Review: The Sublime

The Sublime

MTC

28 August 2014

Fairfax Studio

to 4 October

mtc.com.au

Photo by Jeff Busby

The MTC's production of Brendan Cowell's The Sublime left me angry. So, I took some time to think, read and discuss. I'm still angry, and horrified at the arguments being offered that try and explain how this is powerful and brave theatre.

Cowell's play is about football, AFL and NRL. I love AFL. I love going to the G, indulging in the palpable passion and watching a story that I don't know the ending to.

In this play, a teenage girl watches a player rape her best friend. That's not what left me so angry.

In The Age, reviewer Cameron Woodhead said that someone is going to accuse this play of trivialising rape. I don't think it trivialises rape. Rape is trivialised with every "What did she expect?", "Rape is a very strong word", "She was so drunk", "But you weren't hurt", "You got in the car", "You've done worse", "Think about his future", "She should be grateful", "He's your husband", "We saw you kiss him",  "Are you sure?", "Vindictive slut" and so on.

And yes, for every "she" I wrote, there is an implied "he", but the first turning point of this play is the rape of a 17-year-old girl and it goes beyond trivialisation.

From the playing of Bon Jovi’s “Living on Prayer”, the first 15 or so minutes of The Sublime are as exciting to watch as a Grand Final. With three intertwining monologues, the pitch-perfect performances and writing capture our obsession with the male ball sports, the hero worship that accompanies being a young player, and the aspirations to be one of those admired men. As David Williamson’s 1978 play The Club remains a remarkable look at football world from the management office, this felt like a spot-on look at the world of the players and their fans.

Dean (Josh McConville) is 25 and an AFL role model living in Melbourne who on his way to a Brownlow medal. His younger 20-something brother Liam (Ben O’Toole) plays NRL and is doing everything he can to be selected for the NSW team. They tell us about their childhood, their ambitions and their love for the games. They’re nice young men who deserve to do well. Their story is paralleled with that of Amber, a teenage runner (Anna Samson), who is close to Olympic selection. One night after training, Dean joins Amber for a run along the Yarra and invites her to a match.

And then it – literally – loses the plot. Serious spoilers follow; the forced plot is so linked with the politics of this play, that it can’t be ignored. If you don’t want to read them, skip the next three paragraphs.

On their first brief meeting with Dean, Amber’s star-struck parents suggest their underage teenage daughter, and her friend Zoe, join Dean, Liam and Liam’s NRL team in Thailand for their end of year trip.

But put aside Hell freezing over because something needed to happen to get them to a resort and a Moon Party in Thailand. The party is a dream rage. Amber gives her first ever blow job to Dean because she knows that’s how to get a boyfriend (and the immediate BJ aftermath may be the sweetest and most honest scene in the play), but the fantasy holiday ends when Liam’s best mate encourages Liam to fuck shit-faced Zoe while he masturbates and Dean cowers in the corner. All of them ignore Amber, who’s filming it on her phone.

When they get back to Australia, it gets messy and the legal action is as believable as the parents giving their virgin daughter to the football team. And that’s before Amber is abandoned by her parents, releases the video to the media, pretends the teenager being fucked face down on the couch is her (and that she loved it), gives up running, and moves in with Liam. She moves in and develops a sexual relationship with the man who raped her friend in front of her.

This play acknowledges that non-consensual sex is rape but goes on to explain and exonerate the behaviour of the rapist and his mates, while throwing in a dose of questionable victim behaviour to ensure that the question it poses is “Should the lads be blamed for their behaviour?”.

To make it easier to watch, there are lots of laughs, which help it to hide under the safety net of satire.

Great satire makes us look at ourselves and cringe with shame when we recognise our own behaviour.

The behaviour this work is begging us to see is that we let teenage girls ruin men’s lives. We let girls get away with it.

