Review: My Dearworthy Darling

My Dearworthy Darling
Malthouse and The Rabble
7 August 2019
Beckett Theatre
to 18 August
malthousetheatre.com.au

Jennifer Vuletic. "Me Dearworthy Darling". Photo by David Paterson

I didn't realise how often I don't see reflections of myself on our stages, until I did.

Near the opening of The Rabble's My Dearworthy Darling, Jennifer Vuletic lies on a rock/couch/bed  talking about not being looked at with disgust. Middle aged? Of a certain age? "Never ask a lady her age" bullshit. Women who no longer have the physical benefits of oestrogen and the appeal of fertility can disappear from our stories as we're not virgins, 30-somethings or crones. Not in this story.

Trying to find meaning in a production by The Rabble can work against experiencing their work. On a very superficial level, this is a story about domestic and family gaslighting overcome by the voice and choir of a mystic from the middle ages; which doesn't come near to what's really going on.

The Rabble's theatre can feel confusing and unclear, but their work is visceral and meaning seeps into you without you knowing. It could be in how the lighting changes the colour of the air or how hearing the sound though a bank of speakers forces you to change how you listen to the people on stage. It might be the words or the performances. Or the carpeted floor and the vacuum, silver draped ceiling and LED sign. Or the choir of hooded monks.

But it is likely that your understanding is something that no one else felt.

The text by Alison Croggon began with the 14th century writings of Margery Kemp. Croggon's prolific writing includes criticism, journalism, poetry, libretti, plays and fiction (young adult, fantasy and historical). This text feels like it incorporates them all – there's even a critic joke – but feels more personal than other works of hers that I've read.

The personal is also in the performances from Vuletic, Natalie Gamsu (her sister) and Ben Grant (her partner). In a world that looks and feels so unlike the domestic, they find a naturalism that almost tips the text's poetry and they create characters so recognisable that it's easy to know, understand or judge them.

Natalie Gamsu. "My Dearworthy Darling". Photo by David Paterson

As it was always written to be a collaboration with directors-designers-Rabble-founders Emma Valente and Kate Davis, it's not an option to look at the text away from the production and performance. Davis and Valente develop their theatre from a rehearsal room where no one's voice is excluded and even though only a fraction of the development ends up on the stage, the contributions of all are so blurred that it seems like one voice.

My Dearworthy Darling surprises with its shifts from the familiar to the unknown and from the mundane to the spiritual. Its symbolism is as obvious as it is obscure but its many contradictions feel surprising natural. It's not easy theatre and is as much about theatre as it is about the deeply personal and hidden. But it left me feeling like it was theatre for me.

Finishing this weekend: The Witches and Photographs of A

The Witches
Malthouse Theatre
Last show tonight
malthousetheatre.com.au

Roald Dahl's children's stories are dark and naughty and let children get into all sorts of trouble without bothersome grown ups ruining the fun or trying to help. The Witches is about what happens when a group of children-hating witches meet at a hotel and come across an orphaned boy.

Having missed chunk of the beginning (I should have known there is no right turn onto Sturt Street from Kings Way during peak hour), I didn't review but I loved what I saw.

Guy Edmonds plays everyone in this stage version of the story, which is based on a play by David Wood. His instant transformations from horrible hag to squeaky fast mouse are magic. There's little on the stage except the performer and the imagination of his audience – it's pretty close to the experience of reading – and together they create a show that's more spectacular, far scarier and more loving than anything made from special effects.

Here's what Keith Gow thought after seeing it earlier this week.

NEON
Photographs of A
Antechamber and Daniel Keene
Last show tomorrow
mtc.com.au

Until this show, I didn't know anything about 15-year-old Louise Augustine Gleizes. Known as "A", she was a celebrity hysteric in Paris in the late 1870s whose hysterias were photographed and the young woman was exhibited by her doctor, the influential neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. Photographs of A by Daniel Keene explores the young woman's illness and experiences in the Salpetriere sanitarium from inside A's head.

If only the public display of ill and sexually traumatised young women didn't feel so familiar.

Sixty-something Helen Morse is Augustine and, even though Ben Grant and Anouk Gleeson-Mead appear on stage with her, the script is nearly all hers. Her performance is as beautiful as it is disturbing.

Having seen the photos (they are in the free program), we know A was as gorgeous as any teenage girl is and the key to this work is hearing the teenage voice – one that's still full of hope and doesn't understand the consequences of her experiences – come from an old, ugly and near broken woman. The power of Keene's script comes from what's unspoken.

