Review: Barbara and the Camp Dogs

Barbara and the Camp Dogs
Malthouse presents a Belvoir production
9 February 2019
Merlyn Theatre
to 3 March
malthousetheatre.com.au/

Elaine Crombie and Ursula Yovic. Photo by Brett Boardman

The back wall of the theatre is a huge board with "The Camp Dogs" chalked over partially rubbed-out memories of bands past. The floor is covered with the kind of carpet only found in pub band rooms and old hotels; its waves of bright orange could look like song lines after a few beers. Singers Barbara and Rene are older than their three-piece band and are still rocking their looks from the 80s. Welcome to Barbara and the Camp Dogs. Prepare to dance. Or cry.

Barbara (Ursula Yovich) and her cousin Rene (Elaine Crombie) were brought up by the same mum in Katherine in the Northern Territory. They're older than they want to think they are, frustrate the hell out of each other, and live in Sydney doing whatever gigs they can. Pub sessions don't pay the rent, neither does busking. Barbara doesn't approve of Rene doing girl-band covers at the casino and is still angry that an Aboriginal woman singing is considered "world music",  but is happy to be dodgy when they really need money. When their mum's in hospital in Darwin, Rene convinces Barbara that it's time to go back home.

Crossing the red desert from southern city to the top-end is a well-used Aussie story trope; crossing our continent is impossible to forget. Watching from a plane, Barbara knows that her unwanted journey home is going to be longer and more personal and painful than she fears.

The comfort and easy early laughs of the pub band room fade in the top-end heat where the wound that Barbara tries to hide begins to bleed. Abandonment and being treated like you don't matter doesn't heal with a Band Aid and some Dettol. And she knows it's far more than just her soul that's breaking as cops, lonely roads and cheap wine casks remind her that she lives in a country founded on theft.

Leticia Caceres's direction lets the story about Barbara and Rene move from one about watching strangers to one that it's easy to see your own life in, even if your life is so distant from Barbara and Rene's that you don't know anyone like them.

The use of song – there's a whole other rave review about the music and Yovich and Crombie's singing) – can seem like a break in the action, but music and song make us feel before we realise it. The music (Yovich, Alana Valentine, who co-wrote the script with Yovich, and Adm Ventoura) creates the emotion that starts with the whooping fun of the pub and moves deep into our shared stories, which hurt as much as they celebrate.

Stephen Curtis's design is every inner-city pub we've drunk in while the script takes us to places inner-city pub drinkers rarely visit. And, as always, Chloe Greaves's costumes let us know so much about the characters who are stuck in a time when perhaps they felt best about themselves.

Barbara and the Camp Dogs is urgent and vital theatre. It's about the deep personal loss that screams for family and belonging, and about understanding that our contemporary Australian stories all begin with that theft and the intergenerational trauma that too many people think is in the past.

What Melbourne loved in 2014, part 6

Today, it's Penelope Bartlau, Declan Greene and Sarah Collins with discussion about how ongoing funding makes conservative theatre, why some audience member's should be removed from the world, and why Google should shut down when cat guardians try and diagnose their pet's non-existent illnesses.

Penelope Bartlau

director, writer, creator Barking Spider Theatre

Penelope: Theatre moment knockout this year has to be Punch Drunk’s Sleep No More (New York City). I wish I could have my max-highlight from something in Melbourne because there is SO much going on in this city; we have such remarkable and vital theatre here.

I know plenty have talked about Punch Drunk's  Sleep No More – and justifiably. Why is it so compelling? Because it’s utterly unpredictable, it’s a completely individual experience as it’s virtually impossible for any two audience members to take the same passage and see the same things. I was determined to understand the dramaturgy – and not be disappointed. 

The backstory: they took Macbeth and cut it up and laid out the rawest pieces of the story for us to experience. It’s set in an old hotel – in the Speakeasy period, but it’s not like any hotel you’ve ever been to. Hotels are designed for guest ease and smooth navigation. They took an old hotel and reinvented it into a dreamscape. There are no stage left or right entrances or exits in a dream; so-too it is with Sleep No More.

