Review: Australian Realness

Australian Realness
Malthouse Theatre
22 August 2019
Merlyn Theatre
to 8 September

"Australian Realness" Photo by Pia Johnson

In 2011, someone* told me to see a play in a terrace in Fitzroy during the Melbourne Fringe and I was blown away at the original voices and capture of what it was like to be 20ish woman. One of the creators of I know there's a lot of noise outside but you have to close your eyes was Zoey Dawson. I think I've seen all of her significant plays since then; some (like Conviction and The Unspoken Word is Joe) have blown me away at their original voice and capture of what it's like to a theatre person in Melbourne.

Australian Realness is Dawson's first mainstage show at Malthouse. It begins as the kind of lets-laugh-very-gently-at-our-middle-class-selves-without-being-mean naturalistic comedy. It's set in 1997 and the blue-checked couch, Country Road dress, box of Moet, artichokes and hand-made wind chimes (design by Romanie Harper) are so recognisable that many of the audience will be pricing it in their heads and don't need the references to know it's in North Fitzroy. Goodness, it's so silly-us-in-the-90s-with-our-lovely-houses-reading-that-Tim-Winton-book-about-the-disabled-boy that it could be in that bigger theatre down the road.

But it's not that kind of play.

The family are mum, Linda Cropper; dad, Greg Stone; pregnant daughter, Emily Goddard; coke-head investor son, Andre De Vanny; and daughter's girlfriend from Coburg who is about to lose her job at the wharfs, Chanella Marci. The constant sound (James Paul sound design) of building new apartments next door threatens to ruin family Christmas, but there are secrets that are more dangerous.

It's really not this kind of play.

One secret is that the family money is running out, because no one is buying books or seeing puppet shows any more, and that the shed has been leased to a family of people from the suburbs; doubled by three of the cast. This fag-smoking mum wears a glitter reindeer t-shirt from K-Mart and this dad bonds with wharfy girlfriend because they are the only people who get that the blissful "I can hear the cockies at Merri Creek" silence from the building work stopping next door means that people have lost their jobs.

Bogans V what-Yuppies-grew-into. Australian cities and class. Did people living in huge-houses-near-good-schools know what was happening at the Melbourne wharfs in the late 90s and early 2000s?

When the classes clash, the so-familiar comedy twists into an Aussie sitcom complete with laugh track, talking to the audience and characters that are easy to laugh at because they are not us. And "they" don't go to the theatre, so they won't see it. It's easier to laugh than admit to fear.

And it's not that play either.

It's a what-if terrified imagining that the working class revolution happened. Or a dystopic time-shifting fantasy. Or a blood-soaked urban gothic horror dream. Or a jolt into now with a consensual live-art exhibition and cereal-milk pannacotta Masterchef jokes.

Last week, I was unsure about another play by a young writer on a mainstage because it tried to be too many things at one. This is similar, but is more successful because it changes tones tightly and every genre within the genre would be great by itself. Director Janice Muller ensures that the absurdly outrageous shifts in tone and story are surprising but feel so right in the theatre. The walls can come down in the theatre; we never have to imagine that we are really there. And Goddard remains the same character who was asleep on the couch at the beginning, ensuring there's always someone to consistently care about.

Australian Realness is far more than a safe poke at those who go to the theatre and make fun of bogans. It's a far sharper poke and no one knows the safe word to make it stop.

* Possibly Declan Greene, who has since worked with Zoey as a director and as dramaturg on Australian Realness. UPDATE: Yep, it was Dec.

Review: Hand to God

Hand to God
Alexander Vass and Vass Production 
24 February 2018
The Alex Theatre
to 18 March
alextheatrestk.com.au

Hand To God. Morgana O'Reilly & Gyton Grantley. Photo by Angelo Leggas

Hand to God was nominated for a pile of Tony Awards in 2015, including Best Play (which was won by The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Night-time; which has just finished at MTC). Set in conservative, religious, small-town Texas, its success depends on a balance between its story of personal trauma and God-fearing repression, and the freedom of its God-damning, adults-only language and puppet-fucking irreverence. Yes, it's another Broadway show where puppets have raunchy sex – and it is regularly (and unfairly) compared to Avenue Q.