However the production, directed and designed by Brian Lipson, is so aware of its theatricality that it never escapes the falseness of being in a theatre and feels so obvious that there's little surprise or space for unexpected wonder. When the design starts with rows of tea-light candles, the expectation of their lighting and snuffing takes away from the beauty of the candlelight.

The NEON festival is about the new and the daring. Photographs of A is a lovely piece that's worth seeing for Morse, but it feels out of place in NEON.

Chat: Ben Grant, La Mama

The Shrink and Swell of Knots

La Mama

8–19 August 2012

lamama.com.au

Ben Grant created and performs in The Shrink and Swell of Knots, which opens at La Mama on 8 August .

A man starts building his own coffin, but decides to turn it into a raft in a work described as “an energetic, challenging and optimistic show about struggle, filled with music and ideas, practical information and poetry, transformation and grunt”.

What three words best describe your show?
Original, masculine and surprising.

Do you remember the first show you saw at La Mama?
The Wood Box in 1989.

What is one of your favourite shows you’ve seen at La Mama?
Coranderrk: We Will Show The Country.

I saw it a lot because I made the music.

What do you love about working at La Mama?
The people.

What do you love most about this show?
It’s mentally complex and physically simple.

Where is the best coffee in Carlton?
Tiamo 1.

Who would you love to see in your audience one night?
Mum and Dad, which is lucky as they’re coming.

What do you like to do after a performance?
Relax.

What was your first time on a stage?
When I was four, I played a god. It’s all been downhill from there.

Do you have any pre-show rituals?
A physical and vocal warm up.

What’s some great theatre advice you’ve used?
You don’t have to feel a damn thing.

What punishment do you think is fit for audience members who don’t turn their phones off during performances?
A bad credit rating.

What’s your favourite gelati flavour?
Nougat.

What role/character do you really want to play one day?
Pablo Picasso (stay tuned…)

Do you read reviews?
Sadly yes.

Do you know of any secret parking spots near the theatres (although it’s such a short walk from the Melbourne uni tram stop on Swanston Street, so driving isn’t necessary)?
Sadly no.

What are the best books you’ve read recently?
Theatre And The Body by Colette Conroy, A Scarecrow’s Bible by Martin Hyatt and A Study In Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle.

What question do you wish I’d asked?
Why did you write The Shrink And Swell Of Knots?

How would you answer it?
To see if it was possible to give a young person good advice.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Save For Crying

Save For Crying
La Mama
20 February 2011
La Mama Theatre
to 6 March
www.lamama.com.au

"Nice people make matter," says Luv in Save For Crying. Call La Mama NOW and book because it's beautiful and uncomfortable and funny, because it will be sold out and because it's a gut kick reminder about why theatre matters.

Angus Cerini wrote and directed Save for Crying. Cerini writes about people and lives that educated, inner-city, latte-drinking theatre goers (like me) are more comfortable avoiding, ignoring or buying a Big Issue from. He says he writes about bad stuff and what we do about it and tries to answer it in the "art stuff" he makes. Like the bad stuff in life, there isn't a clear answer and Cerini never gives ones. Instead he leaves his writing in a much stronger and more disturbing position where we question our own lives and the bad stuff we turn away from.

Walking into near darkness, it's easy to feel uneasy and also easy to distance ourselves from the action of these people in a cell who are not "one of us".   The genius of this work is how is it creeps up on us until there's no comforting distance and it has become our story.

Luv (Peta Brady), and Alfie (Ben Grant) have their share of bad stuff. They know that five dollars isn't enough for fish and chips, but they can keep it from Ratspunk (LeRoy Parsons) who "everyday he does the not nice things". Each performer is so embodied in their character that there's no time to admire their acting; so much that their "real" selves final bow is a sharp jolt back to reality.

The artistic collaboration on this work has made an astonishing script an unforgettable show. As the actors create broken souls, the design (Marg Horwell) and lighting (Rachel Burke) hide and reveal action and characters in ways that the mere words of a script can never achieve and Kelly Ryall's astonishing music and sound design is almost inseparable from the words.

And Cerini's words are as beautiful as they are disturbing and terrifying. He writes with a language that plays with word order and strips away everything that isn't needed. In the wrong hands, it could feel forced, but it sounds natural in this world. It's a language that is pure emotion and makes us feel the pain, hope and humiliation that these people are trying so hard to block from their lives, without forcing us to justify, over-think or even completely understand what's going on.

Save For Crying is confronting theatre told with humanity and guts. Don't regret missing it.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com