The work is designed to be, in part, cyclical – by knotting one part of the narrative to the next in a way that is deeply poetic, and all the more so as it was told without dialogue. For example, Lady Macbeth’s dance of persuasion morphed into her “take my milk for gall” scene, to Macbeth’s return after the murders – the first time around – and then this was repeated, added to and completed a second time around by merging directly to her mad “out damn spot” scene. 

To follow any of the action, you had to make an immediate decision about which character to follow – if any, and if you could keep up. You could easily take a misdirection and lose a character, and end up in Burnham Wood encroaching on Dunsenane, or stumble upon someone burying a foetus in a graveyard, or simply get lost. 

It seems no irony to me, that I pursued narrative – given my role as an artistic director and writer, and my set/lighting designer husband Jason Lehane was absorbed primarily in the installations/set – that we had totally different experiences. We came out, compared notes and all the conversations we tracked around the show were “did you see this?” or “did you encounter that?”. Sleep No More is a masterpiece.

Regarding theatre in general in Melbourne, the most dynamic work is – as always – coming out of individuals and from smaller groups, productions and companies. 

I met a guy who knows a thing or two about theatre in New York, and my ears are resonating with his philosophy on funding. It’s no real news to hear it, but he says “Ongoing funding makes artists risk adverse” – heard it here before. But this is resonating especially now in light of the Australia Council six-year organisational funding that is in the offing for 2015. If it’s true – and I think it is – that everything is based on economics, then this six-year strategy is born of deeply conservative economic drivers. Bring on the ecology, and let us “little guys” flourish and make more work, everywhere. The big trees are going to grow bigger and cast greater shadows across the forest floor: the floor dwellers have to become even more inventive, more subversive and louder artistically and politically – if we are to not only survive but thrive.

SM: Penelope's Barking Spider Theatre created an amazing experience in the State Library that started with the Press Dress worn by Matilda Butters to a fancy dress ball in 1866. It explored how Melbourne society saw women and Chinese immigrants in the 1860s and tied it all to now with moving (and moving) explorations of fashion, ethnicity and bodies. It was all so beautiful, but my favourite moment was standing in the State Library Dome room – which was full of people studying and Facebooking – knowing that in any moment their peace would be broken by loud drums.

Declan Greene

playwright, director Sisters Grimm

Declan: For me: 2014 was all about the grrlz.

It started with post’s Oedipus Schmoedipus at Belvoir: a playful satire of the recent adaptation trend – and the dead, straight, white men that continue to colonise our cultural imagination. Coming off Belvoir’s 2013 season, it was conceptually brilliant site-specific theatre. Watching some 20 unrehearsed volunteers dressed in mismatched bed sheets as ‘ghosts’ – while attempting to replicate terrible dance moves off a video monitor – was one of the most joyful experiences I’ve ever had in a theatre. And summoning this mass elation from the idea of death was fkn genius.

(Speaking of death: I wish it upon the scowling piece of shit who sat next to me in that audience and radiated hatred at the stage. You are 80% of everything that is wrong with theatre in this country.)

I was obsessed with I’m Trying to Kiss You’s Madonna Arms at Next Wave. The production was fantastic – but as a piece of writing. I thought it was the most inventive, brilliant text I’ve seen onstage this year: a wild, bruising journey through female representation in popular culture. And very, very, very, very funny.

The journey in Nicola Gunn’s Green Screen was also remarkable. I admired its emotional bravery; the way it used irony, sarcasm and anger to pry open a very recent grief, onstage, every night. It can’t have been easy to do.

Also The Rabble’s Frankenstein. Also Adena Jacobs’ adaptation of Hedda Gabler. Also Fleur Kilpatrick’s The City That Burned. Also Diamanda Galás’ work-in-progress Das Fieberspital at DARK MOFO. Also Emma McManus’ Carly & Troy Do A Doll’s House at Adelaide Fringe. Also... fuck, I dunno. There was a lot.

There were boys who did some very kool stuff too: Matt Lutton’s epic, unsettling take on Patrick White’s Night on Bald Mountain (Julie Forsythe and Melita Jurisic’s ‘drinking’ scene was probably the finest acting I’ve ever seen onstage), Meng Jinghui’s batshit crayyy take on The Good Person of Szechuan, Angus Cerini’s Resplendence, Jackson Davis’s Jackson! Le Diner est Pret! for Woodcourt Art Theatre...

