Review: Dreamers

Dreamers
fortyfivedownstairs
8 November 2014
fortyfivedownstairs
to 30 November
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Photo by Jeff Busby

I wasn't in Melbourne when the Keene/Taylor project was the darling of this city's independent theatre scene (1997–2002), so it's a joy to see Mary Lou Jelbart's fortyfivedownstairs brings writer Daniel Keene and director Ariette Taylor back together with Dreamers.

Originally written by Keene for French company Tabula Rasa (Keene is loved in France),  Dreamers is about loneliness and the hope that can be found even when the isolation seems impenetrable.

Set in a low-income block of flats in any city, widow Anne (Helen Morse) lives alone and earns her living from sewing consignment garments. She's rarely interrupted, except when she catches the bus to babysit her grandson. At the bus stop she meets fellow residents including building foreman (Marco Chiappi), a former bus driver now ticket inspector (Paul English) and younger new-comer to the city Majid (Yomal Rajasinghe) who's looking for work.

Majid knows that people ignore him and move away because he's black, but Anne doesn't and when he's turned away at their local cafe by the waiter (Jonathan Taylor), she buys him a coffee. When their friendship develops, locals (Natasha Herbert and Nicholas Bell) are disgusted and her daughter (Brigid Gallacher) doesn't understand.

While it's a clear reflection on the many ways people hate each other for no reason, Taylor's direction – and an impeccable cast – never forgets that everyone is a likeable and loved person in their own way. With songs around a pianola and dances around garbage bins, the gentle humour makes it easy to see how hate can surface in the most everyday of places and in the most unsuspecting people.

The design uses the long an difficult fortyfivedownstairs space beautifully. Adrienne Chisholm's design incorporates the supporting poles and lets us see into tiny rooms and the whole block at once, with Andy Turner's lighting defining space.

While there are many angry plays about all the isms and how they are wrong, Dreamers is a gentle work about people; people who can always change how they see the world.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Resplendence

NEON
Respelendence
Angus Cerini/Doubletap
13 June 2014
The Lawler
to 22 June
mtc.com.au

Photo by Sebastian Bourges  

Angus Cerini scares me.

In a good way.

In a way that I know his work is likely to disturb and confront me and make me want a glass of wine and some alone time after a show.

His company, Doubletap, are next in this year's NEON Festival of Independent Theatre with a piece written and performed by Cereni, with dramturgy by Susie Dee, where it's impossible to take you're eyes away from him.

Resplendence is ostensibly about a man who goes down to the shops for something to eat and sees an accident. But its story, although powerful, is only there to show us the man.

Cereni's work shows me parts of the male psyche that I don't understand; those parts that I see and want to run from rather than try to understand.

He's supported by a design so integral to the experience that the work couldn't exist if one element were missing. Marg Horwell's design, Jethro Woodward's sound and Andy Turner's lighting put him on a raised catwalk where his walk and turn take us into his thoughts and away from a performer  on a stage.

The language of the text is so inner voice that it's easy to forget when it's recorded sound or live voice. He's never speaking to us, always to himself in his re-telling of his story. And in doing so, his language has found a space that's neither poetic nor natural, but something that shows us his thoughts in ways that language sometimes misses because we censor and control thoughts when we make them words.

And this language is connected to a physicality that's so linked to the psyche that it almost doesn't need the words.

Resplendence is a man who's impotent anger and fear comes from a loneliness that comes from an impotent anger and fear that craves violence or connection or understanding or just a shared laugh from a world that he's already too lost to. It's extraordinary theatre.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Long Pigs

The Long Pigs
14 March 2014
fortyfive downstairs
to 23 March
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Coulrophobia: fear of clowns. If you've never been scared of clowns and their silly red noses, you will be by the end of The Long Pigs.

Rejected and broken by their own kind, the three long pigs (from the Melanesian Pidgin for "human flesh") are so bitterly dark and absurdly hilarious that you'll never be able to look at a fake red nose again without breaking out in a sweat or gagging.

