Review: Nassim

Nassim 
Arts Centre Melbourne
23 January 2018
Fairfax Studio
to 28 January
artscentremelbourne.com.au

Nassim Soleimanpour

 روزی روزگاری

Nassim Soleimanpour's new work Nassim opened at the Edinburgh Festival last year and we are so lucky to have it at Arts Centre Melbourne this week. He wrote White Rabbit Red Rabbit , which is all anyone who has seen Rabbit needs to know.

Thirty-seven-year-old Soleimanpour is from Iran. He now lives in Berlin and is best known for his 2010 White Rabbit Red Rabbit. A performer only performs it once. They get the script when they walk onto the stage in front of the audience. He wrote it in Iran and posted it to the world because he couldn't get a passport. For once, the world – at least our theatre world – listened and it's been translated from Farsi into 25 languages and been performed all over the place by famously known, respected and/or loved performers. The author finally saw a production in 2013, in Brisbane.

As the Rabbit experience is so dependent on performer and audience discovering the text at the same time, writing anything about it is almost unfair.

Nassim is more developed than Rabbit but it is similar in that the performer gets the script when they walk onto the stage. And saying anything about it is almost unfair.

But it's wonderful. I'm smiling as I think about it.

It's about family and home and language and story and how little it takes to feel connected and dismiss any notions of difference.

And never think that it's gimmick theatre. The structure is remarkable and the emotion is real.

On opening night, performer Alison Bell was as nervous as is expected, and much of the experience is being with the performer as they become comfortable with the audience – who also relax and realise that they are part of the experience and not faceless watchers in the dark. As the performer begins to enjoy the experience of having no idea of what's about to happen, the audience switch from being so grateful that they are not on stage to, maybe, wishing that they were.

Especially as there is another person making the performance: Nassim Soleimanpour.

You've missed Alison Bell and Benjamin Law, but Charlie Pickering, Nakkiah Lui, Catherine McClements and Denise Scott are on for the rest of the week.

This is theatre that connects and celebrates and a mini community is formed from each performance; it's our shared experience with the performer and playwright. I know that sometime this year I will meet a stranger who was there, and we will become friends as we discover we were both saw this performance and begin to talk about it.

Review: Betrayal

Betrayal
MTC presents the State Theatre Company of SA production
29 August 2015
The Sumner
to 3 October
mtc.com.au

Betrayal. MTC. Photo by Shane Reid

Following seasons in Adelaide and Canberra, Geordie Brookman’s production of Harold Pinter’s 1978 play Betrayal has opened at the MTC. Inspired by the writer’s own relationships, it’s a remarkable exploration of betrayal from the irrelevant to the heartbreaking, and the personal to the professional.

It opens with Emma (Alison Bell) and Jerry (Nathan O’Keefe) meeting at a bar after their extra marital relationship had ended and she reveals that her marriage to Jerry’s best friend Robert (Mark Saturno) is over. Told in reverse chronological order (mostly), it leaves the audience knowing more than the characters do, so instead of asking “what happens next?”, they can ask “why did they behave like that?”. And without the need for exposition, the writer and characters are able to be completely in the moment and free to be silent.

The transfer to the bigger Sumner Theatre results in a loss of the intimacy that magnifies the relationships on the stage (go for the closer seats) – and makes Geoff Cobham’s clothes-rack revolve design feel more contrived than natural – but the power of the held back performances still reaches the back corners.

The gut kick of Betrayal lies in understanding people who never say what they mean and whose need for control and appearance is more driving than any real love that might be there. This isn’t a wild romance about heartbreak and selfless love, it’s about the far-easier selfish choices that feel uncomfortably familiar.

As the truth of Pinter’s writing is in the subtext of his in-the-text pauses, it becomes clearer when the performances are pulled back and the emotion lives in the emptiness between the characters.

Brookman’s direction ensures that this empty space is wide and clear. Touch – and the emotion connection it represents – is kept to the ritual of a handshake or an hello kiss, or the necessity of sexual desire. And as each scene answers questions to the one that came before, the cast show the moments that set up new barriers and closed down moments of connection.

O’Keefe’s Jerry starts closed and bitter and becomes more open and relatively innocent as time moves backwards, as Saturno’s Robert starts closed and angry and becomes more trusting and content. But it’s Bell’s Emma who holds the heart of the work.

Bell’s contained performance is staggering in its depth and quiet power. She holds back every emotion and reaction that Emma wants to scream but never will. She lets Emma know her weaknesses and accept that she will betray and be betrayed to keep the appearance of happiness, even if no one is happy.

The adultery in Betrayal is never what really hurts the characters or breaks them apart. It’s the little moments about table clothes or broken down speedboats that build into a silence that lets people choose to betray themselves and everything they’ve worked for and wanted rather than acknowledge every betrayal they’ve faced and committed. If Pinter tells us anything, it’s listen to the moments of silence.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Tribes

Tribes
Melbourne Theatre Company
9 February 2012
Sumner Theatre
to 14 March

Heartfelt and honest performances from a wonderful cast are reason enough to see the MTC's Tribes.