But yeah. To quote Jim O’Rourke ===>

SM: Calpurnia Descending. Yeah, yeah our Dec’s a fucking amazing playwright, but the first thing that I really noticed about him was his direction (many years ago in a car park). He knows how to take a piece to the knife edge of offence or shock, dangle it over the edge and pull it back at the exact second and turn it into something that’s close to profound, or just filthy.

Sarah Collins

playwright, photographer

Sarah: I feel really bad because I'm going to give an answer so simplistic it will SHOCK. It will be like when Kerith Manderson-Galvin talked about loving Miley, but dull. 

I'm pissed off I am not naming a show that is more original, less well-funded and not even moderately steeped in metropolitan Melbourne theatre controversy. 

You guys know I aim to be controversial with every fibre of my being, always. I never intended for this to be my answer. Never forget that I am a girl who got scalped tickets off ebay to be second row at The Seekers concert. Never forget about the feathers I ruffled when I stood up during Georgy Girl and blocked the view of the 80-year-olds behind me. The term controversial doesn't even cut it. 

My point is, I have barely seen a thing and I feel bad because the one show I did see that I LOVED was such a good piece of HAPPY FLUFFY THEATRE and I know I should have something here involving Paul Capsis, but I just don't, and I blame it on things happening that I can't control. (Like today, one of my cat's pupils is bigger than the other. No other theatre lovers wake up to this kind of insanity daily. It means you guys all get to go out and see the great stuff and I have to stay home googling "uneven pupil dilation + potential feline brain injury + home remedies"). 

So with that out of the way, you cannot judge me when I say:

My highlight was Beautiful the Carole King musical on Broadway.

It was amazing. It was happy. It was hilarious. It was jaw-dropping. It was so so smart and everything most contemporary musicals aren't. Just watch this and tell me you don't feel some tingles. 

Judith D 4eva.

SM: I’ve checked my cat’s pupils. All is good. She was napping in prep for her late-morning sleep, but I couldn’t let her snooze knowing that her pupils may be unevenly dilated.

Sarah wrote the very gorgeous Bucket’s List and introduced "bucketlingus" to our vernacular, but my favourite moment was seeing Facebook explode when she "accidentally" announced her pregnancy on national television (The Project) while being interviewed about Hanson (yes, Hanson) .

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What Melbourne loved in 2014, part 2

Today, it's photography, Q&As and a reminder to see The House of Yes before it finishes.


Sarah Walker
photographer

Photo by Sarah Walker

Sarah: My moments were both at the Malthouse and both involved high school students.

I recently shot a secondary school workshop for Malthouse’s Suitcase Series, where kids took Angus Cerini’s normal.suburban.planetary.meltdown and worked on it in drama class, adapting it and developing short sections for performance. Each school was presenting a couple of scenes to the other schools, and the levels of excitement and anxiety in the room were stratospheric.

Most of these kids only had about six lines and were going to be onstage for three minutes tops, but they were all so incredibly nervous and exhilarated to be performing. A girl walked past me, gabbling to her friend: “Of course I’m gonna do my very best, but right now I’m so nervous I think I might die”. The girl was, I might add, dressed as a cow. I loved that.

And then seeing the way these kids took a text and adapted it, added things that they felt were relevant and important and worth saying; that felt so empowered. One of the groups added a scene with a character being on the internet and getting pop ups: “Hey man, do you want a bigger penis?”. A boy from another school got offended, asking them where they drew the line of what was appropriate, and then suddenly, 50 high school students were having this engaged, intelligent discussion about censorship in art, and how theatre needs to be able to look at the dark side of life as well as the light.

On the one hand, I wanted to take them all to see The Rabble’s The Story of O and watch their little brains melt, but I was also so impressed at their thoughtful engagement and willingness to listen to each other’s points of view. Grown up theatre could learn a lot from them.

As a photographer, I get a massive art boner for lighting used well, and Am I during the Melbourne Festival was a fantastic reminder of the power of light. I saw it at a matinee with several school groups, which meant that I got a constant whispered commentary on how “totally awesome” the dancing was.