Dramaturgically, it’s also made easier to watch because the described rape is diluted to be less confronting that it could be. The age differences aren’t much. It’s only one guy. It’s quick. There are no absent partners or children to be hurt. Unseen Zoe is the one raped, so the act is distanced from the character we know and care about. Zoe’s over 16 (age of consent), had been flirting all night, wasn’t a virgin, had said how much she wanted have sex with Liam, and was so drunk that she doesn’t realise she’s being fucked face down in a couch.

It’s written to be a "forgivable" or "understandable" rape.

Lawers get involved, but Amber doesn’t share the proof she has on her phone. It’s too hard for Zoe and she disappears interstate. She’s not part of the story anymore and the moral responsibility and consequences of that problem are removed.

The second half explores the brothers’ upbringing and personal hells or “why they act like they do” and looks at the consequences of being videoed.

It’s here where The Sublime sinks below the scum as it shifts the blame and the power to Amber.

Let’s never forget that Amber’s 17. She’s devoted her life to running and had never had sex or a boyfriend. She’s a child. A child who was given dangerous amounts of alcohol by a far-more-life-experienced 25-year-old and saw her friend get raped in front of her. This is a traumatised child. And I hope that as a society we seek to still protect traumatised children and never blame them for the behaviour of the adults who are with them.

It’s a story about how Amber’s eventual release of the video ruined the men’s lives. Where’s the reflection on how the behaviour – criminal behaviour – that was videoed ruined the men’s lives?

Cowell says that his Amber was written to be “on the edge of complicity and victimhood”. There’s not a moment when the 17-year-old is complicit and in control over the adult men. Not when she’s hero worshipping them. Not when she’s dancing drunk. Not even when she grabs Dean’s cock and puts it in her mouth, after he bought the teenager her first ever cocktail and continued to give her $6 buckets of gin and guava.

Meanwhile, to ensure that we know just how difficult it must be for the men to resist such a situation, there’s a young gorgeous actor on the stage with long hair and tiny shorts.

Amber is made complicit because she knows that men like looking at her.

In Crikey, the MTC have published a “holds up a mirror to our society” justification of this play. After all, they are just showing us how it is. But by showing “how it is”, they are supporting how it is.

Victim blaming. Slut Shaming. Boys will be boys. They couldn’t help themselves. Look at what she was wearing. What about their future.

There’s a phrase for this: Rape culture.

As long as women are blamed for being raped or abused, rape culture is preserved and encouraged.

The Sublime is not a powerful work that makes us question if we – the educated ones who go to the theatre and tut tut at tabloid headlines – are complicit in supporting rape culture and the abuse of women. It’s a cowardly work that hints that women, especially young women, should ask themselves if they “deserved it” or if they are to blame for being raped or abused. It’s a work that encourages them to shut up and think very hard before subjecting a “nice boy” to something that might ruin his life, even if his behaviour has already made her own life hell.

Or perhaps I misread the whole thing? So I’m giving the last word to writer Cowell who spoke about his play at the 2014 MTC season launch:

“It’s about how a teenage girl with an iPhone can destroy not only a man’s life but entire power structures and industries who are the victims in this play.”

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Master Class

Master Class 
Left Bauer Productions
23 August 2014
fortyfive downstairs
to 28 August
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Today's performance of Master Class at fortyfive downstairs has sold out but if you book now, you might be able to get in before it finishes on Thursday.

Terrance McNally's play Master Class opened on Broadway in 1995. It's based on the series of master classes presented by Maria Callas at the Julliard School in New York in 1971, which were recorded and readily available. The play is fictional, with Callas working with an imagined first soprano, tenor and second soprano. It dilutes and magnifies Callas as a teacher and icon – which is a master class in opera performance in itself – and leaves the class to go into the mind of a woman who was so sure of her reputation but so uncertain of her self.

Maria Mercedes is Callas. She is remarkable. From the second before she walked into the space, the audience were hers. It's easy to copy Callas's mannerisms and look, but this performance is so far beyond anything so basic. As Callas and McNally talk about how to approach and perform a character, our Maria shows how to do it – without revealing as much as a hint of technique or process. Hers is the kind of astonishing performance that leaves the actor and the script invisible, if not forgotten.