With three extravert, attention-seeking adult children living with their over-achieving parents, there's rarely a quiet moment in this house. Dad (Brian Lipson) is a writer and a never-wrong academic, Mum (Sarah Peirse) is trying to write a detective novel, daughter (Julia Grace) is trying to be an opera singer and son 1 (David Paterson) is working on a thesis. It'd be a bohemian middle class paradise, if it weren't for the constant arguing. The only one who misses out on a daily tiff is son 2, Billy, (Luke Watts), who's deaf.

When Billy meets Sylvia (Alison Bell), his view of his family and his place in our hearing-centric society changes. Sylvia has deaf parents and was brought up with Sign as her first language. She works for a deaf events company and is gradually losing her hearing and her connection to the non-deaf world. As Billy learns Sign and meets a community he'd avoid in an attempt to be normal, he sees how much he has missed and how much his deafness is seen as the centre of his personality.

The dynamic and internal-rules of family life are captured perfectly and it's an awkward joy to watch them argue over the likes of orange juice or if it's Wagner or Terry Pratchett. Lipson and Peirse are especially irresistible as a couple who show their deep love through fighting, and Bell brings the inner hell and dilemma of her character into every moment of Sylvia's smiling politeness.

British writer Nina Raine's script soars when we're caught in the emotions and dilemmas of these complex people, but, as Billy and Sylvia force change, the metaphorical and literal deafness begins to dominate and the author's voice butts in to lecture.

Sign is as complex as any other language, the Deaf community is as hierarchical and inbred as the thearte community and society generally isn't brilliant at dealing with people with different abilities. While loving that often un-spoken issues are the base of a story, but they'd be as clear without the rhetoric and ongoing metaphors, which would let the story and its characters more free to grab us by our hearts.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Jeff Busby

Review: The Ugly One

The Ugly One
MTC
27 May 2010
The MTC Theatre, Lawler

What would you do if you were told you were ugly? Not homely or plain or "not my type", but so unacceptably ugly that even your beloved can only look at your left eye.

Marius von Mayenburg's The Ugly One is far more than a deliciously dark glance at superficiality, but draws its audience close with the shared fear of being rejected for our exterior. Who hasn't glanced in a mirror wishing that the face/body/clothes of someone else would wink back? No matter how much we know that real beauty is on the inside, we don't want to be ugly.

Lette (Patrick Brammel) had no idea that he was ugly, until his boss, Scheffler (Kim Gyngell), wants to send the hotter Karlmann (Luke Ryan) to a conference and Lette's wife, Fanny (Alison Bell), confesses that she always admired her husband for coping so well with his ugliness.  Now knowing he is socially unacceptable, Lette finds help from surgeon Scheffler and is transformed into a total spunk rat.  Business for the good looking can only get better and new friends like wealthy surgery addict Fanny and her son Karlmann offer new paths. Until everyone wants to look like Lette, and surgeon Scheffler owns the template.

Berlin-based von Mayenburg's work was last seen here in 2008 in Moving Target, directed by Benedict Andrews.  Mayenburg's style joyfully exploits all that is unique about theatre and gives its creative team the freedom to inject their own staging solutions.  From Moliere to McNamara, director Peter Evans lets his playwright's voices lead, yet the The Ugly One doesn't allow for an uninstrusive director; and it's a welcome surprise to see a sense of Evan's own style and choices.

The in the round stage contains office chairs, a microphone and buckets filled with crunchy, dribbly apples that provide a gruesome soundscape for the surgery. The couldn't-be-better cast morph between same-named characters as sharply as the surgeon's knife and the moments of doubt in between provide an unexpected rhythm to the text – and even more laughs.

Like recent gems Moth (Malthouse/Arena) and That Face (Red Stitch) and even MTCs Richard III (that didn't tickle me under the chin and make me smile), getting a ticket to The Ugly One is a challenge, but extra 9.30pm shows have been added so you don't have to miss out.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com.

Moving Target

Moving Target
Malthouse Theatre, Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts, Sydney Opera House
13 March 2008
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse

Last week I despaired at seeing banality on Melbourne’s professional stages and began to wonder if I was being too harsh. Last night I saw Moving Target at the Malthouse. To Benedict Andrews and everyone involved in the creation of this work – may I say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Moving Target has come to Melbourne after a season at the Adelaide Festival of Arts. They also brought the Adelaide heat wave with them, but this show was worth sitting in a very hot room for two hours. Direction, performance, writing and design blend to create original, moving, addictive theatre.

The final script is a melding of Marius Von Mayenburg’s words (ably translated by Maja Zade) with an improvised ensemble rehearsal process. What seems chaotic and spontaneous is structured intricately and intelligently to build tension and gradually reveal story and character. The language gives us incredible images like a stubble-covered palm, a half-eaten bird and a green package that is never on the stage, but we never stop seeing it. The final scenes are all exposition. In the show-don’t-tell world of visual story telling, this isn’t recommended, but in the hands of such a team – all I can say is WOW. And this is regardless of content; which is as stunning as its telling. Children and terrorism are highly emotive subjects. This story embraces arch types, avoids clichés and lets its audience feel every genuine emotion.