The set featured a huge bank of lights on the back wall, with some incredible DMX triggering to create patterns. The show started very dimly, mostly side lit, with the occasional shimmer from the light bank, until Shantala Shivalingappa finished a monologue and for just a second, every light on the set blazed on at full in this huge flare – hundreds and hundreds of lights beaming on, sending this rush of heat into the faces of the audience, and every single person in the space just let out this huge involuntary “Ah!”. The students behind me burst into a shocked sort of laughter; I just sat there grinning. There was something so primal, spiritual even, about that moment – humans in the dark being awed by the light.

SM: Every photo that Sarah publishes. It’s as simple as that. There’s no one who captures the essence of a moment like she does. She's made Melbourne look at theatre photography as seriously as we look at every other element of theatre


Stephen Nicolazzo
director

Stephen: Two of my favourite moments of 2014 come from The Rabble: Frankenstein at Malthouse and Death/Deadly/Dead for the Melbourne Writers Festival (also at the Malthouse). These works were exhilarating experimental queer feminist works that were striking in their visual and visceral power. The Rabble’s extraordinary ability to appeal to the darkest cesspools of one’s imagination and realise it on stage is something to behold, and I find the growth and detail of their visual playgrounds so engrossing and satisfying to experience. They speak through the image. A hard task, but one they tackle with gusto. I love them. So much.

Also, I adored Uninvited Guests’ I Heart John McEnroe at Theatre Works. Clare Watson (director) is a magnificent joyful artist and this work was a total nostalgic celebration. It was sublime. The cast and crew were all firkin top notch, and who the hell doesn’t want to see a pregnant Kath Tonkin play Madonna? Joyous theatre. Still think of it today.

And one more, please … Adena Jacobs’ Hedda Gabler at Belvoir. Fucking astonishing. Fucking gorgeous. Fucking Ash Flanders. Imagery I won’t forget. That is all I can say.


SM: Stephen’s show The House of Yes is on at Theatre Works until 13 December.  Go. Book now. Its dark camp freaking twincest is fucking wonderful.

I’ve watched Stephen’s direction for a few years. He’s developed a style and a directorial voice that’s totally his and he doesn’t compromise on what he wants to make and see on the stage.

My favourite moment. There were moments of Dangerous Liasons where I hurt from laughing, but it has to be coming in a tiny bit late to The House of Yes and seeing Josh Price towering in the dark complaining how hard it was to be a mother; I was totally in that world in seconds.


Keith Gow
playwright, blogger

Keith: After having my mind blown by Sisters Grimm’s Calpurnia Descending, I attended the post-show Q&A where Ash Flanders, Paul Capsis and Peter Paltos answered questions from Malthouse Associate Artist Lally Katz and the audience, who ranged from young teens to subscribers in their seventies.

Post-show Q&As are a strange beast. I always have questions to ask, but rarely ever do. Most of the time, when I leave a show, I want to think about it some more (or a lot) before I discuss it with anyone. And questions from random audience members very rarely help me with my own thought processes. I used to try booking tickets for the right nights, but now if I’m at the Malthouse or Melbourne Theatre Company on forum night, I count myself lucky – or I hightail it out of there.

One of my other favourite shows of the year was Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday – but I had to spend time thinking about that. I had no time for listening to possibly facile questions about a show I flat out adored.

One of the other notable Q&A sessions I attended this year was for The Sublime at the Melbourne Theatre Company. I was hoping the audience might ask tough questions about a problematic play. It was mostly simplistic questions and unenlightening answers. None of the troubling subtext was questioned or challenged.

Occasionally I’ll hear an answer I wanted to hear or appreciate that someone else in the audience had a wholly different response to mine.

What I loved about the Calpurnia Descending Q&A was getting the sense of how overwhelmed and overjoyed the audience were by the show and the creatives were by the response to the show. An older audience member got completely lost at the video-game sequence, but appreciated that younger attendees might have appreciated that more. The school kids in the audience loved the video-game sequence, but also connected with the opening scenes because they seemed “more real”.

One audience member commented that the second act felt like “tumbling through the Looking Glass”. Creator and actor Ash Flanders responded, “It’s like tumbling or Tumblr.com” – which it really, really was.

Obviously, I like to talk about the craft of theatre with other theatre makers. Sometimes listening to questions from random audiences doesn’t illuminate my experience of the show at all. But what I realise I do love about Q&A forums is the possibility of getting a glimpse into other people’s experience of a show they’ve just seen – especially after we’ve all just had our minds blown!