The students (Georgia Wilkinson, Robert Barbaro and Anna Louise Cole – and accompanist Cameron Thomas) are amazing young Melbourne singers who already have established careers and could not have been more perfect to represent the standard of singer who deserved a master class with Callas. Each have their moment to sing, but they bring truth and guts to the work with their portrayals of singers facing a woman who has achieved the impossible and who is as likely to tear them to pieces as give them the support to never give up. And they let their characters sing in ways that allows Callas to correct them. I dare any singer to walk away without learning something.

Director Daniel Lammin's last work was The Cutting Boys at La Mama. Written and directed by Lammin, it was about the murder of a young woman and continued his exploration of how young men commit unthinkable violence. And here he is directing a play about an ageing woman and grand opera. Always be prepared to be surprised. As a director, he focussed on letting the text tells its story and led his actors to tell the truth about their characters through their own knowledge and experience.

I was at a matinee yesterday. Not only was it sold out, but received a standing ovation. This doesn't happen every Saturday afternoon at fortyfive downstairs and it was such a wonderful experience to be in an audience who were as committed to the world of the play as the actors were. Mercedes performance is so engaging that there's never a moment when the audience aren't the Julliard students. Callas tells a singer to find the honesty in her performance; this production find the honesty that lets Master Class be so much more than a text-on-stage play.

NOTE: extra matinee this Saturday, but I think it's sold out too. Worth calling and checking.


This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Intimacy

HELIUM
Intimacy
Torque Show
14 August 2014
Tower Theatre
to 23 August
malthousetheatre.com.au

Michelle Ryan danced professionally in Australia and overseas. Ten years ago, she was at the peak of her career and was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She used to dance and had issues with intimacy. She still dances and has issues with intimacy.

Intimacy is dance theatre by Torque Show – a company including artists that Ryan used to dance with – and opens the 2014 Malthouse Helium season with a touching and honest exploration of how illness can change the meanings of intimacy.

With fellow dancer Vincent Crowley, singer Emma Bathgate and director Ingrid Weisfelt, Ryan shares  intimate moments of personal, sexual and romantic awkwardnesses, and those times when you have to ask strangers to give you their seat or help you get dressed.

Members of the audience are made to join in and there are the familiar looks of wanting to help but not knowing how and being terrified of offending in case help isn't wanted. This forced awkward intimacy is darkly funny and carries through to the more personal moments on stage, but it feels like it only scratches the surface. Dating is uncomfortable because dating makes us vulnerable, with or without illness.

A very good friend of mine had MS; I know that walk and the reach for balance. When she was diagnosed, about ten years ago, she said it was like her limbs (and at times her brain) were wrapped in wool, like an ugg boot but tighter. The closest moments for me were Ryan in a sleeping bag trying to get dressed and get around. Its fuzzy soft constriction seems comfortable but makes it so hard to move, physically feel and even hear, speak or see. It may not seem much, but it offers a relatable idea of what those symptoms can feel like. It's easy to relate to the emotional intimacy, but this helped to find how the restriction and frustration of the physical are part of the emotional.

And the strongest and most moving elements piece are the physical and the dance. From Ryan sitting and hiding the impact of MS on her body to her dancing with little balance and skinny limbs that don't want to listen to her thoughts, there's no denial that MS can suck. But her dance – and especially that with tall and muscualr Crowley – is about the irrelevance of the bits that suck and finding the parts of her that still fly.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Last chance: The Velveteen Rabbit

The Velveteen Rabbit: A Cabaret Fairytale for Grown Ups
MUST
28 August 2014
MUST Theatre, Monash University
to 30 August
Facebook event

Even though The Velveteen Rabbit runs until Saturday, you probably can't see it because it sold out a couple days ago. There might be the odd ticket if you're lucky (or know who to ask), but if you have one for the weekend you can safely be excited. It's gorgeous and loving and you should take a tissue.

Margaret Williams's 1922 children's story The Velveteen Rabbit IS the most lovely story ever written. If you somehow haven't cried while reading this book to yourself or to children, hold off because the cast tell it – and the only thing better than reading a story is having it read to you.