Clare Bartholomew (Circus Oz, Die Roten Punkte and lots more), Derek Ives (Rock 'n' Roll Circus, The Candy Butchers and lots more) and Nicci Wilks (La Fura Del Baus, CIRCA and lots more) are the three pigs: This, That and The Other Pig. They're filthy and play in a rank mire of intimidation, mistrust and can't-wash-it-off evil.

With ever-wonderful director Susie Dee, these traditionally-trained clowns put their hands down the throats of glittery-rainbow red-nosed clowns, turn them inside out and cut their guts out from the outside – with a blunt rusty knife.

And with the design team of Anna Tregloan (set and costumes), Andy Turner (lights) and Jethro Wooward (composition and sound) turning fortyfive downstairs into the cesspit factory where the clowns-gone-bad prepare and perform, the only thing more frightening than the clowns is the temptation to join them and roll around with them in the blood.

Be tempted. The macabre doesn't get more gloriously funny.

This was on AussieTheatre.

Photo by Ponch Hawkes

Review: Savages

Savages
fortyfivedownstairs
18 August 2013
fortyfivedownstairs
to 8 September
fortyfivedownstairs.com

At the end of Savages, I had to joke about hoping that no one sees it on a first date because it was too uncomfortable to talk about its content.

Walking into 45downstairs, a sea of paper streamers and an imposing slanting deck beg for sunshine and a party, but I felt a heaviness in my belly the moment that George, Runt, Rabbit and Craze boarded their trip-of-a-lifetime cruise because I thought of Dianne Brimble. I didn't know that Savages was based on this case.

In 2002, 42-year-old Brimble took her daughter on their trip of a lifetime where she died from a combination of alcohol and the drug GHB, known as the date rape drug. There were eight men from Adelaide involved. There have been trials, but none have served gaol time for the death of the fat, old "ugly dog". One judge said that their suffering since her death is as bad as time incarcerated. I wonder if it would be the same if it had been one of the pretty young things the men had playfully harassed who had ended up face down and naked in the tiny cabin.

I struggle to find sympathy or understanding for these men and the people who support them.

This is what's so remarkable about Patricia Cornelius's new play; she tells a similar story from the men's point view. She doesn't justify, judge or even confront their behaviour, but tries to understand how men behave in a group; how nice-enough guys follow the pack and behave in ways they might never consider if they were alone.

This four (Lyall Brooks, Luke Elliot, James O'Connell and Mark Tregonning) are 40ish and have been mates for years. Before boarding they abandon their usual baggage of the women, exes and kids so that for a few days they can be the men they are meant to be. On board, there's nothing unusual about how they compete, share and exaggerate and each might easily pick up if they didn't expect to attract the attention of the gorgeous young or fear being judged by their mates.

Despite their constant guard, Cornelius writes men who are funny and vulnerable and real. She reveals secrets that help to understand them and lend hope that each will be man enough to walk away from his pack or lead them somewhere safe. But this isn't a safe story. It's one that needs to be told and talked about, because these are men aren't freaks or monsters. It's this that's so confronting and unsettling; they are men just like men we all know.

Director Susie Dee ensures that this is theatre that exposes the bigger picture by telling the smaller story. She guides her cast – who are all exceptional in roles that, I hope, are difficult to inhabit – from playful pack to broken men who need to re-claim power. This supports Cornelius's language that's bloke-on-the-street vernacular, but is heightened with a rhythm and delightfully self-conscious rhyme that reminds that it's telling a more important story.

And it all takes place on a set (Marg Howell) that makes the space feel as huge and isolated as a ship so far from land that the unspoken rules of civilisation don't apply. And with Kelly Ryall's sound and Andy Turner's lighting, it's raised and steeply slanted deck creates a world that's always moments away from toppling into the waves.

Savages is theatre that bites and barks at the end of a chain that's about to break, but we don't know if the escaping animal will attack or roll over for a tummy rub. Its telling is theatrically beautiful as it holds firmly to the belief that we – men and women – have to get closer to this problem if we're ever going to understand it and change ourselves so that the packs and everyone near them can feel safe.

This was on AussieTheatre.com