It's also regularly called "irreverent", and the focus on the naughtiness of being rude may be why this production hasn't found its emotional strength or empathy.

Recently widowed middle-aged Margery (Alison Whyte) is running a puppet workshop for teenagers in the her church hall. The only kids are her quiet son Jason (Gyton Grantley), bad-boy Timothy (Jake Speer), and pretty nerd Jessica (Morgana O'Reilly). The class is an inevitable failure but bumbling Pastor Gregory (Grant Piro) wants an in-church performance, Timothy has a super crush on Margery, and Jason will never tell Jessica that he likes her – until he's fist-deep in his puppet Tyrone.

Demonic possession, inappropriate sex and blashphemous abandon follow. There are plenty of laughs, but many fall flat. The fast-paced direction (Gary Abrahams) revels in jokes, but it tends to play the joke rather than tell the story. And when it is telling the story, it isn't clear what it's really about.

Deep laughs – even the most inappropriate ones – come from feeling connection to character and caring about what happens to them; laughing at potty-mouthed idiots is easy, and forgettable. With a severely-traumatised child, deep grief, and unexpected heroes, there's plenty to make the audience care, especially as the tone shifts in the second half and it becomes clear what's really at stake.

Meanwhile, there's still plenty to laugh at and the tone is set by the wit and fun of the design, by Jacob Battista (design), Chloe Greaves (costime) and Amelia Lever-Devidson (lighting). When the curtain opens, it initially looks so much like a hideously familiar church hall that it takes a while to notice the gorgeously hilarious detail (read the posters, look at the costumes) and it comes into its own with a stage-within-the-stage-within-the-stage.

The shock and laughs in Hand To God don't come from its blasphemy or sex but from from wondering if we, too, would behave like that if our life took a similar turn. I suspect that this side of the production will develop as it runs and finds its connection to its audience.

Review: Looking Glass

Looking Glass
New Working Group
3 August 2017
fortyfivedownstairs
to 13 August
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Peter Houghton Daniella Farinacci. Looking Glass. Photo by Pier Carthew

One of the many things I love about Louris van de Geer's writing is that she forces her audience question everything they see on the stage, and that any story chosen by the audience can be far from from what the playwright and creators intended.

He new work Looking Glass is presented by the New Working Group, a network of 11 independent Melbourne writers, directors and designers, and received development funding from the Australia Council, Creative Victoria and the Angior Family Foundation.

Marcus (Daniel O'Neill, who alternates with Thomas Taylor) is about nine; a time when you're not a child or a teenager and are testing independence and the limits of family love. One day he lies face down on the floor and won't get up. His parents (Daniela Farinacci and Peter Houghton) turn to outside help in the form of tall and mysterious Josh Price, who could be the doctor trying to save them, every person they meet or everyone they wish they met.

It can be seen as a standard family-psychology story – van de Geer is inspired by Charles Cooley's 1902  looking glass theory about how we develop our sense of self based on how we see ourselves reflected through others – but nothing about this production is that simple.

The story is grounded by director Susie Dee creating a strong familial connection with the family. There's a genuine warmth between the characters and the audience, even if they are struggling to find that warmth or connection, or the reflection of it, in their lives.

The counterpoint to this familiarity is the design by Kate Davis (set and costume) and Amelia Lever-Davidson (lighting) that never lets know where we are. A white floor is boxed in by heavy yellow plastic curtains – somewhere between sunshine and urine yellow – that define a room but don't fully conceal what's going on outside it' walls and allow anyone to enter or exit from any spot. The colours and mood change from a clinical clean whiteness, which could be hospital or prison, to underground dark black and reds that change any idea of yellow. It could a family home as easily as a dystopian future, an afterlife, a dream or anything we want, or need, to see reflected on the stage.

I chose my narrative early on and it worked for me – I thought the child was dead or had never been born – but there are many other interpretations of the story that are as logical and obvious.

Looking Glass is complex and fascinating theatre because it holds onto its answers tightly while creating the connection and emotion that begs for answers.

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!