Review: The Temple

The Temple
Malthouse Theatre and Pan Pan
8 May 2019
Beckett Theatre
to 26 May
\malthousetheatre.com.au

The Temple. Photo by Pia Johnson

I went into The Temple knowing as little as I could about it. I left not knowing much more.

But I know a theatre reviewer having a week when they couldn't write would fit in very well on that stage.

The Malthouse co-production with Ireland's Pan Pan theatre ( Playing The Dane, 2011) was developed in rehearsals by director Gavin Quinn and the cast – Aljin Abella, Ash Flanders, Mish Grigor, Marcus McKenzie and Genevieve Giuffre. Guiffre replaced Nicola Gunn who worked on the development.

There's a line where process and on-stage look-at-me indulgence smash together and create art. The Temple does this, but it's far more successful when it fails and collapses into almost incomprehensible chaos.

The Temple is whatever it needs to be. With yellow walls, cheap chairs and a table filled with too-bright cordials to drink (designer Aedín Cosgrove), it could be a church, an addiction meeting, a reality game show or a residential therapy centre. Or whatever you want it to be.

It's every work training session I've been forced to go to, every conference, every bloody yoga retreat I chose to go to, every hope that maybe some intense time with strangers will be fun or enlightening or bearable. They're not. Strangers are the worst. Strangers who know they can be whatever and whoever they want to be without consequences are more the worst.

Each character is a version of the actor. Maybe turned up a lot. Maybe nudged down a smidge. Maybe just without their off switch. Their stories are as likely to be true as they are fiction created by someone else. Their behaviour is at best frustrating, which is often harder to deal with than when they are mean.

It's selfish behaviours without the fear of being cruel. Imagine being able to do what you want and say exactly what you think without the fear of consequence or repercussion? Maybe a reviewer doesn't fit in on that stage.

Drink The Temple Kool-Aid. Even if you don't know the reference. Even if you don't like it or have any idea what it's all about.

Mini review: Triumph

Triumph
New Working Group, supported by fortyfive downstairs
19 February 2016
fortyfive downstairs
to 28 February
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Triumph. Photo by Sarah Walker

I became a  Louris van de Geer fan when MKA presented her Tuesday in 2012. Her writing lets her audience continually question and re-evaluate what they are seeing as they are drawn deeper, and more personally, into her stories.

Inspired by true stories, Triumph's three parts are set in a survivor support group following a 911-type horror, a hospital where doctors can't diagnose a teenager, and a forest where two men are almost cheerfully digging two graves. The veracity of their stories change as new perspectives to the situation are revealed, but the truth at the heart of the characters stays the same. Is it harder or easier to be on someone's side when you realise their lie but know the lie comes from a wound that's far deeper and more painful?

Her writing also lets creatives bring themselves to the work to create a richness to the characters and worlds that expands on the text without taking anything away from it.

Director Mark Pritchard and design team Romanie Harper (set and costume), Amelia Lever-Davidson (lighting) and Chris Wenn (sound) use the vast fortyfive downstairs space to move from the uncomfortable light of a community hall to the darkness of a forest. And the cast (Aljin Abella, Syd Brisbane, Anouk Gleeson-Mead, Emma Hall, Leone White) ensure that there's always more to question, and that what we think we see is never what's really motivating the characters.

The result is a theatre that's engaging and fascinating and so complex that it's impossible to consciously take all of it in.



Don't forget that van de Greer's latest work, The Son is part of the MTC's Cybec Electric Reading program on March 4 and 5. And what a cast!

Last Chance: The Good Person of Szechuan

The Good Person of Szechuan
Malthouse Theatre and National Theatre of China
2 July 2014
Merlyn Theatre
to 20 July
malthousetheatre.com.au

Photo by Pia Johnson

The Good Person of Szechuan. Epic!

And it finishes on Sunday. So there's still a chance to see it again.

The cast and performances are divine (even the ones playing gods), the design is somewhere between wtf and wow, the text is Aussie and the direction's Chinese. And it's as Brechtian as Brecht can be.

Brecht was a German modernist and a Marxist who rejected the emotional heart-grab of namby pamby naturalism and wrote theatre that was about understanding the manipulation and falsity of realistic storytelling in order to see the creation of fiction by rulers, governments and politicians. He wrote because he saw his world being torn apart.

Be it sense, fate or luck, he left his home in Germany in 1933 and moved around Europe (avoiding German invasion) and before going to the USA in 1941. He began Good Person in 1938 and completed it in 1943; no wonder there's enough content in this play to make it feel like it's written for any audience who have seen it since.

Set in a fictional Szechuan-cum-Berlin-cum-Melbourne-cum-AnyCity, it's about three gods coming to earth to find good people. It doesn't take long for them to settle for finding one good person. With the help of a water seller, they meet prostitute Shen Te, who gives them a room for the night and is rewarded with enough money to buy a tobacco shop. And then it gets really hard for her to maintain her goodness.

Photo by Pia Johnson

This version is by Tom Wright, who makes it sound like it was written in Melbourne. And it's directed (in translation) by Chinese director Meng Jinghui, whose work in China comes close to having a cult following. His Rhinoceros in Love was part of the 2011 Melbourne International Arts Festival. I didn't get it. However, I was sitting next to a group of young Chinese women who didn't stop laughing. It clearly spoke to them, and to so many others; it's been in ongoing production in China since 1999. I wanted to know what I was missing.

But I got The Good Person of Szechuan. Perhaps all I needed was a slither of familiarity.

And from the gods arriving with shopping bags and looking like bridezilla Madonna (Christian and pop) icons (design by Marg Horwell), it's a world that's filled with the nearly unrecognisable familiar.

From designer dresses (thank you audience member for telling me that they are genuine expensive frocks and not be-dazzled K-Mart t-shirts) to the smoke machine, piles of baby dolls and the live musician (THE SWEATS) in a glass box, there are no secrets but this forced distancing is combined with performances that draw us back into the world and make us see it as us and ours.

And Moira Finucane, Genevieve Giuffre, Emily Milledge, Josh Price, Bert LaBonté, Richard Pyros, Aljin Abella and Daniel Frederiksen! What more do I need to say.

The friend who came with me did have something else to say and she said it to the man who was sitting two rows behind us, Minister Malcolm Turnball.

"At the after party, I slyly bumped into him accidentally, so he had to notice me. After introductions, I questioned him about what was happening to the boatload of Tamil asylum seekers. His answer was, 'I don't know'. He tried to reassure me they were safe because we were 'looking after them'. I politely berated him about it and he really didn't have much to say. Finally I said, 'You've just seen a play by Brecht. What do you think he'd have to say about this?' Malcolm: 'I know what he'd have to say'. Me: 'Exactly."

I loved this production because it must be talking to those who don't care about Tamil refugees and carbon taxes and slow internet. It's made for our Malcolm Turnballs. If those in power can see the world how we do, surely they'll change.

Nup.


PS. I'm blaming my computer for losing my real review. And by computer, I mean I accidentally deleted it.