The ensemble of Alison Bell, Julie Forsyth, Rita Kalnejais, Robert Menzies, Hamish Michael and Matthew Whittet are perfectly cast. It’s a tough job to get the balance right in this show. It takes exceptional skill and craft to make well-rehearsed and detailed staging look random and improvised, let alone to reveal complex characters from what initially appears to be the “real” actors on the stage. All worked as an ensemble, but I have to say that Alison’s subtlety was beautifully powerful and Hamish could pitch his performance just a squidge lower.

All elements of the design fuse to tell this story. The unexpected brilliance of Robert Cousins’ set becomes apparent as the hide and seek games begin. Fiona Crombie’s costumes look like a quick grab from the op shop, but show us the core of these characters. Performer Hamish Michael also designed the sound. The introduction of amplified sound and noise mirrors and supports every moment on the stage. Finally, there is Paul Jackson’s lighting. His Malthouse designs are consistently excellent, but this is sublime. The clean white, the coloured shadows, the transformation to black and white and the seconds of red show the emotion of this story. It is the best lighting I’ve seen since Robert Wilson was last in town.

This whole box of irresistible goodness was brought together by director Benedict Andrews. What an original and powerful theatrical voice. He uses the uniqueness of theatre to tell a story that burrows into the hearts and souls of its audience. The pacing is superb and the release genuinely cathartic. Sometimes the humour and gag were played too hard. The hoodie joke was very, very funny, but it took us away from the world on that stage and reminded us that we were watching an actor on a stage. Even if it’s the best joke ever seen – if it distracts from the story telling, it isn’t worth it.

Audiences deserve to see original, cliché free, astonishing theatre on our main stages. Malthouse’s focus on ensemble creation and original voices is proving that we don’t have to settle for boring. Moving Target might not instantly engage or move you – just go with the journey and you may be amazed where you end up.

This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com.

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty
Malthouse Theatre
12 July 2007
Merlyn Theatre, CUB Malthouse

 
Devised by Michael Kantor, Paul Jackson, Mayann Lynch and Anna Tregloan, Sleeping Beauty is proving that new direction, new blood and collaboration at Malthouse can create the kind of original and enlightening theatre we want and expect from this company.
 
Sleeping Beauty is told as a song cycle, using contemporary and popular music (primarily from the youth of Malthouse supporters). Part musical theatre, part concert, part fairy tale; it asks what Sleeping Beauty would dream about and takes us on her journey from childhood to sexual innocence, to adulthood and the ultimate maturity of disappointment.
 
A song cycle needs singers. The casting and combination of voices and genres was curious. Renee Geyer is jazz, Grant Smith is opera, Ian Stenlake is pure musical theatre and Alison Bell is an actor who can pull off a song. The juxtaposition of the voices was so odd that it worked brilliantly, to an extent.
 
Renee is the diva and star. Her delicious and sumptuous jazz (come R&B), makes you want to drink absinthe and chain smoke in tiny dark room until dawn, as her husky tones makes you fall in and out of love with your companion all night. She opened the night with “She” and captured every heart in the house. What she later did with Eminem was near perfect.
 
Grant has deservedly been on many an opera stage and never ceased to shine. Ian continued to prove himself one of our finest musical theatre performers. His Bowie renditions were nearly as hot as Bowie himself (sorry Ian, no one is hotter than Bowie).
 
The moment I walked away with was Renee, Grant, Ian’s performance of Elvis Costello’s “I Want You”. It took this love song into a dark, intense and confronting realm that explored how mother, father, brother, older woman, older man and lover can desire, want, love or hate the beauty of young woman.
 
While the vocal combination worked, what didn’t work as well was that each of the four were performing in their genre, not as an ensemble. Ian and Grant’s performances could have filled a 2000 seat venue. This created unevenness on the stage that might need some tighter direction. Ian at times simply overwhelmed Alison, who was performing to the room she was in.
 
Alison Bell is a very good actor, but she was the odd voice out. Vocally she wasn’t nearly as powerful as her the other three, which hindered the performance, as it became a comparison. The role needed a singer who was comfortable telling a story though song, rather than acting out the song. (Perhaps someone along the lines of an Australian Idol contestant - a singer who may have actually lived out the bizarre fairy tale dream and nightmare in a public medium.)
 
Direction, design and concept all worked perfectly to create this highly original work, even if a few self indulgent decisions were made. Often the story would have moved much better if songs had been shorter, giving us just the appropriate lyric grab or emotional rift, rather than the whole number. This would have deprived us of some wonderful performances, but would have served the story much better.
 
Sleeping Beauty is a work that will grow and change as it runs. It speaks to its audience and is totally enjoyable. As it becomes tighter, it will begin to work better as a whole, rather than a collection of wonderful moments and performances.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.