Review: Cherry, Cherry

Cherry, Cherry: A Dining Room Tale
A is for Atlas
28 February 2014
Neda's house in Northcote
to 16 March 2014
aisforatlas.org.au

Neda Rahmani tells stories about her family. Her stories aren't extraordinary. Good stories rarely are. But they are honest and open and share the good times and the bad.

What is extraordinary is that she tells her stories in her home around a dinner table that's filled with strangers and friends who have come along for a night of theatre. Cherry, Cherry was first experienced in 2011 and if, like me, you missed it and heard that it was unmissable, book today and hope there's a a spare seat or two.

Neda was born in Iran and grew up in Melbourne. Her father is Persian and her mother is Maritian. She asks her guests if her voice sounds Australian. It does. She's a performer and percussionist and lives in the Northcote house her parents bought. It's a great home with a kitchen made for having guests and a garden that grows a lot of the food she shares with guests. The last time she held this dinner in Melbourne, she lived in a loft in Thornbury. She's also hosted dinners in other suburbs and in Sydney, Canberra and Perth.

The guests (there's no audience here) are welcomed by the A is for Atlas team, who conceived this experience, help cook, serve drinks and ensure that no one is left awkwardly in a corner. From pre-dinner drinks to a delicious meal of lentils, rice, vegies and salad (the only animal is prawn, which is easily refused), and after dinner coffee and biscuits, Neda talks to her guests.

She talks about having a father who wasn't able to be close to his children, she shares a recipe for lemon chilli (that left me tearing up in all the good ways), she says how she was scared to wear her usual short costume at the Speigeltent because she was meeting a cousin, she talks about some of her relative's reactions to her not being married to her partner, she shows us Iranian and Mauritian drums that look identical but in one country women can't touch them, she shows us what she does with sick bags on planes, she hands around photos and a knitted alligator puppet, and she sings, plays and dances.

Her stories are not extraordinary. They are as ordinary as yours or mine, and that's what makes the night such an extraordinary experience.

The barriers are dismantled and any concept of theatre or performance disappears as easily as the first drink. It's about sharing and talking and finding connections that we didn't know existed.

Being an opening night, I recognised faces but I sat next to a retired couple who had read about Cherry, Cherry in The Age and booked their tickets because it looked different and fun. They told me that they hate going to the theatre if they know what it's going to be like and don't see the point if you don't want to talk about it afterwards, and tell your friends to go so that you can talk about it with them. They also drove from the coast for the experience and were thrilled that they'd done so.

Who needs reviews when you have an audience like this.

Come to dinner. You will feel welcome and you will meet and talk to people you didn't know. How often do you leave a theatre foyer having made new friends?

There are dinners next weekend and, if you're in Sydney, Neda's coming to the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in August.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Voyage

Voyage: The Actual and Properly Truthful Account of the Emigration of Thomas Pender
A is for Atlas
21 June 2013
fortyfivedownstairs
to 30 June
aisforatlas.org.au

Thomas Pender was 23 when he took his wife and baby on a dangerous 126-day sea voyage to Australia. People died on the way, they couldn't land in another country because for fear of disease and were quarantined on their arrival in Australia. A boat person arrives.

In 1883, 23 year old Thomas Pender took his wife and baby on a dangerous 126-day sea voyage from England to Australia. People died on the way, on a detour to South Africa for food, they weren't allowed to leave the boat for fear of disease, and on arrival in Sydney they were quarantined for two weeks to ensure the on-board fevers were kept on board. A forefather arrives.

Pender kept a diary of those 126 days. His hand writing is immaculate and precise. His diary is still with us and his great great grandaughter, director Tamara Searle, has made exquisite theatre about their respective journeys through history.

The bare boards of fortyfivedownstairs seem like they were created to be the floor for this show. The performers use every part of the space like it was designed by them, and with only a few suitcases, trunks, costume props and an overhead projector, they create a journey that's as fearful, hopeful, claustrophobic and agoraphobic as a sea journey to the other side of the world can be. And the overhead projector is used in ways that create more emotion and atmosphere than any of the squillion dollar effects currently seen in Melbourne's bigger theatres.

The ensemble (Steve Brown, Kate Parkins, Shannon Quinn, Jon Richards, Brook Sykes
and Leone White) begin by addressing the performers' expectations of the audience and the audience's expectations of the work (yes, I always wonder if anyone is going to take their clothes off and if I'm sitting next to that person's mum). This gently and delightfully brings the audience into the space, lets us get to know the performers, and ensures that their collaboration is as much of the story as Pender's diary. Then, starting with Pender's diary, they play the on-board characters and themselves, while questioning their interpretation of the writing and discussing the truth and fiction of facts.

If we were born here, most of us are a descendent of someone who came to Australia from another country, and maybe if we made this kind of connection to their journey, we'd welcome any and everyone who hopes to escape something by joining us here.

But, as we wonder if Searle's great great grandfather would recognise his own story, this work never screams or even articulates its underlying message. It's much more complex than that and its exploration is theatrical, mesmerising and human.

Voyage is one of the most beautiful and unexpectedly moving works I've seen this year. Its story is so personal for the director, but told in way that ensures that it's our story, no matter when or how we came to Australia.

This will be on AussieTheatre next week.

Photo by Justin Batchelor.

Review: Heracles High 5

Heracles High 5
A is for Atlas
23 June 2010
Meat Market

A is for Atlas are another Melbourne independent company who are dedicated to exploring their unique theatrical voice. In Heracles High 5, director Xan Coleman and his team explore the nature of contemporary heroes and heroism and if we expect far too much of those we hold in esteem.

The laminated safety instruction cards and the airline hanger-like proportions of the gorgeous Meat Market set the scene for the Heracles High 5 trip. But our plane is actually a TV studio and we're ready for the filming of "Green and Gold Live". With screens that tell us when to applaud, sigh, cheer and declare OMG, and a host as enigmatic as Jules (Wes Snelling), it doesn't matter that the plane/TV studio metaphor seems a bit odd because the band is playing, Wes is singing and we've met super hot Heracles.

Heracles looks a lot like Michael Hutchence and sings like Nick Cave, so he could only be more of an Aussie rock hero if he donned hot pats and sang "I Should Be So Lucky". The lyrics were difficult to decipher, but there was enough about diggers and Lleyton Hewitt to let us know what the songs were about.

With an interview by Jules and questions from the 'audience', we learn that spunky Heracles has been every hero since his days in Ancient Greece, including Napoleon, Chuck Berry, John Cleese and a member of the Third Reich – and he's sick of it. He's sick of repeating the his five labours,  he's fed up with Zeus (dad) interfering and had enough of being an idle idol, so he's not denying news report that he's become a government mercenary.

Up to now, Heracles High 5 was so much fun and so original, that any lack of narrative drive was irrelevant.  Looking at the hero versus entertainer and the why folk who haven't done that much get the same label as those who define our universal myths and archetypes is enough to get our brains ticking over.  Then the plane crashed and Heracles had to shovel a lot of poo.  Literally.

The second half takes place on Christmas Island where Heracles repeats his labours and I have no idea why. Heracles ended the same bloke as he was at the beginning, so the labours were a waste of his time. Perhaps what was missing was the human in the hero. Heracles was part human, but this hero was cold, grumpy and dull. Sure he was good looking enough to pick up anyone, but one reason contemporary heroes earn their title is because they are likeable, because they are human.  While Heracles remained unapproachable, grouchy, short tempered and bored with everything, there was not reason for anyone to care what happened to him and I would have flown away without him.


This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.