9 February
midsumma.org.au

Standing on Ceremony: the gay marriage plays is an American series of nine short plays about marriage. No one coming along to see it needs convincing about marriage equality, which leaves it as a celebration of love that's as funny, frustrating and heart breaking as any relationship.

With live music from David Ellis, Laura Burzcott and Karl Lewis, the mood is set and changed between each piece, and Justin Stephens's design of moveable white boxes allows for projections that change while ensuring that all are part the bigger story.

With three directors and a cast of eight (including two of the directors), highlights include London Mosquitoes, a eulogy by Moises Kaufman (The Laramie Project) performed by Michael Veitch and directed by Wayne Pearn; My Husband by Paul Rudnick where a mother is so excited by New York's new laws that she doesn't care if her son doesn't even have a boyfriend (directed by Russell Fletcher and performed by Luka Jacka and Helen Ellis); and Strange Fruit by Neil LaBute where Spencer McLaren and Brett Whittingham and, director, Pearn overcome LaBute's dash to tragedy (and title appropriation that doesn't sit as well as it should).

Pia Miranda and Olivia Hogan perform the two plays about woman, which, despite being by different writers and performed delightfully, may as well have been about the same couple and brought attention to the lesser representation of queer female voices.

Perhaps it's a call for Australian writers to create the next series of plays that represent and celebrate the diversity of queer relationships and the issues faced and overcome on the road to equality in Australia.

This was on AussieTheatre.com