And speaking of getting insights into how other people see theatre this year, I’ve really loved Fleur Kilpatrick’s blog School for Birds – particularly her own post-show Q&As with random audience members.

Her interview with Cameron Woodhead, dissecting his thoughts on her show The City They Burned was brave and insightful – and a brilliant way to continue an artistic discussion, which so many of us think ends with the closing of a show or a critics review in the newspaper.

And, last but not least, Fleur’s podcast with Jana Perkovic, Audio Stage, was another highlight of Melbourne theatre this year. We have such vibrant work happening all around us and this insight into local theatre history was extraordinary in parts. I hope we hear more of Audio Stage in 2015.

SM: Keith’s play Who Are You Supposed To Be was part of the Melbourne Fringe this year. I totally loved being surrounded by fellow Dr-Who-obsessives who got every joke and reference, and I was so happy to see Dr Who show that let a women be the Doctor and challenged some of the gender issues that exist in fandom.

Here's more of Keith's favourites on his blog.

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What Melbourne loved in 2014, part 1

It's December, which means one thing: It's time to find out what Melbourne's theatre community really loved this year.

It's time to ignore the awards and the critics and remember those shows, people and moments that made theatre in Melbourne so bloody wonderful in 2014.

To kick us off, it's Ash Flanders, Paul Capsis and Peter Paltos, who have just finished in Calpurnia Descending at Malthouse. I think Paul's “I wasn’t bored for a second” should be a goal for all shows in 2015. And I wasn't bored for a second in Calpurnia.

Ash Flanders
actor

Ash Flanders, the younger.  Photo by Ben Dyer

Ash: My list should start with shows I'm really bummed I couldn't see this year. These include (but are not limited to) the MTC NEON season, Madonna Arms (Next Wave at Arts House) and, of course, The Good Person of Szechwan (at Malthouse).

A highlight for me was Applespiel make a band and take on the recording industry (Malthouse, Helium series), which blew my mind largely because of the audacity of the concept – a rock-u-mentary made live in front of an audience by a clean-haired cult of young theatre makers, all who probably have $2 to their names. This show made me feel old and jaded – and reminded me to keep pushing ideas further... and to stop being such a whinger!

I will also never forget Jane Montgomery Griffiths’s naked (in every sense of the word) screams for her mother in The Rabble’s Frankenstein. I shall remain happily haunted forever.

This was also the year I discovered my Adena Jacobs impersonation, which has seen the total erasure of my natural voice. Good news everyone!

SM: I missed Ash in Hedda Gabler because Belvoir is in Sydney and I wasn’t. For that I too am bummed. But he posted plenty of pics of him in a one-piece bathing suit to keep me happy.

There was his performance in Calpurnia Descending (his Violet was fucking wonderful  – and Violet was my grandmother’s name, so I approved), but my moment has to be him telling me about meeting Katie Perry backstage. It’s not as sexy a story as it could be and I suggest asking him because it won’t be as good coming from me,

Paul Capsis
actor

Paul Capsis. Photo by Shane Reid

Pau: Hmmm, my favourite theatre moment in 2014  would be a little show I saw in the Tower at Malthouse. Applespiel I think was the title. A great young vibrant and highly energised cast with lots of funny takes on a rock documentary, using film, video, effects made and performed in front of the audience. I liked the energy, rawness, chaos and roughness of the performances and that’s something that’s lacking in a lot of Australian theatre right now. I find so much to yawn at these days. I wasn't bored for a second in this show.

SM: How about making “I wasn’t bored for a second” the goal for new shows?

There was only thing more amazing that Mz Flanders in Calpurnia Descending and that was Paul Capsis as Beverly. When I think of this show, the first image that comes to mind is Paul in his underwear at the top of a ladder; nothing left to hide, everything exposed. This show was endless laughter, but it ended with a moment that made every laugh hurt because we know they came from pain. In different hands, it could have been another laugh, but it was Paul and he was magnificent.

Peter Paltos
actor

Peter Paltos

Peter: My favourites are:

Greenscreen by Nicola Gunn/Sans Hotel at MTC Neon. For me, Greenscreen was an existential theatrical poem that articulated both my loneliness and sense of belonging. I was really touched by this piece. Gunn is a goddess.