The cabaret show isn't the story of the book, but its story of becoming real and being loved form the base of the work. Directed by first-timer Mama Alto, the cast of 16 (plus their very close production and musical team) Monash uni students tell their stories of being loved and rejected and of finding their way to being their real and confident selves.

And if being a young adult at university isn't about finding out who you are and what you want to be, then what's the point of being there?

(Cough, Christopher Pyne how dare you think that anyone supports the idea of uni becoming an impossible goal. When he was enjoying his free undergrad degree, I was doing one of my own at the same university. One where I hung out in the Drama dept, did plays and didn't care that I nearly failed English because doing plays taught me so much more. I think I can safely say that one of us is more rich, but the other is more interesting.)

Moving throughout the MUST space, the ensemble in personal combinations of gold, white, red and glitter move between two stages and around the room to surround the audience with their stories and love. There's singing, original and known music, and personal stories that are impossible not to relate to.

It's a bit long and some of them won't become professional performers, but it doesn't matter because it's all about ensuring that everyone gets their chance to share their story and support their friends. Of course there are stories that come from a teenage and young adult perspective that mellows as we get older. But let's never forget what it was like to feel heartbreak, loss and love for the first time. I sometimes with I could re-capture that intensity, then I remember what it felt like.

And the look I caught on the face of a 50ish dad when the rabbit gets left outside in garden was unforgettable. You're never too hold to care about a fictional toy.

Monash University Student Theatre gives students a freedom to create what they want to create. Sure, they're not creating work for a large and commercial audience, but if we look at names who are making their mark in our independent and professional stages, a lot of them come from Monash and spent their undergraduate years involved in MUST – if I begin to list names, I won't be forgiven for missing some; you know who you are – where they were able to experiment and make mistakes and find the way to their unique theatrical voices.

Review: Glory Box 10th Anniversary

Glory Box
Finucane & Smith
16 August 2014
Melba Spiegeltent, Circus Oz
to 24 August
Facebook event

Ten years ago I saw The Burlesque Hour in the Famous Spiegeltent on St Kilda Road. Moira Finucane, Azaria Universe and Umi Umiumare (and the Town Bikes); I was blown away and I still haven't seen anything like it. Many try, and are bloody wonderful, but they don't find that bit of me that says 'thank you'.


Finucane and Smith's Glory Box, as it was renamed, has toured the world but never misses a home season. This year, it opens the super-gorgeous Melba Spiegeltent in Circus Oz's new home in Collingwood – and it feels like it's come home.

Burlesque and strip. There's always been some female-positive acts, but mostly these performances were (and still are) created to be seen by male eyes and leave the performing woman in the position of an object to be enjoyed by the watcher. Like so many of us, Jackie Smith and Moira Finucane see women through better eyes, so they devised work that that doesn't just subvert that image, but smashes it to pieces and recreates it as something exciting, welcoming and celebratory.


This is burlesque that artists love performing and are doing so to share the experience with their audience.


This is strip that embodies feminism without the need to repress those parts of the feminine that can be ignored, rejected, criticised or fetishised.

This is feminist art that embraces the diversity of the sexual feminine, be she masculine, frilly, wild, angry, sassy, despairing, bejewelled, saucy, sad, prudish, glittery or quiet.

This is art where power and desire have no hint of negativity.

These are people who see nudity without shame or irony.

These are audiences who welcome bodies of all shapes and ages.

Here is subversive, queer, feminist art that didn't give a hoot if you're straight, conservative or "I'm-not-a-feminist-but".

And it's hilarious, sexy and outrageously glorious.

So, thank you!

Over the years, Moira and Jackie have welcomed some of the most amazing guest artists and helped many others to find their voices and their passion. Some are special guests during the season, which makes it hard to choose just one night to go!


Our guests were the magnificent Maude Davey, amazing flyer Roxie Stone, and the seriously sensational Emma J Hawkins whose broken doll strip sums up everything the Glory Box is about.