Madonna Arms by I'm Trying To Kiss You. Three feminists speaking in verse and smashing the science fiction genre a new asshole. So earthy and absurd.

Hedda Gabler at Belvior directed by Adena Jacobs. I have not stopped thinking about the first fifteen minutes of this production since I saw it. It was like a painting quietly coming to life.

Grounded by Red Stitch, directed by Kirsten von Bibra. This was a really well executed, solo show with an impressive performance by Kate Cole. I dug the minimalism of this piece: old school, clean storytelling with no tricks.

SM: If you were in Calpurnia Descending, there isn’t much hope that your performance in Calpurnia Descending isn’t going to be my favourite moment of yours.

Peter was as amazing as Ash, Paul (and Sandy Gore). He was pure matinee idol with all the guts it takes to be a real matinee idol and maintain the bullshit image.

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Review: Neighbourhood Watch

Neighbourhood Watch
MTC presents the Belvoir production
20 March 2014
The Sumner
to 26 April
mtc.com.aud-watch/

Any one who saw Lally Katz's super-gorgeous Stories I Want to Tell You in Person heard about her writing of Neighbourhood Watch, and will be thrilled that the MTC have brought us that Belvoir production. Like most of Lally's work, it's personal, dreamy and so dark that that you're never sure if you're wiping away tears of heartaching recognition or life-affirming love.

Neighbourhood Watch is about neighbours, friends and death and all the things we do to avoid or confront both.

It's set in the year of Kevin 07: a far-too-quickly-lost time of hope. Howard lost his seat and his government, a woman was Deputy PM, a rock star was Minister for the Environment, Kyoto was signed, our Indigenous people were finally apologised to, and we all got $1000 to buy some treats to keep the economy going. Today, such hope feels like fiction.

It was also the year that Lally moved to Far Kew and met Anna, her 80+ Hungarian neighbour who became her best friend, and the year that Robyn Nevin asked Lally to write her a "tough and funny" character. When the Nevin asks, you write – and result is the story of grieving Catherine (Megan Holloway) meeting her neighbour Ana (Nevin), whose lifetime of grief is as guarded as her big-dog protected front gate.

The combination of Robyn and Ana is as good as it gets. Katz captures the unique second-language rhythm and Nevin perfects it in a performance that lets you love Ana in an instant. Ana's Englishisms and missing social niceties are hilarious, but Nevin assures that we are always on her side, even when she is making painful choices, and that Ana is never made fun of. It's such a remarkable performance that it might be impossible to see the play and not consider real-life Anna a friend.

Simon Stone's confident direction is an enhancing and comfortable fit with the writing; he's able to bring Katz's work to a commercial stage without losing her delightfully awkward tone or any of the love that she pours into her characters, while letting them find their place in the world beyond the text.

With Dale Ferguson's almost bare stage design, made intimate with Damien Cooper's lighting, there's enough space to feel the reach of the drama, but Kew is missing. It's easy for a Melbourne audience to understand the subtleties of the suburb – so much of Katz's work starts with and evokes a sense of place that leaves residents homesick –  but its greyness doesn't share the green of the trees, the manicured lawns, Leo's, the High Street tram or getting stuck on Princess Street trying to cut across to the Eastern Freeway. Having said that, I could see it all, so perhaps the wheelie bins were more than enough.

Lally Katz's writing grabbed me from the first time I saw a short play about the Apocalypse Bear in Kew. There have been ups and downs, but at her best her writing is felt in our hearts before our brains have time to think it all through. Neighbourhood Watch is Katz at her absolute best.

But the real world isn't at its best.  Lally wrote a piece for The Age on 1 March: Anna has cut her off and isn't speaking to her. In Stories, Lally talked about real-life Anna seeing the play in Sydney and the thought of it being in Melbourne without her being there is unthinkable – and, more importantly, it's too sad to think that she might not know how much this play has made us love her.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Stories I Want to Tell You in Person

Stories I Want to Tell You in Person
Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir
13 August 2013
Beckett Theatre
to 25 August
malthousetheatre.com.au

I fell in deep fuzzy love with the Apocalypse Bear and Lally Katz's writing in 2007 when the bear appeared in a short play set in near Kew at fortyfivedownstairs. My love was affirmed at the Melbourne Festival in 2009, when writer Lally Katz gave him a trilogy of hilariously dark wonders in Apocalypse Bear Trilogy. He's also in Lally's Stories I Want to Tell You in Person; so, there's no way that I could not adore this show.

Lally's also in it, which makes it more awesome.

Stories is what happens when a playwright has to figure out if it's possible to have a career and a fulfilling personal life while working in theatre. And what better way to share this experience than by getting onto the stage (without acting experience) and telling us what she did to overcome the problem of success and loneliness in an industry that loves you as easily as it forgets you.

Lally's adorable as a storyteller. While her writing is dark with emotional dangers lurking in its shadows and subtext, in person she's light and welcoming and the only danger is that she's happy to be extremely honest to make the story better and risks being judged. It's one thing to be judged for your work, but something else to be judged as a person.

But it's often hard to make this distinction. And Lally's Stories shares this so well.

So what does a playwright do when she has more money than she's ever had before? (And earned that money from a play that every critic in the opening-night audience had written less-than-positive reviews about. Part of me wanted her to quote the worst, but luckily she knows what to leave out in her stories.)

What does anyone do when they have more money than they've ever had before? Spend it, of course.
And so begins a tale of expensive psychics in New York, coconut hair shampoo, the dangers of a Ouija board, $400 crystals, being Jewish on your father's side, a pushy bear, a positive dolphin, going against Robyn Nevin's advice, and the problem of having a cursed vagina.

With the help, love and cynicism of director Anne-Louise Sarks and the shiniest design by Ralph Myers, Lally's story is too honest to be true, too outrageously wonderful to be made up and too marvellous to dare miss.

Photo by Heidrun Lohr.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Melbourne please follow Belvoir's example

Yesterday, Belvoir theatre in Sydney allocated a number of free tickets for Newstart families for their production of Peter Pan.

Peter Pan rehearsal. Photo by Brett Boardman.

"At Belvoir we think theatre is a necessity, but we know that for a lot of families it is a luxury, especially for single parent families. With over 80,000 single parents moved from a parenting payment to Newstart on 1 January things are that little bit harder.

We’d like to share the joy of theatre with some of these families."

More info here.

I'd love to see some Melbourne companies and organisations follow this example.

If you have unsold seats, why not give them to people who can't afford the luxury of a theatre ticket? Not just the families who have been forced onto Newstart, but anyone who is in a position where they are reliant on Centrelink.

Know that these tickets would be appreciated and loved, even if they are in the top balcony (War Horse, I'm talking especially to YOU).

Review: The End

The End
Malthouse Theatre presents a Belvoir production
25 February 2011
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse
to 11 March
www.malthousetheatre.com.au

Samuel Beckett said that "Words are all we have." I'm a word lover and if it weren't for theatre makers, I would have missed too much of Beckett's astonishing writing.

As Coner and Judy Hegarty Lovett showed me the painful bliss of the Beckett's Molloy novels at the 2010 Melbourne International Arts Festival, performer Robert Menzies and director Eamon Flack have convinced me that Beckett's plays are just a hint of his genius.

The novella The End was written in 1946 (originally in French), before Waiting for Godot (1953) and Beckett's Nobel Prize for Literature (1969). His first person storyteller is kicked out of an institution and back on the streets he knows too well. Conned out of his rent money, he heads to the country and finally returns to the suburbs "... beyond the stupid hope of rest or less pain". Beckett's characters are usually in despair, but they show us a light so dim that it's often uncomfortable to laugh – and Beckett wanted us to laugh.

On a bare wooden floor with a cross to mark his place, it's performed as written. Beckett's language is so compelling that the story, for all its drama, can become secondary. Reading Beckett is about the words and language and I don't hear the narrative voice when I read him.  What Menzies's remarkable performance does is turn the wordy narrator in to a character so unforgettable that the words become the music to his story.

Menzies and Flack have created a telling of The End that surpasses the words and creates an experience where the emotion overwhelms the admiration – and the admiration floods in after. This isn't a show to miss.

This review appears on AussieThearte.com

The End is in this book