And every night there's Moira, Yumi, Azaria, Holly Durant and, new to the box, the magnificent songstress and siren Saint Clare.

It's a best of show, so expect favourites including Moira's "I Touch Myself" and Azaria's "Total Eclipse of the Heart": two pieces that they have to keep doing for as long as they can stand.

If somehow over the last ten years you haven't seen this show, there's no more excuses. The sparkling wine at the bar is excellent, it's not that hard to park, it's near tram stops and I promise that you'll leave happy and proud of being exactly who you are.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Einstein on the beach 2

Einstein on the beach
State Opera of South Australia
7 August 2014
Her Majesty's Theatre
saopera.sa.gov.au
to 21 August 2014

Photo by Bernard Hull

I didn't know if it were possible to see State Opera of South Australia's Einstein on the beach without comparing it to the original Wilson-Glass-Childs production (which toured to Melbourne in 1992 and 2013: both were sublime), but it was such a different experince that comparisons are irrelevant.

Einstein is the second part of the Philip Glass Trilogy being presented by State Opera (with Akhnaten and Satyagraha). They are the first company to present the trilogy as a cycle and one of a tiny handful of companies that Glass has trusted with his operas.

Leigh Warren, as director and choreographer, approached it as a dance work about Einstein's E=mc²  and the theory of relativity. It's not the sensory overload and 4.5 hour non-stop endurance challenge of the original. With breaks, a meal-length interval (with Adelaide's amazing Gouger St restaurants minutes away), there's time to talk and take it all in and see the wonder of this composition through fresh eyes.

The choreography is a visual interpretation of the music with the 1–12 dancers following different parts, rhythms or structures of the score. As much of it wasn't written as dance music – Glass wrote half of it to accompany Robert Wilson's design and direction, with the knee plays written just for scene changes, and the rest for Lucinda Childs's choreography – Warren's approach allows the audience to see the music come to life through the dance. I know the music very well and heard things I've never heard through watching the dance.

At the same time, the dance is all about Einstein's theory. At the most obvious level, the first half is about mass and the second about light. But, just as the dancers depict the music, they demonstrate the movement of mass and light through space far better than any physics lesson – and show it with a sense of fun and emotion that lets us feel the passion behind the equation.

The choreography starts with or re-visits classical arm or leg positions. Like Einsten's physics and Glass's music, the first-learnt classical rules are always there but are questioned and re-constructed to create something that feels so right and balanced and still completely new.

Photo by Darren Williams

And it all melds with the sound created by NAME DELETED, the small on-stage Adelaide Art Orchestra and the 16-person State Opera Chorus, who were at times brought into the dance space to become more than sound.

From sounding like one voice to times when all four parts could be heard or a spoken voice was combined with singing voices, the chorus sound exquisite. Working with the dance, Sexton ensures that Glass's music is heard in new ways.

While there's spoken poetry in the text (given to the dancers and allowed to be delightfully funny), the music's lyrics are numbers and solfège. Like classic positions are the beginning of dance, counting and do-re-mi are the first things we learn in music. Everything on the stage begins with first steps and expands to something complex that's unimaginable at the beginning: just like how Einstein's theory changed physics.

Musically, Glass treats voices like instruments; they are sound without personality. But by seeing the singers and having them on the stage with the dancers, there was personality. I can't decide if I loved this or would have preferred the unexpected power of the Wilson emotionless/neutral face that dominates that original production. Seeing the personalities of the individual singers and dancers brings a warmth to the stage, but at the same time something like a singer watching a dancer or counting on their fingers distracts so much more than it should.

There were some initial problems with the amplified sound feeling stuck at the back of the stage and getting lost behind the dancers. This improved throughout the night, but still left it feeling like we were seeing the music through a wall of dance rather than the dance through a wall of music – which might have been the point.

The stage and lighting design were relatively simple and, while supporting everything on the stage with triangles, balance and light, didn't feel like an equal element of the production. I was in the front, so it may be more impressive from further back or in the circle.

Still the biggest disappointment was the number of empty seats and general lack of sense of occassion. Come on Adelaide, you do festivals brilliantly and here's your state opera company being trusted with a masterpiece of 20th century modenist composition. This is something to celebrate and support.

It's nothing like the original Einstein on the beach, but it's nothing less than it. It's a remarkable production that starts with Glass's music to create a work that feels like he wrote it for them, and reminds us to never be scared of seeing any work through new eyes.

There's still a full cycle left of all three operas (if I'd had time, I would have loved to see the others) and I suspect that the third cycle will be the one to see as they as word gets around that it's unmissable.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Last night of The Container Festival

The Container Festival

MUST 
Monash University, Clayton

to 16 August

monashstudentassociation.com

Facebook page

Being crook and being not in Melbourne meant that I couldn't get to The Container Festival until it's second-to-last night.

In its second year, this amazingly fun and original festival is presented by the Monash Uni Student Theatre and Yvonne Virsik is its Artistic Director.

Students and graduates are invited to create any type of performance, on the condition that it fits in a shipping container or other surprising space. The results are intimate and personal and can't be seen anywhere else

Tonight is the Closing Gala Extravaganza with over 20 of the best cabaret, music, comedy, burlesque and theatre acts of the festival. And it's all in the Hub where it's much warmer than outside and there's a bar with good beer and $5 pizzas!

Last night I saw Re-verie: Tom Molyneax's beautiful, creepy and confronting verbatim piece about dreams. If you think your dreams are disturbing, try seeing stangers' dreams come to life when you're shut in a shipping container with such stunning lighting that it's easy to forget that it's safe.

Gale Force

Next was Gale Force Wins!!!: a live game show hosted by Gale Force (the endlessly classy Jack Beeby). We were allowed in a small room for this one. Gale hates KAK and wears a 70s psychedelic jumpsuit better than anyone has dared to. Four contestants are chosen from the audience and then it's nothing like Rock Wiz, Family Feud or Deal or No Deal. My team came second (last) and my favourite game was Celebrity Head, which had nothing to do with guessing celebrity faces.

And Jack is hosting the gala tonight!

The Dig Collective in the Hub

Then it was into the Hub for The Dig Collective  for cabaret, pizza and beer. They said that their "show contains coarse language, unsexy bodies and Scott Morrison being hit by leaks". I couldn't have said it better myself and think that Whack a Mollinson should be played in Canberra.

My night ended with Unease: a burlesque piece that's about every women finding what they think is glamorous and not being scared if it seems weird, gory or unexpected. 

This is a wonderful little festival that creates a sense of excitement and place at Monash Uni and encourages emerging artists to create the kind of work they want to make. And when you make the work you want to make, you find the audience that loves you.

A moment in yarn

A moment in yarn
Sayraphim Lothian
as part of Craft Victoria's Craft Cubed festival
sayraphimlothian.com





















Craftivist Sayraphim Lothian says A Moment in Yarn is a participatory craft experience; I say it's absolutely beautiful – and when she does it next, you must book your spot.

The experience is simple. You sit down with Sayraphim and she asks you to tell her a happy memory. I told her the story about how I eventually got my cat Flue. She asked me some specific questions and as she started crocheting, we talked about our pets.

A few minutes later, she handed me my finished square. It was immediately something precious to me because in it I could see a story that's mine.

We get so caught up in trying to tell complicated and universally-meaning stories and often wonder why they don't seem to connect.

Here a connection is made instantly and unguarded emotions and a memory are made solid by some scraps of yarn and a short conversation.

It's so beautiful.

So please, the next time Sayraphim does it – venues and events, you can book her – take family and friends. Use your square to start a rug or a use the squares made for your family to make a cushion cover. Whatever you do, you will want to do something special with something that looks like a scrap to anyone else.

Mine is the perfect size to put on top of the tin that holds Flue's ashes.

Her eyes are in the centre, the white bits are her, the middle is the colours of the first collar I bought her, and it's held together by me in black clothes that were always covered in white fur.